Please Forgive Me If This Sounds a Little Harsh...

re: Please Forgive Me If This Sounds a Little Harsh...

james hogue — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 04:52:54 GMT

Thank you for the topic. It brought back memories of the first Plein Air workshop I attended with Charles Movali. I was brand new to plein air painting, and I was painting a harbor scene. When Movali stopped by to see how I was progressing he had make a few changes to my composition. There was not enough variation in my background, and he had me place a tree that was off to the side into the scene. I was amazed and he just laughed and said that nature is always wrong.

James

re: Please Forgive Me If This Sounds a Little Harsh...

Jennifer King — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:49:33 GMT

I LOVE David's comment that art "should be as judgmental and lopsided and individual as we choose to make it." I think I'm going to write that on a sign in my studio. Beautiful! And thanks for reassuring me that I wasn't too harsh.

Jennifer

re: Please Forgive Me If This Sounds a Little Harsh...

KatPaints — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 22:15:27 GMT

Yes we need to remind ourselves that we are creating art and not documentation.

re: Please Forgive Me If This Sounds a Little Harsh...

JulieC@10 — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:40:44 GMT

Not harsh. Painting is necessarily a representation, and your work says something about you, no matter how unconcscious you may be in expressing it. It's my favorite thing about art: I get to make explicit the way I see the world!

re: Please Forgive Me If This Sounds a Little Harsh...

david_prokowiew — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:28:51 GMT

Hmm... This is a tricky subject. I'm going to be longwinded on this one. I've heard many people complain that artists tend to idealize scenes and that a plein air painter is somehow supposed to simply reflect what she/he sees. I don't know how that sort of responsibility first came to being, but I've heard it- as though we have a duty to the public trust to be more of a camera than an artist- but anyway, it's out there. This view has always bothered me for several reasons, not the least of which is the term "idealized". I always ask myself, idealized for whom? Some people find beauty in a pastoral scene, and the person who criticizes it as idealized may find beauty in a scene of rats running in a vacant lot. Both scenes may be filled with lies, but both may be qualified by different viewers as idealized. I'm more in agreement with what I think is your view- that we're artists, that our job is to interpret what we see. Therefore, we get to choose what we paint, even within what is presented to us. I think it is our job to create a gift for the world. It should be as judgmental and lopsided and individual as we choose to make it. It is up to the world to accept or reject it, to decide whether or not it has any merit- its strengths and weaknesses, its value.

re: Please Forgive Me If This Sounds a Little Harsh...

Courtney Jordan — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:39:46 GMT

That is because you are a gem, Fergus!

re: Please Forgive Me If This Sounds a Little Harsh...

Fergus A Ryan — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:14:58 GMT

It didn't sound harsh at all!