Professionalism and the Amateur

 Professionals Vs Amateurs

Often, people are lead to believe that an amateur is someone without the skills and representation needed to become a professional in their field. However, the main difference between the two is that professionals make their living off of producing and selling art, whereas amateurs do not. Amateurs can still sell their art if they so choose, but it's not their primary income. It's instead a side-job, or just a hobby or passion that they choose to pursue. 

Being a professional doesn't automatically mean you have a higher level of skill compared to that of an amateur, just that they rely on their skills to produce their income. Being a professional can often change their approach to producing art, they don't have as much freedom to experiment or produce inconsistent art. This is because as a professional, they often have collectors and the public expecting a certain standard or product from them. Many professionals have a personal style that they start to be known by. Take Andy Warhol for example. 

Professional artists

Warhol is well known for becoming a leading artist in the 1960s Pop Art movements and his work mass-produced around the world. He began painting in the late 1950s and gained popularity in 1962 when he exhibited paintings of Campbell's soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles and replicas of Brillo soap pad boxes. In 1963 he was mass-producing these 'purposely banal' (boring/ ordinary) images using silk screen-printing. He did this to show the emptiness of America's material culture, how these products were made lacking and emotional value and individuality. 

In my opinion, he is the perfect example of a typical 'professional artist'. He produced a line of work that he became well known for, and his style of art is widely recognised, even by the common public. If I were to show someone his Campbell soup painting, most likely they would be able to name Warhol as the creator. This notoriety however also brings certain constraints. As you start to be more widely recognised, the public expects your future work to reflect that of your earlier work. For example, if Warhol had created a very detailed oil painting of a garden, most people wouldn't connect the artist to the work. Collectors wouldn't buy it, it wouldn't fit with the name 'Warhol', and it wouldn't gain the same traction that his prints had. People begin to expect the same thing from you, a certain style and quality. 

This notoriety can bring both reassurance and stress to an artist. The comfort of knowing that your art will always sell, knowing that as long as you keep producing art, people will buy it, and you can keep a pretty reliable income. However, to keep the reassurance of constant income, you have to keep creating art of the same, or better, quality of the one before. Once you are known for one style, changing that or experimenting with others can sometimes damage your reputation. You don't become well known for that one thing, you don't have a certain style that people can rely on and your sales can take a hit.

Amateur Artists

Amateurs however don't have this to worry about so much. As for the definition, amateurs are people that produce art as a side-job, hobby or passion. They don't rely on their art to produce an income, although they can still sell their art if they choose to do so. Being an amateur gives you the freedom do experiment with whatever you want, and you don't have the constraints professionals do of having to fit into a certain mold for their art to sell and keep a steady, reliable income. They can create art with inconsistent quality without fear of the consequences.

I think Hugh Dumas is a great example of an amateur artist. He has the same skills as that of a professional, yet but does not profit off of his art. Any proceeds from his sales are donated to charities, he does not make art for a living, but as a passion.

Dumas is an amateur painter with military and French connections, he paints using a range of media (watercolour, pastels, oils and acrylics) and his subjects have a large range as well, Portraits, animals, landscapes and waterscapes. He is a great example of the benefits of being an amateur artist, he has the freedom to explore his interests and experiment with different media's, without having to worry about producing a certain style of quality. 

Although as I mentioned before, amateur artists can benefit from the sales of their art, Dumas chooses to donate all his profits to his chosen charities, therefore he doesn't financially benefit from his art, it's purely a hobby and passion.