My “funny” pictures, as I called them, caused deep distress. They were my best solution to the Final project (half my grade) and would be critiqued by the art director of a prestigious magazine. She was one of the few who hired new artists so the other students, who were defiantly showing off their skills, were angry to see my pictures alongside theirs! They laughed and pointed, in derision, at the “joke” and needed to know who’d taken the day so lightly.
The art director was pushed into stating which ones she would have chosen to illustrate her article. She kept saying there were only a few, “Lets drop it,” but ‘no’ the class insisted. To the shock of the class mine was selected. My teacher didn’t grade me high, I expected that, because of the seeming lack of skills shown.
I consider Van Gough an Outsider Artist rather than an Expressionist and he sums up my feeling. Accentuate the necessary. Diminish and eliminate the superfluous. Don’t we love Shakespeare for exactly that? Do we need to know exactly what Hamlet’s nose looked like, what color his hair was and fingernail style? Is the most essential point of the play, to communicate how ‘pretty’ the world was in this particular year of Hamlet’s life?
Sometimes ‘pretty’ is needed to contrast with a hard to see pain in a young life, as in the portrait of my son’s band aid, at other times my raw art pieces tell complicated stories. I hope you enjoy them.  nancymauerman.com