(Painting Perceptions gives enormous thanks to Jordan Wolfson for this thoughtful and important essay and greatly appreciates his generous contribution. You can find more of his work and information on his website.) He is also leading a workshop “Painting as Interbeing” – May 5-8, 2014 in Colorado, you can contact him for more here.

Jordan Wolfson, Still Life with Flowers (In Memory of Tamar B.) 2014, oil on linen, 18 x 16 inches
Click here for larger view.

Painting has no real context today.  What I mean by that is that we have no larger story and meaningful myth within which to hold and nurture the activity of painting.

This activity that we call painting, that seems so clearly full of esteem as “Art”, has no place of stable purpose in our contemporary world.  It’s rather arbitrary whether what a painter paints is going to be seen as important or not.  It doesn’t correlate with whether the actual painting is any good—quality is not a mark against it, just not necessarily for it either.  It has much more to do with how well the painter is able to interface with market forces; the galleries, curators, collectors, etc.  That is, it has much more do with the context of the art world, and that has become a very odd context indeed.  Further, given the growing secularization and fragmentation of our society we have no place of purpose and meaning for what we call art, and for what we call painting, as might be found in a more traditional culture where the sense of an overarching story is still intact.  One can still hope to find a niche of the art world that might appreciate what one has to offer, but in terms of really contributing to a larger story the only thing we seem to be able to count on today, the only story with common consensus and shared terms, is the story of financial amount: how much is it worth?  And that doesn’t really measure the value of the thing.  The situation isn’t just possibly personally frustrating, it’s culturally bewildering and deeply saddening.­

Other questions arise when one looks at the state of the world in general – where we seem to be headed.  One doesn’t need to know the latest climate change information, the details of human trafficking, or worldwide poverty to wonder “What the hell am I doing?  The world is burning and I’m sitting in the corner coloring?  What does it matter, one more picture?  What does it matter, one more painter?”  It turns out it does.  And more directly than we might think.  What I would like to present here is a case for the utmost relevance of painting.  The house is burning.  If painting isn’t coloring in the corner, then what is it?  How does it matter?   Is there a way for painting to actually contribute to help heal our world?

The question of the meaning and purpose of painting has a history.  The question of painting’s relevance only came into existence when the fine arts as a cultural category was gradually invented and then solidified in the eighteenth century.  Until then, painting and painters had a clear role and place.  As Larry Shiner delineates so well in The Invention of Art: A Cultural History, painting as an activity of image-making was always clearly imbedded in the cultural and economic needs of European society.  The category of fine art, as a distinct realm of creativity in which paintings were made for their own sake out of the inspiration of creative genius, didn’t become a cultural norm until the eighteenth century.  Before that, although there were steps being made in this direction from the time of the Renaissance, and although concerns of form and beauty were considered and essential, the term “art” as we know and use it didn’t exist.  The vast majority of painters performed tasks that they were assigned through their guilds and through commissions; there was always a purpose and use to the images being made.  The terms of individual creativity and the notion of art for art’s sake didn’t arise until art became separated from craft, the artist separated from artisan, and pleasure separated from utility and then ultimately refined into aesthetics.  The rise of fine arts as a cultural category was inextricably linked to the rise of a market economy, a process of commodification, and a growing middle class.  By the nineteenth century the normative view was that fine art was a separate realm of spiritual sustenance, ostensibly serving no other purpose than its own existence.

Matisse, La Musique, 1910, 102 x 153 inches, Hermitage, St. Petersberg

How we think about painting was and is extremely flexible.  Our cultural attitude towards painting as an aesthetic object that must, first and foremost, exist for its own sake if it is to carry any real power, and that any use to which it is put threatens to harm its integrity, is an attitude with a history.  It’s fluid, not inevitable.  Perhaps the aesthetic power of a painting may be re-contextualized, revealing a larger purpose within a larger story.

Indeed, at the same time that this split in the eighteenth century was growing between craft and art, there was a pushback, a resistance to the stripping of art of purpose. There was an accompanying resistance to the split of art and life, this making of art into a distinct, separate realm with its own aesthetic jurisdiction.  This pushback occurred from the beginning and continues down to our day.  We see this resistance in the examples that Shiner brings: the works and writing of Hogarth, Rousseau, and Wollstonecraft.  We can see it continuing in the work of Goya—giving testimony to the horrors of war and violence and injustice, with Manet and the other Impressionists, in their desire to eschew history painting and turn to the everyday life around them.  We see it in the anti-art of Dada and Duchamp, in the 1960s with the developments of Fluxus and the Happenings of Allan Kaprow.  We see it in the work and teaching of Joseph Beuys and the writings of Suzi Gablik, the work of Tim Rollins and the K.O.S., the community based works in Chicago curated by Mary Jane Jacob, the myriad of artists affiliated with the Green Museum, and the real estate development of Theaster Gates.  Whether in the realm of social justice, community building, spirituality or environmental concerns, the claim of art as a pure domain of disinterested aesthetic contemplation has been relentlessly challenged for over two centuries.

Joseph Beuys, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (excerpt)

How is it that we have come to think of art as its own world with no purpose outside of itself?  And if that makes no sense, than how does art function in our culture and civilization at this point?  What are the various purposes for what we call art and which of them might we actually care about?  The period of history in which painting had ostensibly no utility beyond the aesthetic is short, a gradual transitioning of two to three hundred years.  Painting served various purposes before the onset of the realm of fine arts and it will continue to serve various purposes after the end of art as well.  When I write of “the end of art” I mean the end of the story of art that we’ve been telling culturally, a narrative of sequential style that has viewed the long history of human making through the lens of the last two hundred years.  Arthur Danto and Hans Belting have both written about this and come to similar conclusions independently: the story of art as we have known it is coming to a close.  Larry Shiner, in his book, also speaks of this closure and asks what will be next.

Piero della Francesca, The Nativity, 1470-75, 124.4×122.6cm, National Gallery, London

Before turning to try to answer that question let us first look at the possible uses that art has been put to, even during the period of history in which art was defined as necessarily having no utility, and up through today.  Indeed, art does function as an opportunity for refined contemplative experience, and that is part of why we love it.  It also functions as entertainment and distraction.  It functions as decoration.  It functions as philosophical inquiry.  It functions as social action, as environmental action, as an inquiry into, and protest against racism, sexism and inequality and injustice of all sorts.  It functions as financial investment, as a badge of social and class status, as a badge of cultural hipness and cool.  It functions as religious icon and symbol and as a focus of contemplative meditation.  Art functions politically, financially, socially, culturally, spiritually.   Clearly, art functions.  Clearly it has use and utility.  We may not always agree to the uses to which an object is being put to use, but that it is done so is simply a fact of our world.

Given all of these various uses there is a function of art that is of particular importance: art carries presence.  But then actually all objects, everything, carries presence.  Nature, places, people—all carry presence.  And there is the category of things made—some of those things we call art, most we don’t.  Is there a difference in presence between art and non-art?  Today, it seems that the quality of presence is not a determining factor of whether something is defined as art or not—the difference is simply the decision to name and claim that this given object is art.  It can be anything.  We have seen since the time of Duchamp that any object, even one that is factory made, can be turned into art by a switch of the mind.

Soutine, Landscape at Ceret, 1920-21, 56x84cm, Tate, London

So, while strong presence is not the defining attribute of contemporary art, we do find throughout history objects that carry strong presence, and no matter the categories of those cultures, we have come to call these objects “Art”.  That is, one of the functions of what we call art throughout time and place has been this imbuing of objects with presence.  And whether the cultural category of fine art will continue or not, the practice of wielding and imbuing presence will carry on.  It is an integral part of what people do.  I believe this aspect of human making, to take raw material and somehow charge it with presence, is one of critical importance and I would like to now look at it more closely.

What is presence?  And how does it get associated with an object?  What is the process with which material gets charged or imbued with it?  How is it that a human being can take colored mud, smear it around on a piece of fabric and end up charging the materials so greatly that it resonates with vitality hundreds of years after the person is long gone?  How is it that a human being can take raw material and form it in such a way that it moves our hearts and quiets our minds?  And what does this have to do with saving the world?

Titian, Saint Jerome in Penitence, 1575, Nuevos Museos, El Escorial, Spain

First, the question of the nature of presence:  The experience of presence is consciousness becoming aware of itself.  Eckhart Tolle writes about presence beautifully in his book The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment:

 Have you ever gazed up into the infinity of space on a clear night, awestruck by the absolute stillness and inconceivable vastness of it?  Have you listened, truly listened, to the sound of a mountain stream in the forest?  Or to the song of a blackbird at dusk on a quiet summer evening?  To become aware of such things, the mind needs to be still.  You have to put down for a moment your personal baggage of problems, of past and future, as well as all your knowledge; otherwise, you will see but not see, hear but not hear.  Your total presence is required.

Beyond the beauty of the external forms, there is more here: something that cannot be named, something ineffable, some deep, inner, holy essence.  Whenever and wherever there is beauty, this inner essence shines through somehow.  It only reveals itself to you when you are present.  Could it be that this nameless essence and your presence are one and the same?  Would it be there without your presence?
(Tolle, 1999, 96)

A little further on in the book Tolle defines presence:

When you become conscious of Being, what is really happening is that Being becomes conscious of itself.  When Being becomes conscious of itself—that’s presence.  Since Being, consciousness, and life are synonymous, we could say that presence means consciousness becoming conscious of itself, or life attaining self-consciousness.  But don’t get attached to the words, and don’t make an effort to understand this.  There is nothing that you need to understand before you can become present.
(Tolle, 1999, 98)

One of the gifts of making work, drawing and painting, is the possibility of becoming present—in fact, it’s a key ingredient to making strong, living work.  And one of the gifts of viewing objects of beauty and strong presence is that they stop us still and invite us to become present with them, to meet their presence with our presence. This is a particular gift of all art forms, and perhaps the most important gift.  This is how art awakens us, rekindles, reminds, re-hearts.  We remember that we are alive, that things matter, that life matters.  In this sense, beauty serves as a gateway to presence and sheer meaning.  But what does presence as a function of art have to do with saving the world?  And further, we seem to be talking about art in general, the power of presence that can be found in all making.  Does painting in particular have something to offer that goes beyond the general category of art?

Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #79, 1975, 93 x 81 inches, Philadelphia Museum of Art

In an article on Richard Diebenkorn in the New Republic from the September 2013 issue Jed Perl wrote, “Ever since the Renaissance, painting has been the grandest intellectual adventure in the visual arts, a titanic effort to encompass the glorious instability and variability of experience within the stability of a sharply delimited two-dimensional space.”  What Perl is describing here points towards something very specific and profound about the nature of painting.  When he writes of the twin aspects of painting, the stability and instability that paintings exhibit, he is getting to the crux of the matter and may help lead us to the unique contribution and gateway that painting provides.  Painting offers two contradictory experiences.  On the one hand, a painting is a flat two-dimensional object, with its surface texture and color shapes.  On the other hand, a painting offers the possibility of a three-dimensional experience, the illusion of moving into space and discovering form.  Stability and instability.  Fact and imagination.  Actual and fictive.  It is this twin role, and its simultaneity, that gives painting such power.  Real and unreal.  Real and more real.  Painting, through the coexistence of two seemingly opposite experiences, interwoven into an actual unity, may provide the receptive adult the possibility of moving from an experience of fragmentation into an experience of wholeness and integration, not only within oneself but with the world at large.  Boundaries between me and other, between inside and outside, prove to be not quite as firm as previously thought.  This occurs not only because our minds are teased into non-discursive awareness by the shimmering interchange between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional experience; “I see a flat colored surface, no wait, I see a sky and valley  below, no wait—will you look at those marks!”  The experience of wholeness also occurs because the respective completeness of the two-dimensional and three-dimensional is each dependent on the other.  That is, in order for a painting to maintain a consistent three-dimensional arena for the viewer to inhabit, in order for me to visually remain looking at and in the painting as a spatial situation, its two-dimensional composition must be complete—it must hold me visually, and then figuratively.  Conversely, in order for the two-dimensional composition to be complete the marks and design, transitions and edges, must appropriately accommodate the parameters of the given three-dimensional experience, whether that is deep and far-reaching space like a Turner or more shallow as in a Braque, whether full bodied as in a Titian or subtly expansive as in a Matisse.  Clement Greenberg got painting’s essence exactly wrong.  It isn’t the stability of painting’s flatness—its “ineluctable flatness”; it is the inextricable unity of painting’s impossible flatness/fullness, stability/instability, stillness/movement.  This is life.  And this is why painting carries such an extraordinary metaphoric force.

Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire c. 1887 oil on canvas 26.4 × 36.2 inches Courtauld Institute of Art

Again, this may kindle an extraordinary aliveness and wholeness, but what does it have to do with saving the world?  There is one more component that I would like to add to the mix and then I’ll try to put all the pieces together.  Recently I came across a book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible by Charles Eisenstein.  The basic premise is that the world we live in is truly unsustainable.  It isn’t just a mess, it’s on the verge of truly collapsing.  If we are not only going to survive, but also thrive, how are we going to get from here to there?  Eisenstein attempts to find the roots of our situation, what has brought us to this point, and what must change, and it has to do with our story.  That is, we tell ourselves a story about who we are, what is important, how the world works—important questions the answers of which lead us to create our world in a particular way.  He describes our current story and offers an alternative one to help us transition into the more beautiful world we know is possible.  Eisenstein writes:

We live today at a moment of transition between worlds.  The institutions that have borne us through the centuries have lost their vitality; only with increasing self-delusion can we pretend they are sustainable.  Our systems of money, politics, energy, medicine, education, and more are no longer delivering the benefits they once did (or seemed to).  Their Utopian promise, so inspiring a century ago, recedes further every year.  Millions of us know this; more and more, we hardly bother to pretend otherwise.  Yet we seem helpless to change, helpless even to stop participating in industrial civilization’s rush over the cliff.

Francisco de Goya, The Colossus 1808–1812 Oil on canvas (46 × 41 in) Museo del Prado, Madrid

I have in my earlier work offered a reframing of this process, seeing human cultural evolution as a story of growth, followed by crisis, followed by breakdown, followed by a renaissance: the emergence of a new kind of civilization, an Age of Reunion to follow the Age of Separation.  Perhaps profound change happens only through collapse. (Eisenstein, 2013, 3)

He goes on:

What do I mean by a “transition between worlds”? At bottom of our civilization lies a story, a mythology.  I call it the Story of the World or the Story of the People—a matrix of narratives, agreements, and symbolic systems that comprises the answers our culture offers to life’s most basic questions: Who am I? Why do things happen?  What is the purpose of life?  What is human nature? What is sacred?  Who are we as a people?  Where did we come from and where are we going? (Eisenstein, 2013, 3)

Eisenstein describes for a few pages what he believes are our civilization’s answers to those questions and then precedes to offer an alternative of “interbeing”:

Here are some of the principles of the new story.  That my being partakes of your being and that of all beings.  This goes beyond interdependency—our very existence is relational.  That,  therefore, what  we do to another, we do to ourselves.  That each of us has a unique and necessary gift to give the world.  That the purpose of life is to express our gifts.  That every act is significant and has an effect on the cosmos.  That we are fundamentally unseparate from each other, from all beings, and from the universe.  That every person we encounter and every experience we have mirrors something in ourselves.  That humanity is meant to join fully the tribe of all life on Earth, offering our uniquely human gifts toward the well-being and development of the whole.  That purpose, consciousness, and intelligence are innate properties of matter and the universe. (Eisenstein, 2013, 16)

Frank Auerbach J.Y.M. Seated No. 1 1981, 711 x 610 mm Collection of the Tate

Eisenstein explains,

“The fundamental precept of the new story is that we are inseparate from the universe, and our being partakes in the being of everyone and everything else.  Why should we believe this?  Let’s start with the obvious: This interbeing is something we can feel” (Eisenstein, 2013, 16).

We painters know this, and experience this all of the time—it’s why we look at great painting!  Painting directly participates in, enacts and furthers the story of interbeing.  Painting is one way, surely among a myriad of ways, to further this story.  But it is a particularly powerful way that I will try to describe.  And for those of us that paint, painting is our way to lend ourselves to, and help facilitate, the Great Turning, because that is indeed what is happening.

In Eisenstein’s book, he moves through a series of short chapters, exploring various aspects of the situation we are facing.  He has titled the chapters according to their focus, such as Separation, Breakdown, Cynicism, Force, Hope, Naiveté.  Near the end of the book he has a chapter on Story and writes:

We have seen already how so much of what we consider to be real, true, and possible is a consequence of the story that embeds us.  We have seen how the logic of Separation leads ineluctably to despair…We have seen how civilization has been trapped, indeed, in its “own postulates”, its ideology of intensifying control to remedy the failure of control.  We have seen how so many of our efforts to change the world embody the habits of separation, leaving us helpless to avoid replicating the same in endless elaboration.

[T]o exit this trap we must operate from a larger context, a more comprehensive mode of consciousness.  This means not only inhabiting a new story, but also working in the consciousness of story.  If, after all, our civilization is built on a myth, to change our civilization we must change the myth. (Eisenstein, 2013, 213)

Morandi, Still Life, 1954, 26.5x41cm, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Britain

If indeed what is needed to shift our world is a new story, how specifically can painting contribute to a new myth and help tell this new story?  Interbeing is a term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh, a translation of the words tiep hien.  The word tiep means “being in touch with” and “continuing”.  Hien means “realizing” and “making it here and now.”  When we paint, whether from observation or memory or non-representationally, we have a situation which invites us to “be in touch with”, with what we see, with our inside – ourselves, with our outside – the world in which we live, with the places that slip back and forth between what is inside and what is outside—and to bring these places into our marking, our touch, and put into concrete form these sensations, in paint, “realizing” them, and further — providing others the opportunity to have these sensations slip into their selves.  Painting seems to magically allow one subjectivity to slip into another, one person’s experience to be felt and embodied by another, from the inside!  How can it be that one person may have a sense of another’s experience, somehow made available through dumb, raw material?

Earlier, I spoke of the twin nature of painting as both a two-dimensional reality and a three-dimensional experience.  I would like to add to that and relate that twinning to interbeing.  Our interbeing begins not with our relations with another person, but with ourselves, for we human beings are twin in our apparent nature.  We are constantly and impossibly twinning and splitting in our experience.  We are body and soul—or if you prefer, body and mind.  And our identification with either leaves us incomplete because we are both (and, in our deepest truth, neither).  Here the two-dimensional surface of the painting functions as the fact of our body and the three dimensional experience performs as our soul.  The achievement of great painting, the exquisite integration of the two-dimensional and three-dimensional, gives us not just hope that wholeness is possible.  More than that—great painting serves as a reminder, a rekindling, that such is the truth.   Reality is whole.  We are whole; it is only our minds that have slipped and reconstructed away from this awareness.

Monet, Water Lilies (The Clouds), 1903, 29.5 x 41.5 inches, private collection

The degree of availability that a painting presents, the availability of its trans-subjectivity, of our being able to enter into its space, its reality and being, depends on the degree of presence it embodies.  The degree of presence a work embodies depends on how engaged we are when we paint, how much life force goes into the material, the sheer marking and making.  This isn’t stylistic.  It isn’t about closed marking or open marking, realist or abstract.  It’s about life opening.  It isn’t about emotional intensity, or velocity of marking.  Marks can be slow or fast.  It has to do with the amount of inner involvement, life-force, heat, the maker carries in the moment of the making.  That is, the more we as painters bring ourselves into the work, the more open and vulnerable we allow ourselves, the stronger the presence and the more resonant the work, the more the work weaves the world.

Milton Resnick, Saturn, 1976, 97 x 117 inches, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

Telling a new story isn’t a small thing.  It is the thing.  Painting does have a necessary and ancient function; it isn’t to depict the world—it is to weave the world; or rather, it is to reveal and make visible the actual weave of the world, the weave that already exists.  What does this mean?  When we paint we have the possibility of bringing our selves into the work—bringing our life force into the mark, the material, bringing our actual being, in this very moment, as it is, into our touch and setting free that vibration and energy.  To do this is not easy, although it is simple.  But it means daring to bring our actual selves, as we are, without judgment, into the work.  It is also a risk and challenge to receive work, to open ourselves up to painting as a force from another person, another life, to feel safe enough to receive that force and allow it in.  This also is not easy, although this too is simple.  And we find that when we do open to the given surface that there may be a sense of aesthetic force, perhaps beauty, perhaps sheer presence, a kind of transmission from one person to another through the material.  When we paint we are not simply making images, we are weaving our subjectivities, and we are doing this through the medium of colored mud on a flat surface—dumb material participating in the exchange and heightening of awareness.  Painting is not simply an activity of self expression—it is an activity of interbeing, of our intersubjectivity, of our actual interconnectedness.  Painting reveals this, gives proof to it in its very nature.  We are not who we think we are.  Painting carries the possibility of getting us out of our minds and into an awareness of our being.  That is what occurs when we receive a painting, whether from another’s hands or from our own.  The reality of our experience facing great painting, the power and force of transmission remains a mystery as long as we remain in the story of Separation.  As we dare to allow our minds to enter into the story of Interbeing, painting affirms the larger truth of this new story.  Its essential nature re-storys the world, reimagining who we are and where we are going.  As we paint we have the possibility to not only make an object to look at, but to retell our story.

Berthe Morisot, In the Dining Room, 1875, 61.3x50cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Painting is currently trapped within the category of fine art.  But what if painting isn’t about a picture, isn’t even about an object.  What if painting, actually, is about the interaction between two minds, two hearts, two beings—the painter and the viewer?  What if painting is about a way of coming to the world, a kind of communion?  John Dewey writes in Art as Experience, “In common conception, the work of art is often identified with the building, book, painting, or statue in its existence apart from human experience.  Since the actual work of art is what the product does with and in experience, the result is not favorable to understanding” (1934, 1).  In other words, there is no work of art outside of our experience; that is where the reality of art is located.  It is an interaction that reveals an inherent interconnectedness, an interbeing that reveals the illusion of separation. If that were our cultural story of painting what would that look like?  What would an exhibition look like?  Would that change the way we paint?  What happens to the fetish of the object?  The possibility of an interlacing communion through the lending of colored earth to human sensation: mud and oil embodying human consciousness.  Rembrandt understood this.

Rembrandt, Self Portrait with Beret and Turned Up Collar, 1659, 33.3 x 26 inches, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Painting isn’t about beauty.  Beauty is about consciousness.  Beauty is a gateway, an adornment and invitation to space.  The space within the painting.  And space is consciousness.  Space is being.  When we paint we are exploring being.  That is why we need the three dimensional illusion—it isn’t an illusion, it is a gateway—to being.  We are experimenting with different ways of being.  See Rembrandt.  Cezanne.  Monet.  Morandi.  Matisse.  Titian.  Piero.  Chardin.  Soutine.  Martin.  De Kooning.  Diebenkorn.  Auerbach.  Kossoff.  Giacometti.  Resnick.  This is what painting has to offer.  It isn’t the object, for God’s sake.  It is being.

I want to be clear that what I am suggesting is not, in my understanding, a new way of looking at painting.  I believe that what I am trying to describe here is actually an ancient way of looking at painting.  Images carry power.  It is only with the rise and development of our secular culture with its accompanying market economy that painting has found itself delegated to a luxury commodity that is devoid of any real use and value in our society beyond sophisticated decoration, investment and chic.  This is not particularly the plight of painting—so much in our culture has been radically reduced to a flattened materialist, financial definition—the logical endpoint in the Story of Separation.  But the act of painting carries much greater power than that.  And we need to re-describe this activity, re-imagine it, in order to sharpen its power and focus; in order for painting to more fully participate and take its place in our global regeneration.

De Kooning, Gotham News, 1955, 69 x 79 inches, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

For many years now, thinking about the great painters of the 19^th and 20^th century, I’ve deeply envied them.  It’s seemed to me that they, Monet, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, de Kooning—they lived at a time when a painter could still believe in painting.  Painting really mattered.  We certainly weren’t inundated with images like we are today, with television, movies, the exponential growth of the internet and the constant deluge of images from our mobile devices—how could images of paintings compete?

I doubt that painting will ever carry again the kind of privileged position that it once had up through the middle of the twentieth century.  But painting does carry enormous importance as a hand-made object, revealing one person’s being to another, and in that revelation furthering the blossoming awareness of our irreducible interconnection and indeed, our interbeing.  The earlier artists and painters of the 19^th and 20^th centuries had a great, eloquent and noble story called Art.  I’m not sure we really have that narrative anymore—certainly not like we did in the past.  But we might just have something greater—called the survival of our planet, the Awakening of Humanity and the Age of Reunion.

We do not, of course, have to believe this.  We may choose to continue to think of painting as a wonderful activity of depiction.  It is!  And there is nothing wrong with that.  But I am suggesting that there is a much larger story taking place and painting has a central, ancient place in the unfolding of that story.

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Water Glass and Jug c. 1760 Oil on canvas, 32,5 x 41 cm Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh

Painting Perceptions interview with Jordan Wolfson by Elana Haglar.
Sources:

Belting, Hans.  2003.  Art History after Modernism.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Danto, Arthur.  1997. After the End of Art.  Princeton: Princeton University Press

Dewey, John.  1934.  Art as Experience.  New York: Penguin Group

Eisenstein, Charles.  2013.  The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible.  Berkeley: North

Atlantic Books

Gablik, Suzi. 1991. The Reenchantment of Art. London: Thames and Hudson

Jacob, Mary Jane. 1998. Conversations at the Castle. Cambridge: The MIT Press

Perl, Jed. “The Rectangular Canvas is Dead.” The New Republic 7 Sept. 2013.

Shiner, Larry.  2001. The Invention of Art. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

Thich Nhat Hanh, 1997. Interbeing.  New Dehli: Full Circle Publishing

Tolle, Eckardt.  1999.  The Power of Now.  Vancouver: Namaste Publishing

Winnicott, D.W..1986. Home is Where We Start From. New York: Norton

The post How Painting Can Help Save the World, Actually appeared first on Painting Perceptions.

photo credit: Brittany McGinley

I just came back from four days spent at the Representational Art Conference in Ventura, California. When I told several painter friends that I was planning on attending this event, they expressed dismay that I would be wading into a sea of classical painters. The general tone of our conversations held the question, “But why would you want to do that?”

Let me back up a minute. Like a good number of painters who are featured on Painting Perceptions, and are in our general painting tribe, I consider myself an observational (or perceptual) painter. For me, when I paint, the act of looking and responding takes primacy.  I was also weaned at the teat of Charles Hawthorne and Edwin Dickinson, and first learned to paint at the age of twenty by watching Lennart Anderson rub his thumb across my canvas and somehow magically create believable space. At the conference, I was presenting my paper “Apollo and Dionysus in the Representational Family Feud” where I examined the nature of the (very fluid) divisions between three different types of contemporary representational paintings: classical, observational, and constructed.  What prompted me to write this paper was the attempt to understand why there seems to be such squabbling and turning up of noses between different types of representational painters, when most other contemporary artists working today would lump us all together as obsolete and stodgy “realists” and dismiss the lot of us as utterly irrelevant. In the paper, I discuss Nietzsche’s dichotomy of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and explore how these forces interact in contemporary representational painting. Nietzsche shows how the Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies are responses to the chaotic nature of existence. When we see that aesthetic form is an embodied response which is related to our deepest hopes and insecurities, it becomes a little more fathomable how such a fuss can be raised over issues of painting style and subject matter. I argue that where a painting falls on the Apollonian/Dionysian spectrum should not in itself determine a painting’s worth or validity, and that we should recognize our kneejerk reactions for what they are.

The thing is, that while I identified with my peers and classmates who were also heavily involved in painting from perception, I was shocked when I was told (quite unmistakably!) by several of them that I was not, in fact, one of them.  It took me a while to understand why that could be.  You see, while some of my work was loose and “painterly” my most recent series of still-lifes was fairly hard-edged and very detailed.  I sometimes painted “high class” objects which made some painters nervous.  My paintings smacked too much of conventional beauty.  I had also dabbled in working from old family photographs in grad school, and even though my still-lifes are painted from life, I guess the “stain” of working from visual aids still followed me.  And possibly even worse, I seem to be perversely interested in issues of narrative.  I freely admit that while my still-life objects function primarily as formal devices, I still see them as vessels of memory, and stand-ins for those who have made the most indelible marks upon my life.  “You’re not a perceptual painter,” I was told, “You’re just a confused classicist.”  In case you haven’t already figured it out, “classicist” was, in this context, a dirty, dirty word.

As I walked into the Crowne Plaza on Ventura Beach where TRAC was starting up last Sunday, I wasn’t sure if I was an undercover agent or a prodigal daughter finally coming home. There were a good amount of academic papers being presented, but many other activities, as well. There were keynote speeches by Roger Scruton, Odd Nerdrum (that’s right, everyone’s favorite whipping boy), and Juliette Aristides. There were panel discussions with topics such as “The Aesthetics of 21^st Century Representational Art.” There were also several shows of paintings, both on and off site, and a number of demonstrations being performed in the evenings.

I was concerned that I would find rabid anti-modernism and anti-intellectualism, and to be fair, there was some of that. Let’s just say that there were things said about Willem de Kooning and Art Historians as an undifferentiated group that made me squirm a bit in my seat. But it’s easy to empathize with painters who might have spent the majority of their careers working in relative obscurity and poverty who might have found a receptive audience if representational painting had not been so marginalized over the decades.  What I found was that such overt bitterness was very much the minority point of view. There was a general dissatisfaction with the state of the art world as it currently is, with exorbitant prices being commanded by the work of a very few artists at the pinnacle of the art world.  And there was a real sense that there is much good work being done today that is overlooked because it simply isn’t considered “cool” by contemporary standards—much more an issue of fashion than of quality.  The anti-modernism was more than balanced out by wonderful talks, such as one by USC professor and painter Ruth Weisberg that accompanied a show titled “Women by Women” and a featured paper presentation on “The Legacy of Bay Area Figuration” by Huffington Post blogger John Seed, who was a student of Nathan Oliveira.

Rather than trying to bring down the art establishment as it is, TRAC seemed to be offering an alternative that could exist side-by-side. This is not to say that everyone was gung ho about appropriating the label “kitsch,” as Odd Nerdrum and his followers have done. It was more about the realization that there is no monolithic art world, although art criticism has a way of making it seem like there is. Having been to the College Art Association (CAA) conference a number of times, I find that TRAC is a very attractive alternative. It is obviously not as big at this point (although it has already grown tremendously since its first manifestation two years ago) with fewer academic papers and considerably fewer venders of art supplies and such, but I found the general feel of the conference to be quite refreshing.  It didn’t have the sort of stuffiness and impersonality that I’ve come to associate with the CAA. People were generally passionate and eager to interact and learn more about each other’s art and ideas. Above all, the conference buzzed with optimistic energy and a real excitement about the recent resurgence of representational painting.

photo credit: Brittany McGinley

So was I an undercover agent or a member of this tribe? Well, what I found was that the population of the conference was incredibly diverse. Sure, various people had their own ideologies. I know that I naturally have a kumbaya attitude of we should all get along and relish each other’s differences, but I started thinking about the role of polemicists in painting today. It seems like people either hate or love Roger Scruton and Odd Nerdrum.  It’s hard to find someone who feels lukewarm or just generally, faintly positive about either of them.  But let us not forget that observational painting, abstract painting, conceptual art, and all forms of art-making have their loud and divisive figures.  And I think I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s a good thing.  I’m glad that these strong characters are out there, making waves, and pushing us to question and analyze where we all stand. I think that the real danger lies in acolytes. Anytime that a strong figure emerges, you will have those who worship the ground that he or she walks on and who will do everything in their power to try to become a carbon copy. But remember, all you sneerers, that this is not just an ailment of classical painting!  This applies to all types of painting and indeed, all fields of study.  It’s similar to people looking at a great holy man, and rather than distilling those features of faith and intellect which are the shining manifestations of his brilliance, acolytes will start to mimic the way that he dressed, his mannerisms, and his turns of phrase. Well, this happens in painting.  These strong figures catch our collective attention because there is truly something to them. Now whether we accept or reject their messages is up to us, but the main thing is to be discerning individuals ourselves. We should be able to take the influences, draw up the essence that resonates most deeply with our own sense of self, and discard the rest. And it’s important to have many influences, so that we can broaden our perspectives and avoid the dangers of outright mimicry.

Ultimately, I would have liked to have seen a greater observational painting presence at TRAC, but maybe that will happen in coming years. At the end of the conference, the organizers handed out a form to us which asked for any suggestions on how to improve future conferences, and my recommendation was to invite more painters from outside of the atelier movement, such as Vincent Desiderio, Susan Lichtman, Scott Noel, Israel Hershberg, and Susan Walp. I feel that it would help make the Representational Art Conference more fully live up to its name. If I go to the next conference, perhaps I’ll give a talk on the tradition of observational painting. And no, I’m not an undercover agent, secretly sneering at the heartfelt confessions of classical painters, but neither do I see myself as a classical painter. And yes, I had a strong feeling of belonging at TRAC. Like Peter Trippi, editor of Fine Art Connoisseur, said on the final panel discussion, if we started going into all of our differences, the room would dissolve into a bunch of cat fighting. But we can choose to acknowledge and savor our differences, and support each other to greater and greater heights. Sure, there are legitimate criticisms of both classical and observational painting that can and should be made, but hopefully in the context of a positive discussion of aesthetics, rather than the wholesale dismissal of one category or another. And let us not forget the many of us painters who might straddle the line. As painter Richard T. Scott said in his presentation, positive competition would strengthen us all. He would rather get a silver medal with everyone else painting at the top of their game, than a gold with a beaten-down opposition. I come away from TRAC grateful for the large number of interesting people and wonderful painters whom I met. I also cherish the fact that they are not all like me, and that I’m not walking around in some terrifying episode of The Twilight Zone, with my own face reflected back at me for eternity. I feel very hopeful for the future of representational art.

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A provocative and thought provoking discussion of post-modernism and Beauty. Might inspire a lively conversation here.

Part One of Six – you can view part two and the rest of the videos on youtube or click on the thumbnails on the bottom of the video for part two, etc.

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What I miss is the lively discussion many of us were starting to get going. While the interview were great, they perhaps had too much information or not the right kind of issues that would be conducive for getting a discussion going. That said, maybe I can start something up just for kicks…

Do you think there is any standard for framing contemporary (ie modern) realist painting as opposed to more traditional or academic realist work? Many larger paintings I’ve seen in galleries of more post-modern paintings, neo-expressionist, abstract and similar often aren’t framed or have something very simple and inexpensive. Of course, there are many exceptions to this and sometimes the frame is all that is worth looking at. But realist work seems to lean towards being professionally framed, of course with a variety of styles. Within the various types of realism, like landscape – you also see differences between frames like the more traditional plein air painting that often use wide often ornate gold frames or black with gold trim. With more contemporary landscape paintings you commonly see a relatively thin floating frame, shadow-box type frame or very thin frame.

I wonder if the thinner frames and floating frames are more popular because of the modern sensibility of wanting to accentuate the flatness the painting as a 2D art object as opposed to the traditional landscape where the painting is a window onto a world and you want a much wider frame to emphasis this illusion and to separate the painting from the surrounding wall as much as possible.

I’m curious to hear how other people frame their paintings and any thoughts about the best way to go with the type of work they do… Maybe we can get into a big ruckus over the conservative vs. liberal framing philosophies!

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I don’t want to jump out of my own tank too soon but reading this article makes me wonder if there might still be hope the art world could again embrace beauty as a valid pursuit?

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A number of people have commented they would like to see a discussion on what exactly defines perceptual painting. There seems to be a wide range of opinion about how you could define perceptual painting, how strict the definition should be (or not be) to be considered pure perceptual painting. I thought it would be a good idea to get a conversation going about this topic. To have a thread that specifically addresses this topic in depth. In this blog I have tried to show the range of possibilities in the works from some contemporary painters working from direct observation as well as those who work with a variety of sources.

Maybe to pin down a definition of perceptual painting it would be easier to say what it isn’t rather than saying what it is. But even that can get blurry if you stare at it long enough.

For instance, It is generally agreed that performance art and installation art tends not be be confused with perceptual painting. However as we have seen, looking at Cindy Tower’s Industrial paintings you start to see a possible way to merge perceptual painting with performance art.

Clearly, perceptual painting shouldn’t be confused with abstract painting but what about paintings like those of Eric Aho, who often paints plein air but some of his work becomes almost completely abstract. He emphasizes the underlying gestural, abstract design and recognizable observed forms are difficult to discern at times despite being done from life. deKooning painted landscapes outdoors that were completely abstract and with no apparent relation to what he was looking at. Does that count?

Paintings made from imagination is another area where you it should be a cut and dry case of not perception. But what about paintings like Charles Burchfield’s watercolors of the deep forest where he painted in plein air some wonderful sensations of nature not usually seen without first taking some mind altering substance?

Clearly photorealism tends to be more about the copying of photos and photographic detail and has the look of a photographic realism. Some perceptual painters, like Rackstraw Downes will include an almost photographic exactitude in the rendering of details but has the look of life and doesn’t seem photographic. Some perceptual painters use photos to further refine work that had been started from life, perhaps to further refine details that had the larger space, light and masses of tones worked out beforehand from direct observation. Perceptual painting purists would object to this practice, saying it invalidates the truth of the visual experience, which is of primary importance. That drawing and painting should only come from the close observation of nature for it to be truly considered perceptual.

In a recent comment here John Lee (a great perceptual painter by the way) said: “Perceptual Painting may aim for this ‘pure’ response, painting as one Sees (I am not in any way trying to sully that notion!)…but if we think about Monet and Giacometti as BOTH desiring to paint it as they see it, we get 2 different concepts. Monet wants to see in terms of color patch/color spot/brushmark/juxtaposed flat notes of color….while Giacometti wants to understand form as a complexity of planes in space, realized through LINE. Line is a concept for the one, Color Patch for the other. Is it really possible to be ‘pure’ in painting?

I think that question would be a good starting place for a discussion. Anyone care to share there .02?

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A few bizarre emails later and I was convinced it was a scam, my wife thought to do a google search for any similar art scam and bingo we found a very useful website www.bogusartfair.info that had the very same scam listed that was being done to me. Basically, they almost seem legit in wanted to buy your artwork and will send you a certified cashier check for the full (or even more) price of the artwork. However the trick is that they send you a counterfeit check that appears to be very real and may even fool the bank when you cash it. They then ask you to pay their special private shipper from the check. I’m not sure what happens to you when the bank finds out it’s bogus but thankfully I will never have to know!

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“Sunset in the Auvergne” by Théodore Rousseau

The article starts reasonably enough and traces the evolution of landscape painting from the late 18th and early 19th century when landscape painters started to break out of academic landscape formulas and experiment with painting from direct observation, specifically naturalistic light. The show draws from the National Gallery’s stellar collection of early landscape painters such as Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Bonnington, Théodore Rousseau, Daubigny and of course – Corot. Seems like a worthy trip if you can spare the travel time and expense. Sadly, I’ll probably have to take a pass, the show is up until Sept 20, 2009.

But the real reason I’m making a brief post about this review was the ending paragraphs where Melikian says;

“…Monet, Renoir and others discovered springtime and brought it into European art for the first time.

Very little in earlier development heralded this metamorphosis. It only lasted until the late 1880s. Then a genius called van Gogh began to apply with uncontrolled fury intense primary colors chosen for their expressive value. The Nabis, the Abstractionists, the Fauves, the Cubists, followed in rapid succession, like so many artistic upheavals. Singing nature and rendering atmospheric light would never again be the painters’ concern. The modern world had come into existence.”

I’m probably preaching to the choir here but I find this statement disturbing. Why do so many art critics and historians see art history in rigidly linear time-lines. That once a certain style evolves, like post-impressionism, you need to move on, never stand still, on to the newest avante-guarde’s dictum.

This “art-world” mandate often seems like it is saying that today’s painters can only paint subjects with compelling narrative and critical theory standing in front of it, perhaps paint and canvas itself is suspect. Only dead painters can make naturalistic landscapes with integrity. That the observed world lacks the passionate intensity required for post modern art-making. Singing love songs to nature and light will likely banish you to obscurity in today’s art world according to Melikian’s point of view here.

Turning our backs to nature is half the reason we are in so much trouble to begin with. In these times of global warming and the wide range of other man-made environmental disasters is precisely the time for intense and honest looking at nature in every conceivable manner.

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Yesterday I was painting out on a public pier/park that juts out into the San Diego harbor. Generally I only see a few local regulars, a few homeless people and occasional tourists – most times I have the place to myself with a commanding view of the harbor I can paint without distractions. Yesterday a couple of teens and an older gentleman stopped and complimented my painting. Usually I’ll give a perfunctory thanks and then my body language says “I’m really trying to concentrate here – please leave now!” But
I let their compliment sink in this time. For a minute I was famous!

Earlier in the day I stumbled upon a link to a 2007 Washington Post article called the Pearls Before Breakfast, where the Washington Post experimented with having one of our nation’s greatest classical musicians, Joshua Bell, play in a subway station during a D.C. rush hour to see what would happen. If you haven’t yet read this article and seen the accompanying videos it is well worth the visit.

It gave me pause to consider how beauty is pushed aside in the rush to get ahead, that so many people miss out on the nurturing soul sustenance the arts and nature offers. So, I need to be grateful that at least few people who rarely see art will take a few seconds to consider both the beauty of the harbor and my painting. Is it provincial to even consider painted beauty as a valid pursuit of art in these post-modern days? Is my little premier coup paintings of tugboats and container shipping paraphernalia hopelessly romantic banal kitch? Are there enough people left in the world who care about the actual craft and artistry of painting, who can appreciate the underlying construction of a painting in formal terms and not just the outward narrative, subject matter or how it fits in with some school of art thinking?

Playing to the masses is tricky, what they do know and appreciate about art tends to be sappy beyond belief. They may appreciate you but will they slow down enough from their busy lives enough to tell, did they really hear you and most importantly leave a buck or two in your case? The true art lovers, the gallery goers, the collectors may know a lot about painting but they have an abundance of art to choose from and in all likelihood won’t be passing by my pier anytime soon. No regrets, I can just play as best I can and be thankful for the chance to do this.
Here’s some more info about the Joshua Bell article

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I’ve been thinking a great deal lately on the difference is between the popular Plein Air painting you see in magazines like Southwest Art or American Artist and perceptual painting done outdoors that tends to be more modernist in orientation and hanging in NYC Chelsea Galleries. Even though they may paint the same subjects outdoors from observation, when you compare these two approaches it’s immediately obvious how widely different their viewpoints are.

Many “western art” or other regional art Plein Air painters sometimes dismiss modernism and post-modernism as elitist, irrelevant. crass or just don’t concern themselves with contemporary art outside of the popular Plein Air genre. Many plein air paintings champion notions of the ideal past where little evidence of modern life is in view. If they form any theory about what and why they are painting nature it is more likely to be along the lines of celebrating “God’s creations” or perhaps to show all the forms of the glory of nature and the need to protect and preserve it. Or perhaps they just enjoy painting outside and show their work to like minded people who enjoy nature. Rarely do you see plein air painting that speaks issues involving modernist or post-modern painting and plein air painters are more likely to look to French or early California Impressionists, Hudson River Painters and other 19th plein air landscape painters. The absence of controversial subject matter and the affordable pricing of their work tends to make them more popular to the mainstream art buyer and conservative audiences.

Cutting edged graduates of many Art Schools often dismiss Plein Air painting as sellout kitch, provincial, irrelevant and/or just bad art that caters to the low-brow masses. Some, of a post modern conceptualist persuasion, would turn their back to any painting that wasn’t about the bigger issues of sex, war, oppression, depravity or anything with high volume shock value. Little paintings of sea cliffs or mountain views are barely more than motel painting in their eyes. Perhaps discounting art that doesn’t include some type of figurative narrative further refines this critique. This mindset seems to mimic the academic hierarchy of subject matter suitable for painting in the 18th and 19th century where History painting was elevated above all and where still life and landscape were assigned lesser status.

Some landscape/cityscape painters, like me, feel trapped between these two camps, believing that great painting can be made of sea cliffs and mountains and painting outside doesn’t have to mean you turn your back on great modern painting or theory. After all the grandfather of Modernism, Cezanne, was the quintessential perceptual plein air painter who not only looked to nature but the art of the museums as well. Many Perceptual painters also don’t address the big issues of poverty, racism and war and instead turn their attention to art itself – finding art and beauty in the mundane and unexpected of nature as it is seen today, completed with both treasure and trash; ancient and modern. Sometime the perceptual painters find themselves along side the plein air painters, both locked out behind the high gates of the post modernist art world.

It’s easier to look at two leading examples of each approach, each genre is too broad for any one artist to adequately represent them but Kevin Macpherson who is one of the more successful popular Plein Air painters and Rackstraw Downes who is a giant in realist painting from life outdoors (even though I doubt if he would refer himself as a perceptual painter)

Rackstraw Downes, Water-Flow monitoring station on the Rio Grande near Presidio, Tx. part 3 facing south, the flood-plain from west of the gauge shelter, 4 pm, 2002-03,
28 1/2 x 42″, oil on canvas, Betty Cuningham Gallery

Even before looking at the artwork you can make a few observations on the totally different approach in their display and marketing of their work. Kevin Macpherson has a large website that not only promotes artwork and galleries but seems to focus on his instructional DVD’s and books, workshops, endorsements for plein air equipment and folksy messages. Macpherson is making his living by selling his skillset and endorsements to his admiring fan base.

Rackstraw Downes has no website other than the pages his gallery puts up for him as well as a Wikipedia page Of course, you can find out a great deal about him online, like this article about him by David Cohen at ArtCritical.com It’s unfair to judge harshly these different styles in marketing as they aren’t speaking to the same audiences. Rackstraw Downes paintings get sold for up to 100 grand and doesn’t appeal to the hobbyist painter or middle American tastes, instead showing in musuems and his high-end NYC Betty Cuningham gallery.

Kevin MacPherson, Maui Overlook, 8 x 10, Redfern Gallery

Plein Air works, like those of Macpherson, often idealize nature despite working directly from life. When working quickly to capture the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere you need to greatly simplify the color, forms and light to make the painting work. But in simplifying, many plein air painters often push that simplification to sweeten and intensify the color and editorialize landscape elements often resulting in a dramatic landscape or even idealized landscape – devoid of unseemly traces of mundane modern life. Much of plein air painting likes to see the landscape as unspoiled by human touch, to return to a more pastoral time before Freeway congestion, tract housing and Abstract painting. Rackstraw, on the other hand, revels in painting everyday modern and mundane life as faithfully as possible. He makes panoramic paintings, sometimes with insane dimensions like 15″ x 120″ of rural Maine, the Presidio, Texas, and the Manhattan cityscapes, and various industrial vistas of New Jersey and elsewhere.

Rackstraw Downes, Olson’s Reunion , 26″ x 24″, Oil on Canvas

An Art in America article said of his intense observation and fidelity to detail that “you can feel confident that he paints every rivet in his bridge girders” He spends months if not years working plein air on site with often with larger paintings on two easels. He tends to use smaller brushes and very carefully works up the surface to get an exactitude more common with photorealism than plein air. However, it is immediately apparent that he is working from life and not a photo. There is a depth and visual richness to the work that is often absent in works done in the studio. While he only paints what he actually sees, he doesn’t use the expected traditional perspective and often incorporates something akin to a fish-eye perspective with a curved horizon line.

Kevin MacPherson, Valley View, 18 x 24, Redfern Gallery

There is a wonderful feel for MacPherson’s slightly pushed color and loose brushwork show a freshness and joy that makes his work so charming. However, compared to Rackstraw’s intense draftsmanship, his drawing in the paintings seems more stylized and less carefully observed. Many times Plein air artists will work their painting in only one or two sittings – with some touch up in the studio. MacPherson’s type of plein air approach appeals to hobbyists as it seems more in reach to something they might do too, if they take the workshop, read the book and watch the DVD. On the other hand, looking at the drawing and painting skill involved in Rackstaw’s painting might induce the hobbyist to forget painting and take up stamp collecting instead or just shake their heads on why someone would find empty parking lots an appealing subject matter.

Careful preparatory drawing or study prior to plein air work is not something commonly seen, sometimes stylized drawing can be the result. Whether conscious or not, some plein air painters tend to fall, into formulas like how a pine tree is drawn vs how this particular pine tree is much smaller and leans 15 degrees left and a 1/3 of its branches are missing on the bottom. It often comes down to editorializing nature – gussying it up to look like you think it should look rather than what is actually in front of you. However, with MacPherson’s work the paintings tend to be quite small and intimate and concerned more with the play of light and color and natural beauty than exactitude in drawing. His work looks to compositional notions of how the foliage, rocks or light and dark passages moves and keeps the viewers eye in the painting as opposed to copying exactly how many cracks on a rock formation or branches on a tree.

Many perceptual painters, on the other hand, often go to great lengths to get the drawing exactly right in terms of both what is in front of them and in terms of what the painting needs. Perhaps a perfect example of this in the magnificent movie about Antonio Lopez Garcia, Victor Erice’s “Dream of Light” (1993) Where Antonio draw the fruit of a Quince tree and draws plum lines all over the tree and back wall to get the exact relationships between one Quince and leaf to another. Antonio Lopez Garcia is perhaps the ultimate perceptual painter but is this really the model we should all seek to emulate? I think not, everyone should tend their own paths through nature, to just follow someone else’s path often will take you to crowds where your own voice is lost.

There is no conclusion yet to this series of rambles. Clearly both “camps” have their ups and downs. I will try to post more on this issue as I get the time and can think of something intelligent to say. Hopefully others can comment what they think and get a dialog going here.

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