A Tumble of Boulders

Stones are as elemental as I can imagine. They are the foundation of us all. Stones are solid, representing for me, truth. Even when they crack. Which by the energy of nature, they do. They crack, and erode, until by the same primitive actions of nature, they recombine. Endlessly.

Eggs symbolize elemental life. Secondary to stone, yet nothing more than stone animated. A stone egg may be a contradiction in terms, but for me, it manages to represent both truth and yet potential.

The first painting in what I hope will be a series, is of a tumble of weathered boulders, strangely egg shaped, and somewhat oddly lit from above. Wildflowers grow out of their damp shady nooks.

The painting finished, I am sorely tempted to move to greater complication with additional levels of painting. Should I do more simple paintings of stones and wildflowers, or continue exploring? I know what I should do, but also know what I will do. I am compelled to experiment. Tune in!

What do I want to say?

Elizabeth, my teacher, asks me continually what I want to say. And I have no answer. I know that I want to create something beautiful. But as to what I want to say with it, I haven't a clue.

It is said that some artists try to "work through" their particular pain with their art. Perhaps I should try that. Make it a question, a search, a challenge to find answers through painting.

Strangely, it sounds trite to work on profound questions. Even embarassing. Nevertheless, if I could work out how to do it, such painting would certainly be true to myself.

Let's give it a shot.

Responding to Orange Sky, Purple Mountains.

Elizabeth insisted that I analyze my reaction to my paintings, as guidance. So, why do I love the painting below? First, the colors are fascinating to me: bright red-orange, tempered by dull violet and dull yellow-green, outlined by dark raw umber. I don't know what attracts me to the colors!

I like the drawing through the painting, outlining, highlighting, sometimes changing the shapes of the colors. This makes to pour more clearly intentional. I like the solution I found to the overabundance of orange-red and yellow; i.e. the pale violet-blue markings that subdue it, without making it duller.

I like the Asian feeling, which I made a bit cartoonish by adding the calligraphic marks on the left. I later took them out. Why, though, even without the marks does it feel Asian? Most viewers had the same feeling. I want very much to repeat that in future paintings. I also want to create more color combinations that give the same response.

So far, after about 10 paintings, I have not managed to do either! Instead, I found myself using pours in other ways. I have built up a good vocabulary of pours and strokes, using combs and other texture makers. Each time I was trying for a repeat, and each time I moved in a different direction. This is dire.

Orange Sky, Purple Mountains

I have been on my own always of course. But now I have a direction. I have only to follow it, not a simple matter for one who is eminently distractable.

Nonetheless, her directive is to create a group of paintings that are similar in style. Or perhaps several groups? You see, I am already diverging! My last work, see below, is of sufficient complexity and interest to keep me going for at least four paintings. Then, we will see. I must remember that the key, for myself, at that point, will be to change in very small ways, so that new paintings will remain sufficiently similar in style to the rest.

Painting critques are welcome.

Take care for today...

Short stories will gain new impetus.

Short stories, like poems,  have always been held in high esteem by the literati, but the general public much prefers novels.    I suspect that this is going to change, perhaps quite soon, as devices such as Amazon's Kindle become more popular.  Today we use a handheld, laptop, or desktop to read primarily because the information we want is published online.  But as reading a computer screen becomes easier and more comfortable, the short attention span of recent generations,the the busy life that makes watching YouTube such a pleasant, and quick diversion,  and the on/off nature of computers will conspire to make the short story considerably more appealing compared to the novel that it has been to date.

At the same time, I believe we will see that the capability of the computer to provide multi-media presentations will permit more lively and interactive stories, stories that appeal to more of our senses.  And at first these will be experimental and costly as new technologies generally are,  so the stories are likely to be start out short.  

All in all, if I were able to invest in short stories, I would do it with great confidence that I had for once, finally gotten in on the ground floor of a largely unanticipated boom.

 

Whither original art?

Until recently original paintings reigned supreme in the viewer's mind, and for very good reasons: in an original colors are truer and often more vivid;  one is most sensitive to the textures; the frame and settings generally add "depth" to the experience; perhaps most of all, the proximity to the actual object makes us feel greater physical, even temporal, proximity to the painter.  All told, the experience is more "authentic" than the experience of secondhand viewing, via prints, magazines, or the computer.  

Digital art erodes  the supremacy of the original art. A digital artwork  can be available in exactly the same way to all viewers. including the originator, the digital artist.  If the artist so desires, she could even bring the viewer into the process of creation, making that part of the viewing experience.  Examples already exist of this on the net.  

We are told that the future will bring us a gadget at home that can quite literally re-create a work of art on the spot, in our homes, perhaps to our specifications,  by, say,  changing the color scheme so that it better matches the sofa.

Consider how that would change the nature of original art!  Even if the art were not digital in the first place, such a gadget could reproduce it even as scanners already can.  What is the difference between an original photo and the copy?  

The mind boggles.

What is the role of beauty in art?

IMHO the artist only achieves a work of art if, whatever else it may be, it is beautiful.  And the greater the beauty, the better it is.  

In modern times,  beauty is perceived as a distraction from the artist's true pursuit, which is making a personal statement.  By personal statement I mean both in terms of the way the artist paints, draws, or collages, etc., by also in terms of what the artist wants to "say."

 Most modern artists are trying to create something unique.  "Derivative" is a bad word.While art history is still taught, mastering someone else's technique is rarely advised, lest it delay or worse, derail an artist's personal creativity.   While these artists may profess to be influenced by other artists, they do not consider themselves to be  real artists until they have developed a technique or approach or subject which no other artist has ever used.  

Modern artists  also want to express their opinions on political and cultural events and more's through their art. These artists decry what they believe to be evil, often using little subtlety to express their anger and angst.  This is hardly unknown historically, but the pervasiveness of the attitude is.

Similarly, many modern artists like to see themselves as rebellious, which attitude pours alchohol upon the flames of anger and despair. 

 

I haven't enough education in art history to place this attitude into historical perspective, but if I had to guess, I would argue that Picasso was an early example, and that his success gave  impetus to it.

What is the role of the art critic in all this?  I think it is central.  They are the arbiters of taste.  I wonder when art critique  became so central to the education of the artist, and art critics became the tastemakers.  

I don't know why art critics began to prefer novelty of technique and rebellious anger and angst over beauty as a standard.   Perhaps it was  iterative, the artist and the critic supporting  one another; but I wonder if art critics became famous with the advent of mass communication.  Perhaps the creation of mass media and communication made art accessible to the many, and the many were looking for direction about what to buy.  They were contemptuously told that they could not rely on their own uneducated understanding:  "I don't know about art, but I know what I like!" is a statement held up to ridicule. 

More later