An artist, a true artist that is, not just someone who titles themself in order to put a price on arbitrarily living out
there whims on canvas, paper or film, will have a distinct knack for expressing something complicated in a simple way. The best writers make the most profoundest of subject matter easily accesible and straight forward to the masses (e.g Stephen Hawking), the best film makers can take complex plots and feeeling and make them an intuitive experience (e.g Lynch, coen brothers) and great painters can reduce down the most immense subject and details to an easily pallettable experience for many (Klien, Pollack, Rothko). Therefore
artistic skill is the ability to communicate complex subject matter simply, and for this you don''t nessesarily need complicated
painting or wrting techniques as much as the ability to convert and distill complex ideas in your head down to be able to be communicated with the ability you have available and the easier and more straight forward the better. Art is not exclusive to skill, learning or academics. We''ve been doing it for thousands of years, it''s an innate frame of mind we were all born with.