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Originally Posted by Richard Bingham
"A Portrait of the Artist as a Hobbyist" is furthered by perceptions that to be an "artist" one must be a madman or an eccentric bohemian starving in a garrett, whose worth will only be recognized long after he or she is very dead. Compounding this are notions that the making of art results not from study, training, intense practice and hard work, but from infused knowledge ("talent"), and that serious bodies of work result spontaneously out of serendipity, and erratic spur-of- the -moment "inspirations".
Popular perception equates pursuing an art career with an indolent self-improvement at best ("relaxation"), and with misanthropic self-indulgence at the worst. Owing to misunderstanding of how a few elementary art-making processes are utilized in occupational therapy for the mentally disturbed, it's often concluded that the results of "art therapy" are equivalent to the output of dedicated professional artists.
When a pickled shark commands a price in six figures and the starving of a poor, hapless dog to death is proclaimed to be "art", who can blame the man in the street if he is confused?
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When people don't understand the hard work that goes into learning the skills necessary to make a successful piece of work they assume that you are gifted. They think that it's magic, that you are commanded by a higher power to produce an image and your hand makes it so. Most people will never know how much hard work goes into making a bad painting and how many bad paintings are made in the process of learning to make successful paintings.