Paintbrushes in the Toolbox

At the core of every creative endeavour is an artist. Sadly, the term artist is loaded with all sorts of innuendo and connotation. I even cringe a bit when someone refers to me as an artist. To be fair, I also cringe when I am labelled a technician so I guess I need to work on what is and is not cringe-worthy. I am even now cognizant that I just used artist vs. technician as a comparison. Why can't you be both?

I have lived my entire working career as an artist of one form or another. Some would envy me, others pity me... Not only do live my life this way, I also try to get others to live this way too.

I often tell people about paintbrushes in the toolbox. We think of a toolbox as a place for things that are used for practical purposes in exchange for compensation. In contrast, we often think of the paintbrush as a thing that is so delightful to use, its very use is compensation in itself. 

I recently was talking with a young learner about the realities of digital tools and how they don't replace the traditional tools, they augment them. Digital tools are just another paintbrush in the toolbox. I made a mental note about that phrase as I often have been accused of vertiginously mixing my metaphors. I do. I enjoy it. 

As I pondered the phrase later, there were some things that resonated for me. Everything is a tool and everything is a paintbrush. Artists use tools of all types depending on the work they need to do. 

I delved into digital tools early on, but I stayed rooted in my craft as an artist/performer. I just chose to use different tools to express myself with. To suggest that I somehow shifted from being an artist to a technician when I became a digital media producer is something I wrestled with. I resigned myself to giving up my artist identity and became a "tech."

It was much later that I realized the greatest artists are also adept technicians. It is often necessary to be both. 

So, put paintbrushes in your toolbox.