How Artists are like Golfers... or Golfers are like Artists

Quiet Winter Night 

by Scott Christensen

copyright Scott Christensen

 There are a lot of amateur golfers who play every weekend and who golf plays an important role in their lives.  About the time they are ready to throw in the "club", they will hit a great shot.  That great shot keeps them going for quite awhile.

According to one site there is 61.1 million golfers in the world (and that was of 2003!)  Number of golfers in the world

There are a great many professional golfers that you and I never hear about it.  300,000 Professional Golfers

Then there are the handful of professional golfers who we all know their names- Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Nancy Lopez, ...   So how many of them are there?  less than 25, less than 10?

The degree of excellence in the game increases with each classification.  Their compensation and mystic increases from the amateur, to  professional, to the top of the game.

Artists in the world

Artists are in a similar situation.  There are 4.4 Million artists in the world.  Those artists can struggle and just when they are ready to turn in their paint brushes, they will paint a beautiful passage or a painting will come together almost effortlessly.

There are 600,000 professional artist in the world.  If you are someone who is interested in today's artists you would know some of their names.  But if art is not one of your main interests you probably do not know their names.

There is a much smaller group of artists that are household names.  And if you only consider live  2-D artists the group will be very, very small.)  The mystic of that much smaller group is similar between the golf and art communities.

At the being of June I took a class from of one of the "Tiger Woods" of landscaping painting- Scott Christensen.  It was incredibly intimating to even think about taking a class from someone with his expertise.  The class consisted of a broad range of experience from some who had never painted to people who were mature in their art careers.  Scott was very approachable- willing to answer any questions we had, talk philosophy, talk technique, do demonstration paintings, and critique our work.  Painting outside for 7 days in a row was something I had never done before and would love to figure out how to do on a regular basis.  The last day of the workshop Scott told each of us in the class what he thought we, individually, needed to work on to take our art to the next level.    It was a wonderful experience.

So if you have a chance to play with the "Tiger Woods" in your field - go for it.  It could be an opportunity like no other.

If you want to learn more about Scott Christensen, Brian Nehr did a great article on Scoot, his background, and techniques.

Brian Neher's blog post on Scott Christensen