Signs
(Note: There are two copies of the ‘now you can pee’ sign, and they are meant to be displayed in the bathrooms closest to the exhibit. For the men’s room, it would be placed above the urinals.)
2017
Impressionist
Abstract/Nonobjective
Thoughts on Abstract and Nonobjective Art
I used to really dislike modern art. I think part of the reason is that I misunderstood the purpose of it. When you first learn to do art, your whole purpose is to copy your subject as accurately as you can. The best art is the art that looks as much like the real thing as possible. So, like many people, when I was first exposed to modern art I thought, ‘Well anybody could do that. Modern art requires no skill at all.’ But this is not actually true. I found that out by trying to do it. There is a big difference between just slapping something down and actually making it look good. If you don’t believe me, then try to do one. You can’t just copy something that you have already though. Then you are just back to copying what is in front of you. You have to come up with an original design and make it all up yourself. That is hard to do well. It takes a lot of creativity. So, I think it is just different skills that are needed.
Here are some of the reasons that I personally have become more interested in abstract and nonobjective art lately: 1) Once you have developed your skills to the point where you can do at least a decent job of copying what is in front of you, it begins to become a little boring. I think that is why even most realistic artists these days try to spice things up a little bit and change some things so that it is a little bit different than their reference material. However, to make something up entirely is quite different, and I think more fun. 2) It seems less important to be able to record what is in front of you with great draftsmanship in modern times than it used to be because a camera can do that job of recording the scene better than any artist. Now, realistic artists like to point out that cameras are not completely accurate on some things. Perspective can sometimes be distorted, shadows can be darker than they are in reality, etc. But still, with all of the modern photo editing tools available, if you simply want to record something accurately, just take a picture and be done with it. I am not saying, of course, that there can not be great photo-realistic art. Strict realism just isn’t what I am personally very good at, so I will leave it to others who are more gifted in that area. 3) Abstract is just honestly more fun. It is very liberating to stop trying to make something that mimics and looks like something else and instead just making it something that looks really cool. I don’t like ugly art, so I try to make the abstracts as aesthetically pleasing as the more realistic stuff. There are just so many images out there these days. You have them everywhere in advertising and there is a very large volume of artwork out there. I still like the ones that are very skillfully done, of course, even if the subject matter has been done over and over. For an artist it is more about the quality of the painting than the subject. But still, it doesn’t hurt to have a unique, interesting subject either. Non-objective painting is fun because it isn’t really like anything that you have ever seen before. Each one is at least somewhat unique, and because you are not trying to make it look like anything else, there is a lot of freedom.
I like to think of it like instrumental music, or poetry. You don’t have to have any words to enjoy the melody of a song, you don’t have to understand what every single word means to love the poem, and you don’t have to necessarily know what the subject is ‘supposed to be’ in order to like the painting. So, I like doing all of it. I will probably always do the occasional landscape or still-life if I find or think of something good, but I also like experimenting with things and doing some abstracts as well. If you haven’t tried it before, you should. Just experiment a little bit and see what happens. Sometimes the best, most creative ideas come from something that was initially a ‘happy accident’ as Bob Ross liked to call them.