My artistic
vision comes from the people I have encountered as well the
experiences I have come across, not my college education. My four
years attending the Ringling School of Art & Design were not spent
studying the masters of illustration or practicing the techniques
the instructors had given me. My four years in college were mostly
spent recovering from a four year depression while trying to learn
to love, appreciate and communicate with people.
I had found
peace in my passion through philosophy, traveling abroad to several
countries and understanding life and culture with an open mind as
well as an open ear. Then I began to realize art is something that
comes from the heart and mind, the hand to execute is just the
vessel the technicality is just a vessel and being talented is just
a vessel, these things mean absolutely nothing. Sadly those are the
only lessons school could offer me, useless information about
technical prowess that every art school in the nation is feeding
thousands of students. True art and passion is about the idea,
you can't teach someone to have heart.
I began to
feel more comfort about being an outcast for my different ways of
thinking, and working as well as the goals and dreams I wanted to
achieve. At the very end of my senior year of college I left school
and have no intention of returning to finish. Its my way of making
a statement by saying: "What's more important, robotic humans
earning pieces of paper that cost thousands of dollars to obtain
after fours years of conveyor belt education that does NOT guarantee
anything? Or, self actualization through nomadic
intellectual curiosity?". The worst thing anyone can do is to give
up on a dream that was previously started, and I can tell you right
now I will not stop.
- C. J. Darden
