Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

That said, I consider almost every single thing in my life that I am involved in an artistic endeavor… Anyway, moving on… If you don't already know, Tristan is working on a series of oil-paint portraits of IAM members. Anyway, a few days ago he wrote an entry I'd meant to comment on; I'll quote part of it here:

…they went on to say they weren't into any art after modernism because art

1. “stopped having something to say”
2. “instead tried to emulate photography”

I started to lose vision as my blood began to boil and stopped providing oxygen to my eyes. Well I see your generalization and raise you another! Why is it that people that love “artists” that can't paint have almost no real respect for artist who can?!

[go to the entry if you want to comment]

Personally, I think that the person who made the comment was missing the point entirely, because my feeling is that Tristan or Sean Cheetham, who was the the seed of this conversation, aren't just “emulating photography” — and portraiture has a lot to say. The subtleties of catching emotional character in paint is extremely difficult, and isn't really about fabricating a literal clone of the visual scene… Yeah, it's realistic looking, but it doesn't really look anything like a photo, and I think that anyone who claims that is kidding themselves. After all, there's nothing special about being able to simply reproduce something — anyone can be taught to be a street artist when it comes down to it. That said, I did want to make a general comment of agreement, and I make that comment as someone who mostly paints like Stephen Colbert thinks — from the gut, not from the brain.

Anyway, my comment of agreement is that while you can create some fantastic pieces of art with a shockingly low technical skill level, when it comes down to it if you can't handle basic life drawing, making paint move the way you want it to move, and so on, you will have very tight limitations on the type of art you can create. Technical skills can be applied in a way that can appear hapharzard or simplistic, but there's a richness that's lost without a solid foundation I think. An old friend of mine once said to me (and I agree completely) that (and I misquote), “If you can't draw a hand, you're not an artist.”

Hey, hands are hard!

That's why I draw cartoon monsters.

OK, I draw cartoon monsters because that's what I think about.