Name: Ashanti Garratt
Year: Second
Age: 20
College: Pendle
Hobbies: Netball, going out with friends, cooking, camping
What made you choose Fine Art: Art is one of my talents and I have loved it since a young age. Back then it was a way to relax.
What do you like about Art: Once you get into it you kind of escape and once you are focused you can push everything out of your mind and do it for hours and enjoy it, because it’s fun and you don’t have to think once you get started. It’s the getting started that’s hard.
Why should someone think about doing an Art degree: You get a lot more unique skills from Art than from other degrees, such as creative thinking, time management, independence, problem solving and the skill of balancing practical and theory – so there are lots of transferrable skills.
What are some of the issues you find with Art: The expense, the mess, it’s time-consuming, actually coming up with ideas can be difficult, the writing element and trying to balance the research and practical side, dealing with preconceptions of art – it can be very frustrating and offensive.
Why do you think people presume Art is easy: Everyone thinks it is just about drawing a picture, and just ‘cutting and sticking’. People just see it as a ‘pretty picture’ and not the things behind it – everything in art today is the conceptions behind it and could look like the worst or easiest piece in the world, but it is the ideas behind it that actually make it.
What would you say to someone who said Art is a waste of time: Oh my god. It makes me very angry. People brush it off as a waste of time because it seems like a creative, easy subject unlike something like science that is approached as something more worthwhile doing, but it has the same merit as everything else because it requires the same amount of skill, practice and time that you would expect to put into any other degree.
What are your career aspirations: I’m like any other student with an unclear plan, but my degree allows me to be open to many opportunities. A career I am interested in is advertising, particularly the design side of it.
What advice would you give someone considering doing a degree in Art: It is nothing like A-level so it isn’t what you would expect – you need to be prepared to be completely independent in what you want to do; the themes, concepts, ideas – everything you want to do is up to you, tutors have a say and push along the work you do but in the end it’s all down to you. You must be creative and have the ability to work on your own to be successful in a Fine Art degree.
Art is a pain, but it’s worth it when you see everything you have produced and put all of your time into.
(Thumbnail from TomBrown)