Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
A Tibor de Nagy quote, from The Business of Art, second edition:
“As a rule, artists are difficult-to say the least. Their emotions are more intense. Their egos are either enormous, or just the opposite, but they are never well balanced. Artists love and hate, and hardly ever feel neutral. Their enthusiasm is exaggerated. They recognize beauty faster. They are more sensitive in connection with other peoples’ suffering. Their intellect keeps them from ever being boring to other people. Their jealousy tortures them day and night. They give more than they consume. In short, if you want a smooth existence, keep away from the art world. But if you want to really live- meaning suffer and burst out of joy- become involved with artists. You will never fade away; you will just die of exhaustion. Generalizations are like statistics. They very often distort or even lie. The truth of the matter remains expressed in Goethe’s Faust:
“He wants from the sky the fairest star, from earth the highest joy that’s to be had: everything near and everything far can never satisfy his deeply stirred desire.”
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sometimes the committed painter sees in two dissimilar genres a potential for communication, an outlet, which repeats the same message to different viewers.
Between figurative and non-figurative paintings there is little room, they are closely related in execution and sometimes concept. Both are tests of formal skill, both strive to create a fresh environment, both (hopefully), profile a sophisticated style and hopefully too, both are smart, contributing to Fine Art, whatever that may be. Both can be simply good painting.
Normal methods of measuring expertise are sometimes invalid as "quality" in non-figurative painting remains a barely measurable thing at best. Summed up by the casual viewer as idiosyncratic babbling giving pleasure to the maker only, and if the work does have an idea to support it, it must be a joke. Concept in non-figurative paintings eludes most viewers and rightly so, "meaning" sometimes arrives with the viewer, sometimes there is none. Sometimes a painting is simply that, a painting, and not a painting of something.
The best non-figurative works are a test of formal skills; color theory, focal point, format, mark making, balance, depth, shading, texture, expression and so on.
Fact is every formal element used in figurative painting is found in non-figurative, why that is difficult to grasp, accept and enjoy is a mystery. Few of us have trouble understanding that all music is made on a piano key board. Makes no difference what genre of music, the tune is found only within a narrow range of musical notes. But the notion of a painting having the same concept as jazz remains hard to grasp.
There are simply many viewers, who are certain the language they are familiar with should be universal, and are certain a language they do not understand is gibberish.
It is best to like a painting and not know why or worry about meaning.
But it's a fact that Bouguereau had nothing important to say.
But it's a fact that Bouguereau had nothing important to say.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The justification for landscape painting evolved with history art. Brief research points out that paintings baby steps away from craft and on toward an intellectual process ushered in the emergence of landscape painting as a standalone subject, naturally there are other factors. Landscape having been relegated to "by work" by medieval patrons and painters became an accepted genre as the middle ages fell away and the middle class became an economic force. With the rise of the middle class emerged leisure time,the "third nature",and decoration for its own sake. The effect the middle class had on “land” is known by the emergence of flower gardens and land manipulated for aesthetic's sake. So paintings as well became more decorative (a portable window with a view), less about religion and accessible to more folk. As land use progressed from wild nature, to cultivated crops, to city parks, so too did painting’s subject matter become less pragmatic (religious/mythic/historical), and about owning for the pleasure of it.
Fast forward to the modern painters of the last century, and it seems to me that as American yards filled with flowers and fewer vegetables, painting became more about aesthetics, (flowers),... and less about illustration, (vegetables). Certainly there is a place for both, but more often than not, the folks most vocal out here in “rurality” are those pragmatists who insist that painting (if they even think about it),must be about something and understandable. Such people who insist on easy understandability in painting,.... are vegetable,..... people...... :),... not that there is anything wrong with that.
Kind of a stretch I know,... but for off the top of my head it's the best I can manage.
The bottom line for me is,... and this is not original,... if it's fine to have control of the land, manipulate it,... cultivate it,.... use its resources and enjoy it,...then it's fine if I manipulate paint and canvas, for some pleasure or exploration, plan, plant and cajole out of tubes what makes me happy/feel better and weed that which does not.
Fast forward to the modern painters of the last century, and it seems to me that as American yards filled with flowers and fewer vegetables, painting became more about aesthetics, (flowers),... and less about illustration, (vegetables). Certainly there is a place for both, but more often than not, the folks most vocal out here in “rurality” are those pragmatists who insist that painting (if they even think about it),must be about something and understandable. Such people who insist on easy understandability in painting,.... are vegetable,..... people...... :),... not that there is anything wrong with that.
Kind of a stretch I know,... but for off the top of my head it's the best I can manage.
The bottom line for me is,... and this is not original,... if it's fine to have control of the land, manipulate it,... cultivate it,.... use its resources and enjoy it,...then it's fine if I manipulate paint and canvas, for some pleasure or exploration, plan, plant and cajole out of tubes what makes me happy/feel better and weed that which does not.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
"Hoopa-Humboldt Co.", o/c 28in.X60in., 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
A few non-figurative
These works are simply old school painting founded on gesture, process and evidence that, for me, the canvas remains an arena.
They are an interpretation of physical places and events familiar to all who live in Northern California,… our spring and summer fire season.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
"Coleman Lake", o/c 54in.x52in. 2008Friday, August 28, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Two o/c paintings that are currently hanging in an office space. The secrataries gave them an eye roll when I first put them up. Each of them felt compelled to say they did not "get" abstract art. My response was "these are not abstract". Technically, they are. But in the real world 'abstract" means non-figurative. Obviously these are landscapes. But anyway,.... the ladies want to keep them hung having grown used to them, somthing like jazz,... after listening to it for a while, is easy to like.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
