Painting is Very Much Alive

I firmly believe that art is all around.

And that artists create.

Art can be found in the angle of the sunlight glinting off the ripples of water in the bay, or a close shot of the pads of a kitten’s feet captured in a photograph.

Art can be made from weaving fibres together to form a basket or a Navaho rug.

Art can be the words forming phrases and growing into sentences that will grow to encompass a story or a novel.

Art can be distilled from the sounds pulled from the ether and entwined with words to create music.

Art can be sculpted out of clay or painted on a piece of canvas or even a bicycle bell.

Some would dismiss the bicycle bell because although hand painted there are many. But it isn’t the hand painting that makes the bicycle bell art (although I am sure that hand painting ensures superior quality), it is the design that the artist creates that makes it art.

What we see, feel, smell, touch and hear informs out art. But if you have imagination, art is everywhere.

I just read Mark Philip Venema’s article $10000 for Proof that Painting is dead. While I could use the money, I must strongly disagree with the idea that painting is dead. Because I think that painting is very much alive.

Perhaps it’s just not in captivity.

My teen just finished a senior high school art course where more time was spent teaching students “artspeak” than in creating art. This is one very talented kid who has been thoroughly dissuaded from even thinking about art as a subject for higher education.

Could it be that talented painters are simply abandoning the “art world”.

Maybe those who feel the caress of the muse are choosing to find day jobs laying bricks or writing computer code to give themselves the freedom to create their art in their free time.

So they are spared having to learn the correct form of hyperbole required to win a reviewer’s attention or convince a gallery to exhibit.

I just added several artists websites to my blog roll — newly rechristened:

Art & Music … are all around

Several of the new links are for artists who are very good painters in the classical sense. I rather think that those making pronouncements of the “painting is dead” variety are somewhat out of touch with reality.

Because artists create. That’s the thing about artists, they must create.

A great many artists are painters. So long as there are painters, painting won’t be dead. No matter what anyone says.