Why Art (painting) is Important… on “This Day”
I have been working on a series of dawn, paintings created at dawn on location for many years. While the failure rate is significant because it is so difficult to do I kept doing it. I asked myself why it is that I am doing this. Part of it was to capture what I saw and to share it, as usual. But the challenge was also part of it. I wanted to conquer it and make a difficult subject show itself to the world at its most beautiful (in my opinion) But then I heard this phrase. “The choices you’ve made that brought you to this day.”
“You get another chance “To do better and be better. To become more of who you are and what you were created to fulfill.”
Oprah
How do you explain to someone who has never purchased a painting
or had art in their life its importance? How do you explain the importance of art in a person’s life? For me, when I heard those phrases, it seemed to me that you do have a reason for doing the things you do regardless of whether or not anyone at the time is noticing. But looking at my series of dawn paintings which have “turned out” and thinking about that phrase of all the choices that I have made which brought me to that rock and that dawn and that moment in time. The idea became so profound. I do have the chance to perfect my communication.
Now what is it about fine art, specifically painting that makes it significant?
Why include it in your life? What is it that makes fine art add depth to your life? I think it is this idea of the focus or purpose of creating it in the first place. I have always looked at painting, as an artist, as a means of communicating, just like writing a book or a poem. When I paint something I’m capturing a moment in time but I also bringing all my depth of experience that I have for that particular subject. All the things that mean something to me are then interpreted through my new experience that I am interpreting into paint at that moment. That is one human communicating across time to another.
Why is this important? Because we are communicators first and foremost and above all we like to share our experiences. This is just how I have chosen to do it. I find something so beautiful I can’t not paint it. And so, I paint it in the hopes of capturing some modicum of that moment and communicating it across time with the hopes that it will mean something to people. A painting can transcend hundreds of years and somebody can look at that painting and experience that moment through that painting. The better you are at observing what the artist is saying, understanding brushwork, understanding color and understanding the whole moment through your experiences and your eye, the better that communication is. If at the same time the artist is skilled and able to say a lot with a little, in other words, they’ve refined their abilities they make it easy for you to understand, then the painting speaks.
Why own it? You can look at a painting at any point in the day and say
“I am there on the coast, at dawn, watching that sunrise”. Experiencing a new dawn and a brand new era, a brand new day, a fresh start. I have a fresh start on this day of my life, no matter what is happening in the world, every time I look at it. So that’s why I do it and why I am painting. To remind people about that fresh start to each day, that observation that no 2 days are the same, or that each wave is uniquely formed by the combinations of wind and tide and light. Just like us.
If I can do a good job and capture that experience, well then at any point, at any time, any place that painting can speak to somebody across time, across cultures, anywhere in the world. What I put down in paint is a language. If somebody is open to understanding, they can open the door and experience that moment and that may transform their life.