What’s the Difference Between an Artist, an Artiste, and an Artisan?

Professional Fine Artist, Curator. Writer & Contributing Editor on Art, Culture, Tantric Buddhism. Former Arts Ambassador, US State Dept.

Feb 18, 2017

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Someone asked me recently what the difference was between an artist, an artiste, and an artisan. It made me wonder how many people may or not know what the difference is? Here is the Dick and Jane version:

An artist paints, draws, sculpts, makes a film or is skilled with something involving perception and the use of their hands. Because writing used to be done by longhand, writers and poets are also known as artists.

An artiste is a professional entertainer, especially a singer or dancer: cabaret artistes.

An artisan is a skilled worker that uses his hands to make something often functional or that will enhance something else; furniture, gold leafing, decorative arts (like faux finishes), jewelers, upholstery, embroidery, glassblowers, leather workers (like shoemakers), potters, weavers.

Bakers are also included and pushing the limits of the term are cheesemakers and beer makers.

Uriél Danā at the Getty Museum — At the Getty Museum

Uriél Danā has been honored for her work as a fine artist, writer, and lecturer for more than four decades. Her oils, gouache, and lost wax bronze work have been shown in 12 countries on 4 continents. She is a former U.S. State Department Ambassador to the Arts under the Arts America Program.

Her oil paintings and drawings are included in dozens of private, corporate, and celebrity art collections. In October 2015 two of her paintings were selected for the Carousel de Louvre exhibition in Paris, and she was included in the catalogue Modern Art Masters in Complex Musée du Louvre. Her work was included in the landmark exhibit “The Otherworld” (link) featuring the history of Visionary Art. The exhibit spanned 2021-2022 at the Roland Gallery in Los Angeles’ California Lutheran College. From 2022 to 2023 one of her drawings was featured in the Small Works exhibit at the MEAM (European Museum of Modern Art) in Barcelona, Spain.

After serving in the United States Air Force, Uriél attended Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco, studied Sculpture, Museum Management, & Art History at College of Marin, Kentfield, and apprenticed 4 yrs with California Surrealist Master Painter, Gage Taylor in Marin. In addition to her own art career, she was known for her painting collaborations with the late Gage Taylor under the name Taylor-Dana.

Uriél curates two fine art streams on BlueSky: of Contemporary Figurative Artists and Japanese Woodblock Prints.

What’s the Difference Between an Artist, an Artiste, and an Artisan?

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