Chances are I don’t paint it – I don’t see the point of depicting the routine. No-one has a painting of their own brand new brick house hanging in their living room. It’s always: a rusted old plough in long dry grass, a ramshackle hay shed, or a vehicle of the kind the average person is unlikely to ever own or drive.
Of course by the time you read this you and I will have seen multiple paintings posted online showing modern houses and bland passenger cars. One can only hope there is something about them that pulls the eye in, something that turns the ordinary into the extraordinary. For this is what art is about. The house in the painting must take one’s thoughts far from suburbia to that rural idyll one dreams of living in when one has proverbially won the lottery.
It’s a dream, a daydream, an escape from . . . the banality of reality! For me, this is where ‘still life’ falls flat. If you want to see a vase of flowers, get a vase of flowers.
Art for art’s sake? Sure, we can marvel at the skills of the artist who conjures a split mandarin on the canvas, the light of a summer’s day filtering through its segments. There is a beauty in the way it has been depicted. But I didn’t become an artist to convince you I’m skilled, this would be hubris. Then again, in saying so: ka-ching! I am made a hypocrite, for there is a very lifelike depiction of the everyday hanging in the kitchen where I live and work. A platter of fruit I painted all those years ago.
I never look at that platter. Does anyone else in the house ever notice it? I don’t know. It does not, it seems, transport one away from the everyday. It provides no escape from reality. It does not make anyone laugh, nor does it elicit comments from visitors. The ‘still life’ is dead, like all ‘still lifes.’
And as such it should never be seen outside the artist’s studio; it should remain in a dusty corner as a reminder that the artist learned his craft painting anything on which fell the eye, honing his skill by depicting the everyday in order that he might one day manage to create a scene which causes someone to pause, transfixed before it, not hearing their name, yea though it is repeatedly called!
Of course . . . The aforesaid is all a matter of opinion. I have my opinion, you have yours. We own these opinions, and we hold hands with them as though they were our own children when we are crossing the street. But we – most of us – introduce the same to others as though their slightly grubby little hands were clinging to our evening dress, or three-piece suit, unmentioned until we feel the need to defend them as our own.
Most people are discreet with their opinions as they are with the cellulite on their upper thighs. Not seen outside the beach. Kept to one’s self for the most part. Or hidden away like parts of the body which perform their functions only in private. ‘If you haven’t anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’
Your painting of a bowl of fruit is very nice. Not that I’ve seen it but I’m sure it is. Perhaps it’s as gorgeous as many of those we come across day by day, but it’s not my scene. And if I wouldn’t want it on my wall I wouldn’t paint it, not even if eight billion other inhabitants of this mortal coil were beating a path to my door for it.
I paint to make you think. To put a smile on your face. To teleport you to some other, more interesting place. To evoke nostalgia.
Never to push an agenda, or impose a viewpoint. Never to promote an idea, unqualified, as something others should adopt as their own. But always to show the irony in others’ wrong-headedness their failure to think for themselves.
Prohibition was arguably the stupidest legislation ever enacted. At the same time alcohol advertising and promotion of drinking is one of the most destructive activities of mankind. Not to say I wouldn’t buy that single-malt you’re selling.
But those are just opinions, I haven’t succeeded in making you think for yourself.
I might yet though, if I paint something that makes you giggle.
