Is it art, or is it decorative?

 I have heard so many people saying the piece they were looking at was nice, but wasn't "real" art.  I have had that aimed at much of my work over the years.  The fact of the matter is that I began my artistic journey as a "decorative painter".  

I took a couple of brief recreational programs in my early 20's  through the local park system during the height of the bicentennial era's tole painting craze. I painted a few of that era's trademark daisies with strawberries, trying to exactly copy the pattern the teacher gave us.  None of them were particularly good, but I learned a little.  

I dabbled a bit over the years, usually under my mother's watchful eye.  She was a highly skilled decorative painter and active in the National Society of Tole and Decorative Painters ( which later became the Society of Decorative Painters).  She bemoaned my tendency to ignore the pattern and instructions, and literally rolled her eyes at my original items.  She sometimes did original items of her own (better than mine by far) but repeatedly refused to be referred to as an artist.  Real artists, she believed, were generally drunken degenerates, at high risk of sending packages containing their ears, and were inevitably suicidal.

Years later, when I became permanently disabled, I saw what should have been a disaster as a new beginning.  I could finally stay home and focus in my painting!  I joined the local chapter of the SDP, and rapidly began to acquire new skills. 

Color theory, brushstrokes, value, contrast...these and other things were my new tools and I worked to develop skill with them.  I studied technique using patterns and designs of others, but always took the next step and incorporated them into original designs.  

I hoarded "big" 16"x20" canvases, saving them for when I was skilled enough to not "waste" them.  When I finally got to that point, I really went to town! 

It was a short step from mini canvas panels to "just gimme a wall". 

At what point does the student become an artist?  I do not know.  I know that when I started painting purely from memories and imagination, I knew I was there.  I was able to share a vision of places that no longer exist, to capture moments out on the lake that for a brief moment were pure magic, to make statements even when I did not speak a word.  And the more I created, the stronger the urge to create became.

I look at anyone creating original work as a "real artist"--skill and experience levels of course vary--and I like some better than others. 

But I will never disparage a piece as not being "real art" just because it is small, or on a Christmas ornament, or painted on a strange surface or functional object.  Art itself began when primitive humans decorated their clay pots and cave walls, and it was the act of creation, as much as the finished results, that gave it added significance.