I learnt a long time ago, but after I started my painting journey, that almost everything is considered an art form. I learnt that an artist isn’t just someone who paints pictures. People say that writing is an art; that acting is an art; that dancing is an art; and of course putting paint onto canvas or paper is an art.

Like all art forms, whether a piece is liked or not by someone is very subjective. What some people find compelling or being drawn to, others may not, much less understand it. I have learnt that this is very much the case when it comes to paintings.

There are so many kinds of paintings to choose from. There’s modern art, contemporary art, abstract art, cubism and, of course, my favourite and like my art, there’s traditional art where something looks very much like, or as close to, the subject as the artist’s skill can render it.

There’s no mind-boggling thought process that the viewer is subjected to. But that being said, in my opinion, the latter gets much less attention than, say, abstract art.

Now, we’ve all heard of the street artist, Banksy. He’s famous, or even infamous, both at the same time. He’s also very invisible, by choice, in that no one really knows who he is. Apparently, no one has ever seen him.

I don’t know how that anonymity is maintained while he is on a street corner painting, Painting a picture takes time so I often wonder how he manages to remain unseen while he is, shall we say, performing. I suppose the bigger question might be, why he wishes to remain anonymous.

I often compare anonymity to writers. There are many out there who write under pseudonyms, often for a variety of reasons. A writer might want to be thought of as a member of the opposite sex because they might feel it affords them better exposure. Or they might be writing about a controversial topic and don’t want those closest to them to recognise the work as theirs.  

But writers rarely get the media’s or readers’ curiosity peaked as to who they really are. Possibly the reason being that one can’t really tell if the name on a book or an article is real or not.

Of course, if the book is written by ‘Anonymous’, or an article is published with an ‘Anonymous’ byline, the writer might be asking for people’s attention.

Banksy is one artist who is both contemporary and anonymous. Every few months a work appears on a wall and people again begin to speculate as to his true identity. Recently the famous British actor, Michael Sheen, who played Tony Blair in the movie, Diana, was suspected of being Banksy because he tried to save a Banksy artwork from being destroyed.

People thought he was trying to save his own work. Of course he has denied it, saying that he liked the artwork and thought it was worth saving. But before Sheen, the famous British artist and host of Art Attack, Neil Buchanan, was also on the suspect list.

He too denied it, though in his Art Attack show he did create a lot of street art using any material he found lying around. If it had turned out to be him, it would not have surprised me in the least.

But the question I wonder is why Banksy wishes to remain anonymous. His artwork is very good and prints of them are being sold all over the world. But, to be honest, even the name Banksy might be a pseudonym. For all we know it might be John Smith. But the funny, and almost sexist thing is, that everyone has automatically assumed that Banksy is a man since they keep referring to him as a ‘he’. Has it never occurred to anyone that Banksy could be a female?

In my view, Banksy does not need to remain anonymous. As I said, his, or her, work is very good in that it requires a fair amount of skill to draw and paint the way he, or she, has done.

Unlike abstract art, though one of the most popular art forms today, in the words of many on Twitter and other social media platforms, it doesn’t require thought but just a splash of paint and, in some cases, literally.