|
 |
|
|
 |
|
| |
page 2
Stone Riley
Greybeard's Rant page 2
(my real artist's statement)
(C) 2005 by Stone Riley
It's hard to guess just why we folk of so-called Western Civilization -- speaking very very generally of course -- can feel ourselves and our surroundings most powerfully through pictures. Why not, like the old Egyptians, do that mostly by making architecture? Or, like the old Greeks, conceive of ourselves and our world most deeply by making ritual? Why not show ourselves to ourselves mostly by doing communal dance like folk in New Guinea and many tribal places? Why not primarily depend on descriptions woven by some exercise in word or sound? Others certainly do. Why not through puppetry or basket-making? This is a tantalizing speculation but hard to put your finger on.
But granted that this is our choice, it is not hard to understand why applying sticky colored paste to surfaces is prized above all other means of making pictures.
Painting is better than cinema. Imagine that. Great as they can be, movies are not the ultimate. An even better kind of picture stands still for your examination, and yet the moving eye and the mind that follows discover thoughts as vivid and alive as if the picture moved. This stillness lets you explore your thoughts then while the whole work is all there with you to be rechecked and reconsidered. And you can step back from the damn thing so easily to see it whole then come in from another angle.
Nor does still photography hold the greatest possibilities. The great virtue there is the strong illusion of manifest physical reality. An even better kind of picture could lead our minds though realms of spirit, philosophy and myth more readily, to help us feel reality more richly.
All this can be done best by painting. With instruments like brushes and with stuff that you can mix to all different consistencies, and especially if the audience is going to see the actual physical artifact you've got your hands on, you have amazing choices.
Within two inches you can make a surface go from looking like porcelain to looking like human skin. You can make things at the microscopic edge of human perception and in the same piece make things as big as a wall. Changed your mind about a color? Paint over it. Made a big dancing motion with your arm and wish now it had been more parabolic? Change it. Stymied by a challenge that you set yourself, started strong but don't know where to take it? Stand the canvas in some dusty corner and look at it once a month until the answer comes.
And the materials are so basic, so elementary, that the freedom of design is as vast as for a writer with his empty sheet of paper or a musician playing solo. You can attempt any design that you have ever seen or visually imagined. The whole world is at your disposal in this regard.
(continued)
|
|
| |
|
| | |
| | |
|
| |
|
Cart
