to be an artist...

Do you have to be good at drawing to be a good artist? one of my sisters always tells me that she "can not draw". i always tell her that she doesnt need to draw well in order to be a good artist. aside from that fact, i think she can draw better than she claims she can. i think the idea behind the image is more important than the skill. yes, the skill is important and can be imperitive to the design but it is not the end all and be all of the artists vision. take picasso for instance. he paints woman with 3 breasts and eyes where their noses should be...his skill is not defined by how accurate he is able to paint the human form but rather the concept of the human anatomy. even an artist like Cy Twombly who is one of my personal favorites, paints with so called scribbly lines deceptively like a child...i can't tell you how many people i hear say, "i could do that". but i beg to differ. No you couldn't. Cecily brown is another artist with whom i love..her images are hidden behind smudged lines and scratched lines. these artists define art by execution and subject, and skill...no one more of an artist or less of one because they do not create art that looks like a photograph like Dega or Cassat, both of whose art i adore as well.
so what makes an artist an artist? is it merely a self proclaimed label one gives to themselves or is it one given by society. how important is it to be able to paint realistically. and if it is not important to know how to create on paper something that is visibly recognizable why do so many art schools put emphasis on this in the classroom?

Social Studies

As i was in class yesterday...(i am getting my masters to be an elementary school teacher)...i was thinking about how social studies has influenced my art. This would seem relatively normal except that the idea of social studies and how it applies to the classroom is broken down into skill, concept and content. I started to evaluate the way in which i broke down current events and past events (ie. history) and how i incorporated all these ideas into my paintings and my poetry. what skills did i use to break the ideas up. what correlations were fused together when i went through the file cabinet in my head. it is really something spectacular to think about.