On Mar 3, 2010, at 11:14 AM, [email protected] wrote: >> or "I have something to tell people." Never. It's always, "I like that >> piece for x, y, or z reasons." I can generally isolate what aspects of the >> work have a strong impact on me >> > Are you talking about your own work, or someone else's?
Actually both, but in slightly different ways. When I am painting or drawing I know when something good has happened. That part is really good, the line is right, the shading or coloring or brushwork, etc. Mostly that arises from my sense of fitness: that line is precisely fitted to the shape it's delineating, or I drew it with the right kind of pressure and release, and the like. Reflecting on it as I write this message, I realize almost all of my emotional response comes from the sense of fitness, of something being proper and appropriate where it is, as I made it, in relationship with other parts of the picture. It's the same when I view another person's work. I respond to how it's made noticeably more than to what it "says." To be fair and accurate, there are great works whose subjects affect me as much as their formal properties. One of the things about representational work is that the referred subject is incorporated into the work (by reference, as the lawyers say). Thus, I then fuse the formal means of the work to the referred subject and determine how well they fit together. That's one of the fatal flaws in Kinkade's (and others') sentimentalizing pictures: his formal means are meager and cliched and the "meaning" of the subject is comparably trivial. Sometimes, I have to kill one of my children. I have to erase or paint over a part I really liked a lot. That is not a pleasant realization, but the rest of the painting suffers unless I eradicate the unfit part. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
