Being an Artist is about living your life as a spectator, there is nothing special about being an artist, because artist is basically an active citizen. Everyone is an artist, but everyone is not a visual artist. The only difference that makes one a visual artist is the choice of using image and form as one’s medium of expression. It is about the way one chose to express one’s thoughts, the aesthetical sensibility and language. Every discipline has its own choices that one has to take. In visual art there is a very subtle and important choice that an artist has to face in their life, which is the choice of being an art practitioner or becoming an ‘Artist’.
Becoming an ‘Artist’ in contemporary situation is competitive. It is competitive and extremely difficult for the40% of artists who want to become an ‘Artist’, making agreements with galleries and museums, continuing their art practice and research, planning their career, looking for opportunities, conducting exhibitions, opening ceremonies, wine glasses, whiskey maybe, the celebrations, sometimes not, being in everyone’s Instagram stories, using peoples Labor, embracing the capitalist world and the longing for BBC to knock on your door to make a ‘Documentary’. The ultimate truth about the art world is almost 60% of artists who do art will not end up as ‘ARTIST’ they keep continuing their practice by being Art practitioners.

An Art practitioner is basically a part time artist, but can be defined as someone who is an artist, who is not an ‘Artist’ but who can become an ‘Artist’ or who can reject the ‘Artist’ and still do Art. Art practitioners are a different category; it has its own multiplicity of meanings and definitions. Some Art practitioners think of it as a stairway to become an ‘Artist’, some are teachers, engaging collectively in the process of changing art and society by guiding students, there are research scholars, there are people who apply the knowledge and sensibility of art in other fields, there are traditional art practitioners, (S.P.A.I) Self Proclaimed Amateur Iconoclasts like myself and (UTA) Unidentified Thinking Artists, and of course a generation of art practitioners who rejected the technological intervention in art and proclaimed it as a disaster and the devil of art, the same people whom when pandemic knocked on the door, flipped the coin and opened the door saying “All Hail Digital Media”.
In any case whether one is an art practitioner, normal ‘Artist’ or
a BBC documented ‘Artist’ there is one question that an artist has to face in her/his life. the question of what is art practice and how to express it.

Being and becoming