glenn ligon

Glenn Ligon, a man who gave up his typical life of the 5-9 to dedicate his life to art. He explores several things in his art. He mainly focuses on race, language, desire, sexuality, and identity. He does this through words. He can do colored words, or black and white colors. I find this super cool. He started making art of preexisting characters. He had his own little side gig through high school. I think this is super important in any artist life. The idea that you must practice repeatedly to get good at creating art. Even the people who are known as the greats, while some of their work might seem super simple to create, when you get down to it, you see that these people got the way they were through trial and error, seeing Glenn Ligon do this reassures why he is such an outstanding artist. He wanted to make art with words. He started to tell other people’s stories, rather than using his own. He even took words for books and other scriptures. Glenn talks about his mom many times throughout the video, and her role on his art career, sending him to art class, getting him books, and making sure he had an education. She knew that even though his passion was art, she wanted him to have a well-rounded education. A lot of his work looks messy. He did this through trial and error. He found that when the writings looked messy would add more character to his art. I think this is super cool and really shows that all this comes from trial and error.