Blog
Posted on 7/28/2020 3:42:45 PM
By Donald Fox
2 Comments
Red and Blue
Students’ most favorite test questions are multiple choice because those at least give some clues or reminders of potentially correct answers. The second most favorite questions are true-false ones because there is fifty percent chance of success. The least favorite questions require too much thinking and/or remembering. These include fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and, of course, the dreaded essay question. A painter facing a blank canvas is really juggling several visual/semantic problems. There is the blank that must be filled in. Expression could consist of a series of short answers kind of like a collage of various elements assembled or blended together. Or, a composition could be likened to a visual essay where elements support a thoughtful, seasoned statement that extols a particular theme.
Realist painters are sometimes described as copyists since they primarily jot down what they are looking at and make the painting appear as close to the observed experience as possible. Anyone who has seriously considered painting, however, knows that copying and interpreting are quite different expressions. Abstract painters, on the other hand, are often criticized as fantasists, as purveyors of an anything goes attitude towards creative expression. Again, someone who has studied art knows that abstraction is as challenging, and sometimes more so, as reproducing visual sensations. Whatever the form of expression, there is so much more to discover than what lies on the surface.
My artistic journey has explored both forms of expression, and today I think about painting simply as painting. There is a process that when followed with passion and intention produces a desired artistic result (and in my mind there is nothing simple about this process). The end product is a rich visual experience for the observer, and part of that experience may derive from metaphor, symbolism (the creative act itself is a symbolic act), personal mythology, and the interaction of color, shape, and texture, as well as whatever intuitive response the painter experiences in the moment of creation and that is somehow infused into the work.
In short, painting is about life experience although a particular painting may not readily reveal that experience to the observer – not my experience, that is. Ultimately, the painting becomes about whatever the observer experiences while appreciating the object before him or her. There may be emotional feelings conjured from the interplay of colors or textures. There may be spatial experiences evoked by those same colors and textures. A viewer may have some past experience come to mind that I as the artist would have no idea about its content or personal meaning. Possibilities here are nearly endless, and I don’t say this to be glib or trite or obtuse. Art is always a personal experience. The art piece serves as a sounding board or amplifier upon which that experience is projected or by which it is evoked. That is the magic and mystery of art, and it happens regardless of artistic style or surface appearance.
