Better Art Than In

First published on March 10, 2021

I've spent a lot of my life thinking about art.

When I was 11 years old, I won a painting competition and my painting became a post-card sold at a local swimming pool. I lost visual art in the midst of art classes that didn't inspire me, but rediscovered it one day in the Louvre in front of a Degas statue.

I was fascinated by music, and after somehow finding my way through the winding roads of fear and insecurity I managed to learn the guitar. Enough to play in my room, and even write songs. Enough to once play a gig supporting some friends in their band. Enough to play at my wedding.

Perhaps the defining moment of my childhood came when I took part in a school play aged 10. That started a 15-year love affair with acting, from Shakespeare to Berkoff and beyond; an experience which spawned almost all my longstanding friends, one way or another.

And now I write. I've always written, but now, mostly, that is my art. This is my art.

I also worked in the arts. I did the things that need to be done so that young people could perform in a youth theatre, community theatre projects with incredible ambition could continue, so young people could take over a theatre, so two small towns in Yorkshire could have access to live art on their doorsteps. And more.

Most of my obsessions (apart, perhaps, from football, although let's have that conversation another time) have been artistic. David Gemmell, Noel Gallagher, Frank Turner, Brandi Carlile.

And so, you could say that if I know a lot about something, I know a lot about art.

Here's what I know. Making art will change you. You. You, the person reading this. Playfully creating if you can, fighting the creative battle if you must, will change you. Whoever you are. Doing it for 12 minutes more this week than you did last week will change you.

It might be because of what my friend Jo says, that seeing that you can create something, that you can be an artist, is powerful because it changes your perception of yourself. If I can make something from nothing, what else can I do? If I can create this, I can choose to be different anywhere in my life.

It might be the connection that art has to inspiration, whatever art you make. Or to joy. Or to your heart or your spirit. Inspiration, joy, heart and spirit: connecting to those things will change you.

It might be that art is a connection to the divine. That's what those moments feel like: the Degas statue, the perfectly balanced Henry V speech, 50,000 people singing Some Might Say, three people performing an acoustic version of The Eye in a church. They are divine.

Sharing it will change you, too. It's not just the making it. The gig supporting my friends was the end of a musical oddysey, a Hero's Journey for me. And this practice only became art because it's here, for you to read it. And that's what changed me about it more than anything.

So create something, yes, because creating it will change you. But share it, please, because that will change you, too. And it might just change someone else. And wouldn't that be wonderful.

Because art, real art, doesn't make things worse. You can't make things worse by sharing your art. All you can do is make things better. Starting with you, yes. But not finishing with you.