The Day a Professor Told Me My Work Was Not Art

I grew up as the artist kid in a black and white house. My dad was a cop, so his world ran on right and wrong. My mom was a math teacher, and even though she felt things deeply, she still lived where numbers equaled numbers. Then there was me, the one who saw all the shades of gray. Not a few of them. All of them, plus all the colors and everything in between.

To their credit, my parents let me chase it. Piano lessons came early. I drew and colored constantly. In middle school I picked up the trombone for the least serious reason imaginable, because my favorite character on Star Trek played one. By the time I finished high school I had stacked up enough art classes to walk into college with an art minor already within reach. Ministry was sitting somewhere behind all of it too, a quiet sense at sixteen or seventeen that I was called to something, even though I had no idea what that word meant. So I hedged. I went one step further than the minor and declared as an art major, with ministry tucked behind it as the backup plan.

It lasted less than a semester.

When the Room Decides You Do Not Belong

I figured out fast that the department and I were not going to get along. I have never been comfortable being told how to make my work. Back in high school I had a teacher who would reach over my shoulder and draw on the thing I was making, and it made me furious every single time. College turned that one bad habit into a daily institution. Suddenly I was being told what counted as art and what did not, and if you know me at all, you know I do not sit quietly with that. I say what I think. So I said it, loudly, and the department and I went to war.

It came to a head with one professor who managed to kill the thing I had loved my entire life. Friends would catch me after class and ask what I had possibly done to make him that angry. The honest answer was that I had refused to pretend his opinion was a fact.

Stand Up and Defend Why This Is Art

Here is what that professor actually had me doing. He would make me stand up in front of the class and deliver a full defense of why I believed the thing I had made was art at all.

In a color theory class.

Not a Rembrandt. Not a Van Gogh. Color theory. I was being asked to justify my existence as an artist over an assignment about how colors sit next to each other. What in the world. That was the moment something in me went quiet, and then went cold. I stopped liking any of it.

The Sentence That Set Me Free

I have had a handful of identity driven turns in my life, but this one was different, because buried inside the worst of it was something that felt a lot like freedom.

You are telling me what I am doing is not art, so I am just going to go do whatever I want anyway.

That was the whole shift, right there. If the cost of staying was letting someone else define my work and nodding along to keep the peace, then I was out. I have never been good at kowtowing to anyone, and I was not about to start for a grade. The thing is, the verdict in that classroom did not actually take anything away from me. I could still draw. I could still paint. I could still build. All it took from me was the need for the room to agree, and it turned out I did not need that nearly as much as I thought I did.

Creativity Does Not Disappear, It Moves

Here is the part I did not understand at the time. When you stop pouring your creativity into one channel, it does not dry up. It goes looking for another place to land.

For me, that place was music. I was already playing bass in a couple of bands, doing gigs, playing for people, sitting in on fill in sessions, even doing some studio work while I was still in school. I loved every minute of it. So when the formal art door closed, I just turned and poured everything into the door that was already open. If you went back through my old journals and notepads and drawing pads, you could probably mark the exact week the drawing slowed down and the music took over. It was not a loss. It was a redirect.

I even made a practical call out of the whole mess. Switching my major to Christian ministries meant graduating a full semester early, so I did it and saved the money. People love to ask what you are going to do with an art degree, deliver pizzas. I never had to find out. The creativity walked out of that department with me and came along into everything that came next, including the work I do now.

The Permission I Stopped Waiting For

If I could go back and sit down next to the version of me in that color theory class, here is what I would tell him. The professor was never the authority he believed he was. Nobody outside of you gets the final say on whether what you make is art. They can hand you a grade. They can reach over your shoulder. They can make you stand up and defend yourself in front of the room. None of that decides whether you are an artist. You do.

The people who needed what I would eventually build were not sitting in that classroom. They were out ahead of me, waiting on a version of me that had stopped asking permission. The day I quit waiting for the room to agree was the day I actually got free to go find them.

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This story comes from Create Your Art with Darren Cooper, the show for the experts, builders, and creators who have something real to give but have not yet made themselves findable. If PJ’s turn from rejection to freedom hit something in you, that is the point. Your voice is needed, and someone is already looking for it. Watch or listen to the full conversation, and when you are ready to build the platform that makes your work findable, visit 1898creative.com to learn about Impact90.

Create your art. The world is waiting.

#createyourart

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Full Transcript

Darren: Before forty:three creative became your main thing, you spent close to twenty years in creative work, but inside the church. Leading worship, running creative teams, all of that. For those who might not know that chapter, what did that work mean to you? And when did you first start to sense there might be something more for you outside the walls of the church?

PJ: Outside the walls of the church. That is a loaded question, right? Because it is like, are we talking about the church, the building, or the church, the people? In the ministry sense. Yeah. So we kind of have to go back. I cannot really do anything in small, short stories, which is why Lauren always leaves when I come over here. I grew up in a family that really pushed me to explore my creativity. My dad was a cop, so very black and white. My mom was a math teacher. Even though she was a feeler, she was still very black and white. On the Enneagram she is a nine, or a one, or a nine wing one, or a one wing nine. You can relate to that. But still a lot of black and white. You know, numbers equal numbers. When you are a cop, it is right or wrong. There is a lot of that. And then they have got this artist kid who sees all the shades of gray. Not just fifty shades of gray. All the shades, all the colors, all the different things. And they let me explore that a lot. They got me into piano lessons early. It is nerdy, but when I got into middle school and joined the school band, I started playing the trombone, because my favorite character from Star Trek played the trombone. We are just letting it all hang out here.

Darren: Okay. Yeah, that is good.

PJ: My mom said she did not know that until just the last month or two ago. She said, I did not know that. And I said, oh yeah, totally, one hundred percent.

Darren: That is wild.

PJ: Anyway, they let me explore all of it. I always drew, I always colored. I think I was a pretty decent artist. My extended family built into that as well. And much like you, I did the high school youth band thing at church. That sparked my love for playing music live in front of people. So I started learning bass guitar. I started on bass. I broke this finger playing baseball in high school, so if you zoom in you can see it hitch a little. It is kind of weird. So I never thought I would play real guitar. Fast forward through high school, I am playing bass and singing and doing all of that, just exploring what creativity meant. And then at sixteen, seventeen, I felt a call to ministry. Did not know what that meant.

Darren: None of us really do, even afterward.

PJ: Right. You do not know what it means. So I leaned into it, but I still had this huge love for art. My dad is a photographer, so I had learned a lot from that. I was doing independent study photography classes at my high school. The year I moved into our high school, it was a brand new school that year, so the art lab had a Macintosh iMac for everybody in the department. By the time I graduated, I had enough art classes that I could have gone in with an art minor. I actually went to school as a declared art major, because I am supposed to do ministry but I do not know what that means.

Darren: You always have to have the backup plan.

PJ: Right. It is kind of music related, what are we doing here.

Darren: What are you going to do with an art degree, deliver pizzas?

PJ: Yeah, exactly. So that is kind of what I thought I was getting into. I went to school as a declared art major and was going to do a ministry minor, because I figured, you know, practical skills. Does that mean I work for the church? I really did not want to be the guy working at a church. That was just not my plan. When you say ministry, I always thought, let us figure out something else to do. I was less than a semester into the art program and realized the department hated me. I hated the department. They had it out for me. I know that as you were doing your prep and reading me your notes, you said, so you went to school and declared an art major, and that did not go well. Yeah, no, it did not. What it really boiled down to was, I have never been comfortable being told how to make my work. I had an art teacher in high school who would reach over my shoulder and draw on what I was doing, and I would hate it. It made me so mad. So I go to college and I am getting told what is art and what is not art. And if you do not know me, I do not do well with that. I tend to speak my mind when I do not do well with something. So I let everybody know. It got to the point where one particular professor kind of killed my interest in it. I did not like it anymore. I would have friends after class come to me and say, what did you do to make them so mad? He is making you stand up and give a dissertation on why you think what you did was art.

Darren: Oh, wow.

PJ: In a color theory class. It is not like it is anything deeper.

Darren: No.

PJ: I am not Van Gogh painting a Rembrandt or something. It is just color theory, bro. What in the world? So anyway, that kind of killed it for me. I walked away from it. But at the same time, I still had all this pent up creative energy. And I realized that if I switched my major to Christian ministries and got a ministry degree, I would graduate a semester early. So I thought, let us save the money. That is kind of why I landed practically in that major. And it really did serve me well.

Darren: What I hear though is that you have this, I will call it a lifelong journey. A creative kid doing this thing, gets to school, art major, all of it. And then there is this moment where, whether it is a certain professor, multiple professors, or just the sheer experience itself, you kind of lose the love of it. Talk to me a little about what that was like from an emotional standpoint. What were you feeling when all of a sudden everything you thought about where you were headed, even though ministry was there tucked behind it, that was probably the first time the art kind of just fell out.

PJ: Well, are you ready for a therapy session?

Darren: Let us go.

PJ: Honestly, I do not know that I have ever thought about it like that before in that context. There have definitely been those identity driven changes throughout my life, but that was one of those ones where it was like, well, you are telling me what I am doing is not art, so I am just going to go do whatever I want anyway. Whether I graduate with your degree and kowtow to what you are saying, which I have also never been good at.

Darren: Sure.

PJ: You could have my mom and dad on the podcast sometime and they could tell you all about that. But for me, that one was kind of a freeing moment, because of the release in it. I could still draw. I can still paint. I can still create stuff. I was terrible at clay. I can build stuff with wood, but when you talk about doing clay, I am not a ceramics person. Where it all came down for me, I think in that time, was, I guess if I am just not going to do that piece anymore, then I am going to turn it around and find other ways to be creative. So I walked away from it. If you were to go back through all my journals and notepads and drawing pads, that is probably the timeline of when that kind of left. But I was playing music. So that is really when it became, well, let me put all my creative juices into this. At that point I was already playing in a couple of bands in college, doing gigs, playing for people, fill in sessions. I did some studio work when I was in college. I absolutely loved all of that. You know how those are. That was the best. So when I am getting ready to graduate, I had just gotten married, and I am thinking, I do not know what I am supposed to do. I am about to have a wife.

Darren: Yeah, I guess that is true.

PJ: I only have one semester left in school because I am graduating early. What am I going to do with my life? At that time, I knew I was going to do something in ministry. I just did not know what that meant. And then I was in a college small group being led by a guy who was the young adult pastor at one of the churches in town. He transferred out of that role into being an executive director for Youth for Christ. He said, hey, I am doing this, we are starting these new clubs, why do you not come do one of those. It is a full time job, you have to do some fundraising, and so on. At that point I thought, cool, I do not have to work in a church, I can work with my family, I can still do ministry. I realized I was a terrible youth pastor.

Darren: No.

PJ: I was not. Youth was not my thing.