I think we all can make art. We can all be artists; all humans have artistic ability. But only a few become "great artists".
Regarding the second question, I think we all have an innate ability to create Art. As part of my Urban and Regional Planning degree, we undertook exercises such as drawing a picture of Stravinsky sitting in a chair upside down. When I turned it the right way, I was amazed at how accurate my resulting drawing was. We used exercises from a book, 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain'. I also learnt that in Australia and New Zealand, the education systems after the third year of school focuses on the left, logical side of the brain.
I also undertook a day drawing class at the Council for Adult Education in Melbourne. We began sketching a stick by looking only at the stick, not at the paper we were drawing on. We ended the day drawing a bowl of fruit and a drawing of our hand. I was really surprised at how good my drawings were. I thought I only had the ability with graphic art/Technical Drawing.
My father was in the Royal New Zealand Navy. He taught himself to draw and do watercolour paintings to pass the long hours at sea when he was not on duty. He painted until he died at almost 80 years of age. I have a watercolour of his on my wall, it is of a storm on the coast at Waikouaiti, north of Dunedin in New Zealand. I also have some of his caricatures from his time in the Navy. He also used to paint us with very green-looking skin! He did say that getting skin tone right is difficult.
So, perhaps we all have the ability to create art.
I think that the role of the artist does change with different cultural considerations. Two examples are from New Zealand and Australia. Both countries recognise indigenous and European artistic cultures. The art of each culture has quite different meanings. In the case of Australia, Indigenous art has only quite recently been recognised as Indigenous art, as it was seen as primitive and therefore not art. Their art has also been misappropriated by some European Australians. In New Zealand's case, early on, Maori art was also not art but is now seen as equal to European art, and there is also crossover between the two traditions. Also, Maori art has changed as they learnt to express their culture using traditional means and adapting some European techniques into their own tradition. Maori culture, while in some ways repressed, the Maori continued their traditions and even fought wars to enable this and to stick to the Te Tiriti o Waitangi/ Treaty of Waitangi which talks about Maori Toanga/treasures. The Treaty though only gained serious consideration in the mid 1970s to the point that all law made by parliament must consider the Treaty of Waitangi and the Maori version has precedence as that is what most tribes signed up to.
