For me it all comes down to the need for human touch. In life we gotta be loved. By what? Other humans of course. And pets too. I don't think anyone can truly go it alone in this world. The magnificence of human touch can change your whole body chemistry in a split second. Whether from your lover, Mother, or a good friend. I think this translates to the canvas as well. People will always have a desire to see the human touch. To see what one person has taken the time to make important admidst this violent, swerving, overwhelmingly beautifully scary universe. Making one image that serves as a protest to gravity and all things suppressive.
True as painters we have a lot of visual competion out there. I just saw the new Harry Potter last night and it was full of dazzling effects. And the effects were the main reason I went to see it. I'm glad there are visual things out there to provide contrast to what I do. Sometimes I think of the latest visual technology as a challenge but mainly I think of it as another area on the visual spectrum. Painting and Computer Graphics and everything around and in between need eachother to make eachother important and unique. And as an extra note about Computer Graphics there is a lot of redundancy and repitition of certain effects and character design. Every genre has room for innovation. There are so many things that haven't been done yet in the world of painting! And we need to be doing them!
I think about the touch, always.
ReplyDeleteIn a portrait history/theory class from undergrad the teacher made a statement that struck me. He related the repeated mark to a caress. And a caress he described as reaching for the person's otherness. I think the otherness being what makes that person different, unique, their own, more than just a physical mass.
Painting is my way to distill an otherness about a place or object. That caress makes it precious. I like how a viewer responds to an image of something that wouldn't be identified as a "precious" to them. But it's my precious so it's their precious too.
You know what you can do with a painting that you can't do with Harry Potter? Touch it. I used to study design and was disturbed that I could spend hours on something and it would be gone when the computer crashed. It was so satisfying to work with materials and have a painting at all moments of the process. I couldn't hit undo or save multiple versions but I never lost everything in a moment.
I know. I look for "touches" when I go to a museum. I get excited to see "touches" in a so-called master piece.
ReplyDeleteBut, I only do so, because I can relate to the touch from my experience being a painter. Younger kids who are into computer games does not care about "touches". They don't see "touches".
Is it a gap in generations? does this gap close some point or not?