These words spoken by me, at a recent camping trip to Joshua Tree in conversion with another artist installing a sculpture at the event we were attending. Understanding and being able to express visually is a whole other language. It is so difficult to convey this to people as no one seems to look anymore, My old studio mate from RISD is having an opening at a gallery in Portland tonight, he recently posted this comment.
"Painting will be dead when looking is dead, when we start receiving all visual input from video transmissions sent to the chip implanted in the visual cortex of our brains rather than through our eyes. Then the physicality of an image won't matter because nothing will have physicality. Since those days are coming soon, I will look hard at my subjects now, and paint!"
by Tim Flowers
To some extent we are all selective viewers otherwise our heads would explode, with all the visual input, so our brains successfully block out a lot of stimulus for us.Is this form of looking training us to look less deeply? My husband now only watches TV while also looking at his I-Pad. With all this extra looking or maybe scanning we seem to see less.
It makes me wonder who actually sees my work? I suppose requiring the viewer to be present in the now, is almost like asking a pig to fly. Has it always been so? Maybe , after all to really see art requires a commitment from the viewer, a willingness to be present in the now. We are all trained by the media to receive instant gratification, art requires a slowing down a willingness to be open.
I have finished the three pieces I was working on and have tried an alternate positioning of two of the finished pieces.
