On her blog, Allyson Stanfield posted a quote from Romare Bearden:
Painting and art cannot be taught. You can save time if someone tells you to put blue and yellow together to make green, but the essence of painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself.There are no goals that I still want to reach. I don't believe in goals; goals are for a football team. An artist is just seeking what he might find.
My thoughts are: yes and no. What CAN be taught is discipline. What can’t be taught is vision. And vision, the energy of the artwork, is the most important ingredient. It’s the energy, the force, the reason that takes the artwork beyond the mere craft of the piece.
Discipline is very important in making art. It’s the foundation. It involves not only how you use your time in the usual sense (hours and concentration) but also how you coordinate your mind and body and, more specifically in most cases, mind and hand. What a good teacher can teach is methods to stimulate good useful discipline. Without discipline, art cannot happen. Without vision, it has no power.