Ancestral Background, Belief, and Personal Expression

 

I could have entitled this as “What Does It Matter if My Father were a Baptist and My Mother were a Catholic?”  Another could have been “What is the Artistic Meaning that My Father’s Lineage was Northern British Isles and My Mother’s was Southern Italy?”  

(By the way, in my drawings here of my parents, my mother’s hair was dark but I just didn’t fill it in when drawing.)

Neither of these titles would get to the nub of what I want to note and both may lead one into another direction of either belief or ancestry, and those would be too narrow.

Instead, I am trying to figure out if there is any meaning at all to my own artistic expression and my upbringing and heritage.  Do they all work together?

I suppose that I can claim they do work together since, after all, here I am drawing particular kinds of artwork and everything I’ve lived through so far has led to this moment of artistic expression. 

That would mean those expressions necessarily connect to my past as well as looking forward to my future, but that is also a presumption that my art is a clear and direct understanding of those moments.  I cannot assert, however, that it is the case simply because I may not have perfect comprehension of my life.  What can I affirm?

Of course, biologically my ability to coordinate perception and making marks on paper comes from my parents, and surely family, school, and experience shaped that ability too.  Whether the drawing is an unequivocal result of those factors is another question, but something of those life events likely remains within the visual interpretation just as they are present in nearly everything else that I do.

Does this mean that there is always a direct line between personal history and the artistic outcome?  I don’t think so, since what I want to present may not be anything that my family would ever have guessed or it’s obscure that my experiences would have led to that inevitable reaction.

It's Earth Day

 Here is a tribute to some species lost; The Secretary's Desk.  Although I think some have reported that the Chinese River Dolphin has been found but no serious evidence so far.

 

Drawings Based upon Past Art

I enjoy reviewing past art as much as anyone else, and a few times the work has inspired me to try another composition based upon the earlier presentation.  Here, I took a couple figures from Botticelli's Primavera and placed them in a picture about spring cleaning, Asymmetry of the Spring, wherein there is an encounter with a spider.  

Remember that you can click the image to enlarge it for easier viewing.

 

A few people have remarked that my style tends to a surrealist outlook or even a humorous one.   While that may be the case, my point is to show how one may vary an original composition to gain another effect.  Granted, large schematic drawings of spiders are not everyone's favorite subject, but the Botticelli figures themselves appeared well-suited for their function in this drawing.

Similarly, I went ahead with the same outlook for the drawing Yield of the Fall, using figures from a Durer print.

 An environmental and agricultural lesson did not seem out-of-place here, and I like to think that an artist as Durer, who enjoyed painting flora and fauna, would have agreed.  As with the Spring drawing, this varies the composition a bit though not as much.  It's fairly faithful to the Durer original except for the absence of some plants and critters.  Again, the tone is decidedly different from the original; whether for the good or for the ill depends upon artistic taste.

 

Can You Teach Students to be an Artist?

Big question, especially for those who earn a living to teach visual art.  Of course, one can ask that question about any of the Arts whether architecture, literature, music, performing art, but here I’ll stay with the visual arts.

First, I think that there are at least a couple approaches that one can teach, and those are a way to train or work on a skill and the other is critical judgement about visual art.  Now, since the rise of movements as Dada the former lacks a bit of standing in contrast to, say, 150 years ago.  No longer does skill alone qualify to “make art” but something more and that would be another article so maybe I’ll tackle that in the future.  I have expressed a bit about it already in “How to Make Art” https://danielraymondchadwick.blogspot.com/2021/04/how-to-make-art-or-is-that-right.html.

Nonetheless, I think a physical skill would go a long way toward making imagination a concrete reality.  For instance, does it help to know about the technology for digital art and how to use it best?  Sure.  And that is a skill one can learn, although as with any other skill, how good they are at it will vary by individual ability and training. That goes for other methods like painting, drawing, fiber-art; it’s convenient to know the strengths and limitations of the tools and the ability to employ them.

Critical judgement about visual art would also be another approach that one can learn. True, figuring out why artwork is “good” or “not so good” may be a bit of a balancing act on the high wire of aesthetics, but as long as one refuses to get caught up in trends then that will cultivate the evaluating mind.  Understanding an artwork sub specie aeternitatis, or “in the big picture” both aesthetically and historically, is important in this regard.

So, now that a student has a level of skill and comprehension about evaluating visual art, then are they ready to make Art?  I suppose one may contend that they’re more prepared now than they were and I would agree.  But I emphasize that the artist must have something to present whether in terms of formal visual aspects or in a message of some sort.  Along with that, it would help to do so with imagination. 

One still may ask: is that enough?