Another day in the lock-down and I was tapping forward on the seemingly endless story feed on Instagram, coming across things ranging from artistically captured portraits to those hilarious memes which I forwarded in my personal groups; just to realize the page I was following was a private one and I was bombarded by my friends for the act.

The beauty with a monotonous act is the fact that when the monotony breaks, we know it! The same happened to me when my attention was grabbed by a post by an artist saying

“If you are recreating some art from Pinterest, don’t say that

‘Art is how I express myself’

Shut up okay! You are not there yet”.

I was spellbound. She, a person with a beautiful hand for the craft, paints strikingly amazing pieces! How was she saying the words she had just said? I pondered on the expression for a while when I decided to give her a perspective of what I thought; breaking my personal monotony to just keep looking at the stories and never interacting.

In my opinion, the thought presented was totally stereotypical and non-liberating! Isn’t art supposed to be everywhere? Right from getting inspired from someone else’s portrayal of things or creating art out of their personal conscience, everything is art! Because even if someone is ‘copying’ something, they’re only copying the features they notice, comprehend and understand. And as the law of nature suggests non-existence of absoluteness, there isn’t a possibility of two pieces of art being exactly the same! Does this not make everything ‘unique’?

‘Copy’ only the part which they comprehend or take notice of; speaking volumes of how people work, how people introspect into things! Imagine a thousand people ‘copying’ Monalisa; yet every copy you look at, will have a different angle to it, a thousand retrospectives of a single work of art!

If I were AN ARTIST, I’d literally ask people to look at my paintings and copy it, straight away. My thoughts are a result of all the things that have passed through my mind and I have somehow tried to put that on a canvas. My thoughts are open to be seen, to be shared, to be comprehended, to be copied, to be inspired. This community that we have, is all supported by our indulgence through art. If there’s something that’s limiting you, maybe that isn’t art at all. My art is open. Open for improvements, comments, tomatoes and medals if it’s worth it! Art is a language, and if you try to suppress other artists by saying that this is a copy, it’s just a personal gain and the fact that you don’t want other people to take or continue your thoughts! Personal benefit. No sense of a community. Abandoning the purpose and one of the aims of art in general. In simple words, commercialization of art.

Maybe there’s a difference between good painters and artists!

Yet, introspecting on my not so humble rant on the whole scene, I asked myself if it was appropriate to criticize art? Considering the artists thoughts about the ‘copy-gate’ were itself art and I was wrong not accepting the thought as it was?

Or was this a very desperate attempt by the so called artist, to break the monotony, and spark something controversial? As I said,

“The beauty with a monotonous act is the fact that when the monotony breaks, we know it!”

I guess I’ll never know!