Man has been fascinated by paint since we lived in caves.
In an age of machine made artefacts, we are still spellbound by the mark making of humans. The machines struggle to make the right mistakes.
We recognise the axe bite in a beam.
The book is always better than the film.
Art sits on craft like oil on water. Craft can be taught and practised, art comes from the top down though and can only really be recognised after the fact. The tools and techniques might be the same, but the aim and objective is opposite. Where craft aims to make an aesthetic merit of necessity, art can survive only by making a necessity of merit. Something can be beautiful because it is well made, or well made because it is beautiful.
Framing my paintings provides me with a useful transition between the two. Perhaps the closest anyone comes to cave art might be considered calligraphy of the sort done with brushes - done in one hit with no mistakes. Picasso worked like that, sometimes. Machines work like that. It’s economical. My paintings are over painted time and time again as I try to erase the mechanical, the practiced. I want to keep the ones that remind me of a freshly split log that happens to resemble a landscape.
As a medium, oil paint is unique. I’ve painted houses for 30 years and and stopped using oil 15 years ago. Water based is adequate. Not for paintings though. Oil does it’s own thing. The medium is the message.
We are all privileged. Certainly, gratitude for our inheritance is something that needs to be practiced with humility and reverence - from our eyeballs to the language we speak. We cannot escape the institution. Like the Hotel California - "you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
It's exciting and terrifying. The hard miles are behind us. We will all be forgotten, and yet our legacy is eternal. This is a memento, a souvenir, a rendezvous. We don't seem to have a word for it in English.