An artist is someone involved in a creative activity devoted to making art, practicing the fine arts, or exhibiting an artistic art. The most common use in academic and everyday speak, artistic language, and general speech refers to an artist in the visual arts alone. Artistic language is used to describe art that was produced by an artist and that exhibits creativity. Visual art is any work made by an artist that is visible to the public. An artist producing visual art may be a painter, sculptor, printmaker, or even a photographer. Artists produce work in all of these areas.
In the United States, American artists include such notable figures as Monet, van Gogh, de Kooning, Jasper Johns, and Wheatley. In France, there are several prominent artists whose works regularly adorn the French Louvre. In England, artists include such notable figures as Rembrandt, Titian, Caravaggio, and Giotto. In Japan, there are great Japanese artists such as Okumura Katsuhiro and Naoto Maru. There are also Chinese and Indian artists. These artists have produced works in such far-ranging disciplines as painting, ceramics, wood, glass, metal, and printmaking.
There are many types of arts. The fine arts include music, dance, the fine arts, and theater. The visual arts include motion picture, television, film, and theater. The natural sciences embrace astronomy, zoology, paleontology, botany, and ecology. In education, these forms of arts are used as tools for teaching science, mathematics, history, and art in general.
An artist must have talent, skill, and the ability to produce work of extraordinary beauty. Beauty encompasses all things seen and unseen. It includes colors, shapes, lines, texture, and light. The work of a painter includes paintings, sculptures, photographic works, gardens, photographic prints, installation art, glass work, and jewelry. In fine arts, the artist must have exceptional skill, exemplary imagination, inventive and technical skills, and an appreciation of art.
A person’s artistic personality is reflected in his/her professional and personal style. As an artist develops his/her style, he/she learns to express his/her personality through the various mediums available. This includes painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and furniture making. The artist can be categorized as abstract or realistic, and the type of work can be classified as impressionism, impressionist, cubism, and pre-modern, or classical.
Today’s visual arts and crafts market includes more traditional and modern artists. Abstract Expressionists include figures like Picasso, Manet, Monet, and Braqueuse. Realistic Artists include Picasso, Manet, Renoir, Chayon, Monet, and Gauguin. Cubism and Fauvism are both considered to be realist. Classical Artists include Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Robert Rauschenberg, Morris Louis, Florence Nightingale, and John Keats.