Marcus John Henry Brown – Work like an artist

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Now, there are many kinds of types of artists: performance artists, painters, digital artists, sculptors, artists, writers, dancers, composers and musicians.

There have been many types of artistic movements too: impressionists, cubists, pre-raphaelite, futurists, expressionists and pop. And there have been many words written about what art actually is. But I’d like to look at what an artist is and what they do. The Oxford English Dictionary describes an artist as „a person who creates paintings or drawings as a profession or hobby“ – which isn’t particularly helpful in my opinion, so I had a long think and came up with eight things that I think describe what an artist is or does.

1. The artist looks at the world in an attempt to understand it. They take it apart, examine it and put it back together in a way that they think will have an impact on people.

2. The artist uses ideas to put the world back together. Ideas are the artists strategy. Their chosen medium is their tactic: paints, stone, clay, performance, words, dance, video or music or their tactics.

3. Artists are curiosity machines and culture filters. Curiosity fuels them.

4. Artists are professional outsiders that work hard to get stuff done.

5. Artists simplify and invent.

6. Artists own their own process

7. Artists fight for their ideas and what they believe in.

8. Artists are obsessed with impacting people with their work. For me, that sounds like a recipe for creating an environment that can thwart the most successful corporate saboteur. You see I think you could become an artist: a corporate artist. And here are my simple tips and tricks to start working and thinking like a corporate-saboteur busting corporate artist.

+ Tip 1: Start a curiosity book. Learn one new thing every day. Write in your curiosity book. It can be anything: business related or just a piece of general knowledge. The curiosity book keeps you on the lookout for the new and interesting. It keeps you curious.

+Tip 2: Take a photograph every day. It doesn’t matter if you post it on Instagram or on Facebook, but just by making a conscious effort to capture the world around you, you start looking at the world a little harder. You’ll start to see more. You’ll want to capture that perfect shot.

+Tip 3: Go for a walk. I’ve made an entire film about the importance of walking. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/6aRoT0wmvnU

+Tip 4: Create a body of work. Look at everything you do as a body of work and not just as a chain of unrelated events. Order your work: use sketchbooks, notebooks, idea and project books. Feed your ideas with other ideas. Document everything.

+Tip 5: Work really hard at understanding the world around you. Look at people, watch them, listen to them: deconstruct the world around you and try to understand why things are the way you are. Now you have the tools and the mindset to become a corporate artist. In the next film, I’ll show you why you should bother.

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Beginnen werde ich mit Tip 1.

Und Tip 2.

Wird Zeit, dass mal wieder etwas Schwung in meine künstlerischen Ambitionen kommt.