Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

“To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal.”

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Illustration tells a story. Art may also do so, but in the telling may sometimes transcend the story. [A masterpiece is a work that by definition transcends the artist's intentions, and the problem with art schools - in which I have both studied and taught - is that they encourage students to consciously try to paint a masterpiece, which by definition cant be done.]

 

 

“I can't tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that art has often judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past has suffered, so that it has never been forgotten.

I know too that the powerful fear art, whatever its form, when it does this, and that amongst the people such art sometimes runs like a rumour and a legend because it makes sense of what life's brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us, for it is inseparable from a justice at last. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts and honour.”

 

Edited January 2, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

The question becomes, how does the artist manage to get out of his or her own way? Because at the end of the story, it isn’t about being "great", which is a public trial; it's about knowing, which is a private revelation and a personal epiphany.

 

 

 

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.”

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 2, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

How does one turn a linear, black and white image into a full colour painting? This has never been easy for me, and is often the curse of those who are more comfortable with drawing than painting.

 

 

Picasso for example, was essentially a draughtsman -

 

 

Minotauromachia

 

 

Edited January 2, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

Guernica

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Whereas Velasquez was perhaps the ultimate "painter's painter."

 

 

Infanta Margarita

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Or if not him then Turner

 

 

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

I've been thinking a lot about cave painting recently, about how the artist/shaman [probably a woman by the way, as shamans are to this day in Siberia] worked harmoniously with the surface of the rock face to evoke the form of the ur-animal she wanted to depict -

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Here is a work in progress based on the pen and ink collage I posted earlier.

 

 

 

This is actually a picture of a rock overlaid on my drawing. Now I have to engage with both surface and image, in order to excavate what lies beneath.

 

 

So the issue with using Photoshop is a parallel concern to that of transforming drawing convincingly into paint. How to transcend the medium? How to create density of feeling in one so facile, when you can simply request a filter to render an image in any way imaginable?

 

One day perhaps I'll know.

 

Edited January 2, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

I'd just like to say thanks to the following board members for posting in this thread. Your comments have been deeply appreciated - frequently heart warming, occasionally thought provoking, and always positive!

 

I apologise for not having found the time to acknowledge each of you individually. I hope you all have a great New Year!

 

 

Sardo Numspar,

nearmint,

jimjum12,

Sqeggs,

MrBedrock,

Kevin.J,

comixnoir,

adamstrange,

DavidMerryweather,

goldust40,

Foxtrot70,

RedFury,

godquest,

comicjack,

Yellow Kid,

Comicopolis,

jbcomicbox,

pcalhoun,

Comixcroz,

Twistty1,

Buzzetta,

comicwiz,

Senormac,

Sal,

thehumantorch,

40YrsCollctngCmcs,

BOOT,

Theagenes,

buttock

[Flex Mentallo]

Edward Hopper (1882 –1967)

 

 

 

 

 

Hopper was a painter of silence. In his world, time stops. People live frozen lives.

 

Here is a gallery of his work.

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Edited January 3, 2013 by alanna