“And that in painting and sculpture there must be a meaning…or it is not art” (Munari, Design As Art)
As my art teeters on the borderline of being abstract, I sometimes do raise concern if what I produce can be considered with any real honour in the eyes of others. There is no obvious meaning in a lot of my work and I don’t necessarily paint to imitate life; usually an artist should theoretically hold one of these to wire an electricity into their work in order to pulsate an audience. Should I be painting to convince the audience of a sense of purpose and that my work has a level of complex if I’m abolishing a demonstration of hyperrealistic wow-factor?
Growing up I always felt that in order to be “good” at art you must be an artist with utmost skill that operates more so like a printer: replicating life directly. Those convictions fade as you experience a wider threshold of creation. Determining one’s artistic ability quickly moulds into something less rigid and transforms instead into how they invoke emotion, create experience, use life events to inform their work. The invention of the camera flipped the whole artistic pursuit as artists were now freed from needing to act as a machine. The purpose of making art flipped, the market alongside it. In come the expressionists, impressionists, cubists, surrealists all exploring further and further away from the realistic depictions the world previously relied on artists to make. This must have been an exciting time.
I think artists are held too tightly by these notions of what factors allow their compositions to be considered worthwhile of viewing. This is the danger for me of monetising artwork: we start to create with the intention of becoming commercial rather than painting truly from within. I think my artwork is meditative to create, usually motifs will arise from my subconscious and at the end I can make links to what I have produced and where in my life it originated from. This is meaningful to me, but to a viewer of my work it might just seem like I am painting with no true purpose. For some people, this is the non-negotiable for why they should spend any interest in my work. In terms of monetisation this is detrimental for me. The again, I always say the people that are supposed to see your work, will see it. It’s why I haven’t allowed art to be my main income, I am keeping a sense of freedom.
The discourse of if contemporary work is approaching the point of no return has always been heated between those who love the work of Emin and Hirst vs those who literally just want to see something that makes perceived sense. I think the experimentation and fearless approach artists such as the YBAs have definitely stems from the fact everything is less taboo these days. Then again, did they ignite the taboo to dissipate?
I think something interesting to consider is if we start to see a retreat back to traditions because of the upcoming presence of AI. AI is collaging all art ever made and sometimes producing significant work; will artists feel as if they need to beat the machine and showcase this hyper-realistic skill again? In some ways I guess we are reverting back to being machines if we take on this approach.
I think artists have proved just about anything can make it into public attention and galleries; and recently those artworks obtaining the maximum attention happen to have been the more obscure ones. Shock factor can be everything. The argument of abstract vs realistic and what makes a piece of art real will be a debate I think mainly contemplated by those who do not feel art and instead enjoy it simply for visual quality. Either type of viewer is not a bad person- they just experience differently. I think all art is defendable and more importantly beautiful, it should be respected for what it is. To be cliche: art is subjective. Nevertheless, the overlying discourse does sadly sometimes inject a sense of doubt into what I’m doing. That’s all to say…
Just make what you want, fuck it.
plus!
a little update...
deepest apologies for not updating the blog! life got in the way. I've decided to rebrand the graphics a bit into more of a template style to create a bit of consistency across the blog and intrigue with some pull quotes.
inspired by this which quite frankly is advocating way more important messages but also is very nice design
secondly i am going to aim for a blog post every fortnight since a new list of commitments have been added to my pile but hopefully a return to every week can come once i pick up some pace with it all again!
i'm also hoping to soon scan in some new work soon to upload to my portfolio and hopefully can get a better layout and energy for my website soon!
thanks.
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