Art & Perception

Here at the Montana Artists Refuge, I find myself limited to the materials and ideas at hand. In Portland, I have access to two physical locations of Powell’s books as well as various used book stores and the big national chains. I also am within easy travel distance of four large art supply stores. Delivery of online orders is fast and easy. In Basin Montana, none of the above are present. So I have to make do with what I have available to me. And what I have available is sometimes just eccentric enough to be more than merely useful.

Along with my Phaidon biography of Cezanne (by Mary Tompkins Lewis) and a Dover book of Durer’s Drawings, I brought a copy of Gregg Kreutz‘s Problem Solving for Oil Painters. The book resides in my studio where I thumb through it when I need to rest my fingers and arm and eye from the physical act of painting.

I’m not recommending (and yet not not recommending) the book exactly; Kreutz is a bit too dogmatic for my tastes. Yet he does give me some things to push off from. more… »

Sunil Gangadharan, ‘The United States of Adipose’, Sumi ink on 400 series watercolor paper, 11″ X 14″ 

There was not much to write about today. These drawings are some of my recent ones. Nothing serendipitous, (if Steve were curious), but a slow burn and thrill involved in teasing ink using a bamboo pen over the creases and crevices of highly textured paper.

Sunil Gangadharan, ‘Untitled_12_26_07’, 11″ X 14″, Sumi ink on 400 series watercolor paper

I have been interested for some time in exploring possibilities for interesting texture in my photographs. One idea was to print on hand-tinted paper; that’s still under investigation — rather back burner at the moment. Another is encaustic medium, i.e. wax or something similar applied over a photographic print. I’ve made one small print by that method, and am definitely still experimenting. But photographing horses recently, I discovered a new strategy:

falling snow + moving horses = hatched textures.

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New Year back in my home town:

Per aspera ad astra; through adversity to the stars, I read at school in my Latin class. more… »

Roberta Smith wrote a lively piece in the Sunday Times last week titled ‘What we talk about when we talk about Art’ (link here). She weighed in on the use of commonly used clichés used by the artworld that inherently reflects and harbors intellectual insecurities. As an example, she talks about the oft over-used ‘Referencing‘ (as in the statement “this work referencing male chauvinism uses…”), ‘Privilege’ (as in “privileging the leftist agenda”) and ‘Practice’ (as in “my studio practice”). I have seen these used and sometimes abused in many artist biographies, statements and exhibition descriptions. While Referencing really means ‘referring to’ and Privilege means ‘favoring’, it is the term Practice that has the biggest potential for being misconstrued…

 She makes three assertions:

#1. First off, there’s the implication that artists, like lawyers, doctors and dentists, need a license to practice. Many artists already feel the need for a license: It’s called a master of fine arts. But artists don’t need licenses or certificates or permission to do their work. Their job description, if they have one, is to operate outside accepted limits.

#2. Second is the implication that an artist, like a doctor, lawyer or dentist, is trained to fix some external problem. Art rarely succeeds when it sets out to fix anything beyond the artist’s own, subjective needs.

#3. Practice sanitizes a very messy process. It suggests that art making is a kind of white-collar activity whose practitioners don’t get their hands dirty, either physically or emotionally. It converts art into a hygienic desk job and signals a basic discomfort with the physical mess as well as the unknowable, irrational side of art making. It suggests that materials are not the point of art at all — when they are, on some level, the only point.

While I completely agree with #1 (that a formal degree while definitely useful is not essential to the development of an art mindset in an individual) and #3 (the subversion of materials around an artist constitutes an important part of artistic expression), I do have questions about #2 (the assertion that artists have a self-help, therapy based relationship with their art and it serves to solve personal, subjective problems rather than focus on larger global issues)…

I would say that in a large number of cases, the output produced by an artist may be directed to induce the viewer to think about (and in the ideal case, acting to alleviate) a problem hitherto unknown or underrepresented (sewer cleaners in India or a film about plantation workers in Dominica are two cases that come to mind). I might also add that artistic expressions such as the above stems from strong sincerity that the artist must have for the problem rather than being an accidental by-product while the artist indulged in self therapy…

Feedback appreciated.

In light of Sunil’s posts in which he displayed photos of a number of items about his household and, subsequently, led a discussion of Photoshop methods, I will add one of my own.

Each year we get a conifer and cover it with a grab bag of ornaments, many of them home made, which together form a gathering of memories and associations. Throw in some beads and wheat bulbs and we have something that, while something of a jumble, is just fine for us.

This year I have tried taking some shots of the tree for further manipulation. The re-shaping has been modestly tonal and chromatic, with an occasional wave of the magic wand. As has so often been mentioned in this blog, continuing to focus on a motif can and will lead to new visions. I have always accepted our trees as apparitions of an inside-out nature, glowing from within as they present various surface effects – all merry and light. This year the tree has been lurking at me, perhaps the result of some of my recent reading and viewing. I have approached the images in this mood.

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This is a long tale and tail, as you will see. It has several segments.

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