It starts with a piece of paper and awkward attempts to make marks that will conjure any object from the real world in the mind of a viewer, a ball, a cylinder, or a pop bottle. At first you won’t want to show anyone and when you do they’ll probably make a joke. Well get used to it and anyway serves you right for caring what they think. If you intend to travel the narrowest steepest path art has to offer there won’t be anyone there but you, and what you think will be all that matters. Like traveling on a road in the mountains you might occasionally think you glimpse a section higher up but mostly the destination is lost in day-to-day trees. At the top there could be a pass but you might never get to even see it -- doesn’t matter. Traversing a glacier it’s never a good idea to sit and rest, it’s just so hard to start up again and with so many easier ways to get off the mountain it’s best to keep climbing.
The opponent of the artist is the blank canvas and allies should be tubes of paint but they’re not at all friendly, surly and rebellious and in no mood to cooperate with a greenhorn. They sabotage the clear and visionary concept and are quick to mutiny over simple commands. Without sturdy discipline they’ll make a mess pretty quick. Sometime after Malcolm Gladwell’s ten thousand hour apprenticeship, the time he claims it takes to get good at anything, the personality and perspective of the artist begin to show through whatever they paint. This is not a conscious determination and arises through simple practice, it can’t be helped. The subject of a work of art in the end is always the artist, since ten paintings of the same thing by ten artists will yield ten quite different paintings. On canvas what the artist reveals is not about the subject but about themselves, and it’s up on the wall to plum how much the viewer is ready to see -- it’s a two way conversation, shallow or deep.
In the end the art acquired over a lifetime speaks not for the artists, but for the person who has assembled the individual pieces into a living arrangement, each painting or print having become a familiar friend. Truly collecting art, knowing where each piece came from and something about its artist, thoughtfully arranging them room by room with each new abode, and never selling anything no matter how valuable it becomes will land a person in a fairly pretty comfortable nest in the long term. Not just for the painting you see but also for the long apprenticeship that preceded it, the person who collects art has hired cheap and is, without regard to profit or loss, making a very good bargain.
The opponent of the artist is the blank canvas and allies should be tubes of paint but they’re not at all friendly, surly and rebellious and in no mood to cooperate with a greenhorn. They sabotage the clear and visionary concept and are quick to mutiny over simple commands. Without sturdy discipline they’ll make a mess pretty quick. Sometime after Malcolm Gladwell’s ten thousand hour apprenticeship, the time he claims it takes to get good at anything, the personality and perspective of the artist begin to show through whatever they paint. This is not a conscious determination and arises through simple practice, it can’t be helped. The subject of a work of art in the end is always the artist, since ten paintings of the same thing by ten artists will yield ten quite different paintings. On canvas what the artist reveals is not about the subject but about themselves, and it’s up on the wall to plum how much the viewer is ready to see -- it’s a two way conversation, shallow or deep.
In the end the art acquired over a lifetime speaks not for the artists, but for the person who has assembled the individual pieces into a living arrangement, each painting or print having become a familiar friend. Truly collecting art, knowing where each piece came from and something about its artist, thoughtfully arranging them room by room with each new abode, and never selling anything no matter how valuable it becomes will land a person in a fairly pretty comfortable nest in the long term. Not just for the painting you see but also for the long apprenticeship that preceded it, the person who collects art has hired cheap and is, without regard to profit or loss, making a very good bargain.
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