Art and Writing with Ryan

My name is Ryan Pinkard. I am a 21-year-old Colorado native studying Studio Arts and Journalism at CU. I love travel, photography, art and writing, so you could say that my hobbies and studies are often one and the same. On this, my professional aspirations are also of a similar focus. If I could have my dream career it would be to get paid doing those things listed above that I love. The most important of those categories to me is travel, but the focus of my professionally directed studies is art and writing.

I am a developing artist and writer, and the beauty of this course is the fact that we are bringing these two studies together. My experience in visual arts is fairly deep, with years of hands on art courses, as well as art history. I enjoy historical and contemporary art, and I also enjoy writing about my own work. I find the power of the artist statement to be the best way to explain intention and defend my work. Writing is very much a craft and a practice, and I look forward to exercising it with all of you this digital semester.

Rhetoric, to my understanding, is more than analytical writing. It is writing (or and use of words) with intent for persuasion or defense. When someone talks about the rhetoric of a politician, they are speaking of their ability to convince people of the “rightness” of their policies. In the arts it is the way an artist communicates a message, which is the ultimate goal of art. There can be both a visual rhetoric in the way the piece speaks or communicates on its own, and then a written or spoken rhetoric to defend or deepen the understanding of the piece. As an artist, developing this skill is invaluable and transferrable to countless other applications in professional and social life.