Hands ON

I believe thought has always been involved in the artistic process, artists have always been thinkers as well as makers. While there has obviously been a shift away from object making by the majority of today's artists, there are still a large number of them that persist. Deskilling is a crisis in the sense that many of today's young artists are never formally trained in traditional art media. In my opinion that creates a problem; it falls under the category of not being able to break the rules unless you have practiced and understood the rules. How can deskilling be an artistic process by which an artist practices, if the said artist never possessed the skills in the first place? In addition, an artist must contain some skill in order to present their thoughts in a visual context. If we are to boil artistic creativity down to thoughts then are not all of us artists? For me there has to be some form of execution or creation on behalf of the artist and I would like to see it executed with some skill.