Why I Paint
I remember once talking to an artist friend. I told her my work is about death. There was a long pregnant pause. I think she was unsettled and shocked. It’s not something I talk a lot about, but really that is the core of my painting.
When you first start painting…..
your concerns are different and perhaps a bit more pedestrian.
How do I mix that colour? How do I get this to look like a tree? How can I improve the composition? What new art techniques can I learn?
All of these concerns are about the craft of painting.
Craft seems to almost be an ugly word when applied to painting. I know academics that sneer at the idea. They don’t believe in the traditional methods of teaching art. They think that skill development robs the artist of individual expression. Concept rules their work. On the other hand, self-taught artists have excellent skills, yet often the work doesn’t go past the photograph.
I am suggesting that to be a good artist
you need a blend of skill and concept.
Skills are important. I’ve spent a lot of time honing them. I still do. It’s important to learn about the tools, colour theory, and the materials of painting. That is how you master them. Yet in my mind, a good artist needs a balance. What you have to say is important.
After all, art is visual communication.
So, as an artist, what are you communicating? What do you have to say? What is the underlying content and intent of your work?
A recent show at Cspace, Calgary. I still have some prints of some of these paintings. A percentage of the sales of these prints goes to charity.
You can argue that all artists are in the business of marking time. Through artwork, we know of people from the past. We know of Artemisia Gentileschi through her paintings. Through the sheer mastery of that work, we learn the story of a woman painter who achieved recognition during her lifetime. In fact, she is the first woman who gained entry into the Academy of Arts and Drawing in 1616. A painting becomes a legacy and message to the future. A painting lives beyond itself.
Pink Sky Syndrome. 48 x 36 Acrylic on Board.
This is something I contemplate when I am painting.
I love skies and the change in them. The clouds waft and morph with the wind. Yet the contrast to this change is their consistency. Skies are above us always. They have been there in our grandparent’s time and even before.
One of my summer projects is investigating the Majorville Medicine Wheel in Alberta. It has been called Canada’s Stonehenge as it is over 5000 years old. Not much is known of the people who created the stone circle. Those people are gone, but the sky was overhead then and now. The circle marks their time there. It marks the importance of the landscape, where they lived and died, and their relationship to it.
Uplifting, Nosehill 8 x 10 Painted Plein Air, just before the storms came.
My skies are about marking my time. They are about personal epiphanies and meditations on those greater questions about life. Why are we here? What do we do with our time here?
I also am developing my artistic skills to better serve that message. I am interested in the effect of colour, and the development of surface quality. I use those skills to develop the content in my paintings.
My job as an artist is to marry that skill and content to create better paintings.