Wednesday, February 08, 2012

MAKE ART THAT PLEASES YOU FIRST.

Every now and then, I say something that sounds so truly profound that I wonder if it really came from me in the first place. I had that experience recently while writing a young artist and was so blown away by this revelation that ace to me that I wanted to share it with you readers here. The young artist in question is a conceptual artist, who also is dabbling in photorealism. Following is my reaction to what he told me about himself.


THE LETTER

I believe it's good for artists to have a photorealism base. It's a great place of departure even for conceptual or abstract artists. Artists have to have some type of springboard to jump off of even if they're jumping into the void. That springboard seves as an anchor point for them to refer back to, otherwise IMO, their work becomes a chaotic mess that makes sense to no one but themselves.

No matter how independent an artist believes himself to be, he must realize or at least be honest enough to admit the he is creating art for SOMEONE no matter how narrow the audience.

If an artist s truly doing it just for him or herself, then they would never share their work with anyone.

And that's fine too.

Art is a profoundly human thing. 

Elephants don't ponder what beautiful lines they're going to make with their trunks, nor do rattlesnakes wonder if they're "rattling on beat"  only humans do that. And we do it on a primal level because it's pleasing to us.

Remember to always make art tat pleases you. First.