he stopped speaking, slowly turned his head away from lydia to face me, gave me the “WTF eye scrinch,” then slowly turned his head back to lydia, and proceeded to speak as if i and my question didn’t exist.
i was recently in the gallery hosting my latest show, hydrodynamics when i overheard a conversation between two painters. one of the painters had a piece in a different show in a different section of the gallery, the other was a member of the gallery’s co-op, a friend, and a wonderful artist in her own right - lydia riegle. the conversation was driven by the artist (whose work was in the show) explaining to lydia the differences between his abstract painting and the work of an abstract painting that won an honorable mention award from the show’s juror. he felt his piece was too structured, and apparently others had mentioned this to him as well. he then showed how much more “free” the abstract painting that won the award was. there certainly was more structure in his piece - not mark rothko-level structure, but in comparison one would notice more structure in his painting than the other.
he told lydia, “i need to be more free in my painting - to be less structured.” and i replied with a simple, “why?”
he stopped speaking, slowly turned his head away from lydia to face me, gave me the “WTF eye scrinch,” then slowly turned his head back to lydia, and proceeded to speak as if i and my question didn’t exist.
now, i’ve experienced plenty of what i’ll call the photographer prejudice in art galleries, and i think in part, some of his reaction may have been due to that prejudice. photographer prejudice in the fine art world is when painters, illustrators, print makers, drawers, etc. think “down on” the “lowly photographer.” there is a common misconception that all we do is merely point and click our little cameras, which in turn, does everything for us. yet i’ve seen the attempt to hide the surprise on the face of these other artists as i talk about color theory with them and how i apply it to my photographs. i see their faces go from bored to lit up as i explain the compositional difficulties we often fight as we strive for the best landscape photograph. but alas, i’ll end the tangent here.
to change one’s work based on the results of one show is akin to chasing our tails.
i think another reason for the reaction was because he’d implied to lydia just a moment prior that his work should be less structured in order to win prizes, acclaim and recognition!
i was merely looking for him to expand on his reasoning, so i could make the argument that chasing his assumed reasoning for not winning and the other piece winning was about the worst thing he could do as an artist - at least in my extremely humble opinion.
first of all, his piece was bright and cheery using bright colors that contrasted against the other colors in the piece well - giving the piece a good amount of “pop.” the other piece was more subdued, not near as happy - it evoked in me a slight sense of melancholy. the colors in much of the piece were similar, almost resulting in a feeling of drabness. but the artist added somewhat subtle pops of color in less prominent areas that caused the muted colors elsewhere in the image to now appear. perhaps it was this emotional difference that contributed to her piece winning and not his. perhaps the juror enjoyed her constrained use of color to bring out the colors in the rest of the painting, and felt less impressed with the “pop” of the colors in the artist’s painting. maybe it was just how the juror felt on the given day that contributed to the piece winning while his did not. the truth is, we’ll never know why the juror selected one piece over the other. but one thing i’ve always kept in my mind is that a juror’s acceptance or non-acceptance of a piece says nothing about the artistic quality of that piece. at the same time a juror presenting an award for a piece is also not any indication of the quality of the art within that piece. it merely reflects how that juror, or group of jurors feel about the piece.
a road’s curve into the unknown among the fog
to change one’s work based on the results of one show is akin to chasing our tails. what happens when we apply to the next show and also don’t win. what then will we attempt to do in order to get that coveted honorable mention or best in show?
chasing results will lead us only to a lesser form of self-expression
i have a dear friend, and fellow photographer who has a particular image processing style adored by some and abhorred by others. but i continue to recommend him to just be him - to make images that represent how he felt when taking the image, to hell with representing reality - represent yourself. some may argue the masters would never dream to do such a thing, but i’ll argue that ansel adams did exactly that by putting a red filter over his lens to completely darken the sky over half dome. the sky in the final negative and prints was NOT that dark in comparison to half dome in reality, but this unrealistic image turned out to be quite the consequential image. and i’ll get into in a future blog post.
the artist in question continued to excitedly explain his light bulb moment to lydia, perhaps with dreams of becoming an “award winning painter” in the near future. he may very well attain that title if he makes the changes he suggests. perhaps he’d get that title without making the changes. but one thing is in question, and it’s something i asked him at the end of his theory explanation: “will your new work still express you?”
lydia agreed it was a point that should be considered. meanwhile, he again failed to reply to my question.
only time will tell what the results of that day will be for my new friend. but there is one thing i can say with certainty - chasing results will lead us only to a lesser form of self-expression. and art should be, as i mentioned previously in a blog post - a form of self expression.