Talking Art....

So, I had lunch today with a fellow artist & friend, Heather Jerdee. She's awesome, it's crazy how much we have in common and how giggling and funny we get when we are together. She's amazing and I'm so glad to know her :)

Anyway..... We got to talking in Barnes and Noble, are you supposed to do that?

Anyway.... We were talking about realism vs abstract expression. One of many topics that came up was the future of realism... We live in a photoshopped world, not that there's anything wrong with that.... It's just that photoshop, digital photograghy heck the gosh darn camera has changed the necessitiy for realisim. 500 years ago, painters painted portraits to document what a person looked like - of course, as it does today wonderful expression came out of that exercise. But today, well why have a portriat done?

I like portriats because you can show a person a side to themselves that just doesn't happen in the camera - you're free to emphazie something or exaggerate even.

The artist is also part of their work, if you ask photoshop to make something look painted it does, perfectly, blindly. If you as a painter to paint something, you'll see flaws, you'll see areas worked on, maybe stuggled with.

Most importantly, with art, you'll get a chance to see things as the artist sees them, not with just his eye but, his mind and heart also. That's art. Not perfect realisim - if you want that, take a picture. If you want to capture the mood of a room, take a really good picture. If you want to capture how you feel in that room, on this day, paint/draw/create a picture - create something with your hands, heart, mind. One way to express what's going on in there is to use your heart & mind to tell your hands what to do.

That's why you can look at art and feel connected - understand institivly what's being said, beyond words. Even relate to the artist personally. Realisim has nothing to do with that.