4 visual artists

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Do those of you who are visual artists, do you find it easy to talk about the technical aspects of your work but difficult to talk about the content? For me it's like a language that simply doesn't translate. Full disclosure: I haven't painted in years but have a BFA.

I find myself doing that all the time. My subject matter is semi abstract, but representational enough that the viewer can recognize figures, horizon lines, sky, clouds, earth. Yet I rarely describe the subject matter, I prefer to talk about the mixed media technique I employ, in the order in which I work, from the raw surface, up through the final glazing.

I have no contacts in the arts so I don't talk to people about it. Here I showed some of my work and my approach to doing it but the content is specific to each piece and I don't determine it, I discover it as I work.

I guess what I'm asking is if the content, however it comes about, is something that you "know" on some weird level but can't adequately express verbally. I find that if I see a painting that really moves me I can't express in words why.

Although the subject matter itself may have emotional impact there are visual formalities of angles and lines that move in dynamic or static patterns and color interactions and value arrangements that convey emotions just as the variables in music have emotional impact.

Yes, I know, but if someone asked you to explain the emotional impact of the painting in words, could you?

no. For me my art is what I feel inside. I cant say I can express it in words....

Neither can I and it always seems like people want you to justify it by some kind of explanation. Well, in art school no one asked-it was all about the mechanics. I think it was considered bad form to ask. My brother and I were talking and both agreed one of the reasons we didn't pursue grad school was fear of the orals. I remember seeing a book of prints by M.C. Escher and in the index he had the "meaning' of each print described. It kind of turned me off. Anyway, I think the reason I'm musing about this is I haven't painted in a long long time and I'm trying to figure out what my block is. I need to be able to talk to someone about the process. I should join an artists group in town. I know my posts are disjointed but then again so's my head.

Okay I see your point. I havent either painted for many years. This summer I went to an art week and took a few artcourses. There was one that was a painting course for three sessions. We was so strictly directed in what to do and what to follow and that disturbed me a lot. The leader was reading a poem and we was supposed to paint out of that. I understand absolutely nothing out of poems and thought I will just paint and see what will come out of me.

I took a very big piece of paper and just splashed paint all over it. That was a great feeling! I didnt think at all, I just did and created and followed the creativity in my hands.
Then the leader came to me and asked me to "give a meaning" to the painting like forcing me to explain it and how it connected to her poem theme.....that kinda pissed me off...I dont want anybody to force me to think in words about my art....

and I admit I didnt get the name of this thread at first

thinking

What four visual artists? I dont see any four visual artists in this thread...later on I realise you must mean "For visual artist"

sorry I have difficulties understanding short expressions of this kind

xalepax wrote:

[quote]Then the leader came to me and asked me to "give a meaning" to the painting like forcing me to explain it and how it connected to her poem theme...[quote]

What did you tell her?

xalepax wrote:

That's what I get for trying to be trendy -It's only been in the last couple of years that I had any idea what OMG/LOL/WTF etc. meant.

I said that I didnt have a clear meaning with it, just liked the feeling of the painting flow...then she said "but there must be something that is supposed to be connected to your previous painting and the theme....."
Well....I said.....then its two cats in the tree ( I painted a tree on the previous painting).....and she was satisfied with that reply...

you can always portray it as 'a protest against the concept of mastery'...
or the concept of expressing an artwork in 2 dimensions when you see 3...

The gist of a good deal of the posts is that some instructors are terribly sure that a painting must have some sort of goal beyond the intricate relationships of color, line, form and texture. It seems to me that these people have small feeling for the mechanics of creativity. I usually start a work merely working with the mechanical basics and if a subject matter suggests itself I push the work in the direction of the image that appears. Frequently I take a random interesting pattern and scan it and make several copies through Photoshop. Then by studying the patterns, perhaps over a matter of days I can get several interesting images out of a single pattern and keep the original on file for further exploration. No two artists will get the same images so most of the creative thinking goes on as an interaction between the pattern as a stimulus and the imagination of the artist. Here is one piece.



I did not consciously create the figures of the doctor and nurse in surgical masks in the background or the horizontal patient in the foreground but I discovered the figures in the random patterns and emphasized them with Photoshop and moved them into position to create the image.

If i could say it in words I wouldn't have to paint a picture. I paint specifically what cannot be said in words.