• Home
  • The Work
    • The Heads
    • The Figure >
      • The Lena Series
    • Studio Paintings
    • Figure Drawings
    • Plein Air Paintings
  • Contact
  • Blog
George Rhys Artist

Good-Looking, Not Stunning

3/17/2016

6 Comments

 
Picture
Green and Gables, Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24"
My more recent work has been worrying me a little bit. Even at my advanced age I am learning by leaps and bounds. I am discovering and implementing advances in my conception and execution with every new serious work. But most of the breakthroughs are subtle even if profound. I am very happy with my progress but am I cutting edge enough? Am I producing works of significance? Sometimes I think, sure, this is working pretty well, but isn’t it just another magazine illustration—or less?

Those close to me do see my evolution, and are excited for me, but I find myself pondering my beautiful-woman-in-the-movies question:

We see a stunning woman in films, acting as an average person, and there is no question about her. If you see her on the street you see a knockout. She is gorgeous on screen and she is gorgeous on the street. Somehow we tolerate the idea that someone so beautiful could lead so prosaic a life as she plays in the movies. But what about the average-looking woman on screen? She plays the not-so-attractive second fiddle to the stunner but how does she come across on the street, walking among the rest of us poor fours and fives? I suspect that in daily life many such a “mere” seven is recognized as a beauty.

I cannot forget that however much my work pleases me and those around me, it is very much just another also-ran in the wider world.

James Lord, in his book A Giacometti Portrait, quotes Giacometti as envying the everyday illustrators who could make straightforward renditions of people. Lord was surprised; I wasn’t. I too worry about all the things I am not.

According to tests, I am pretty smart, but I am no Giacometti, no Picasso, no Modigliani. I could emulate those guys, but I could never have been them. The same is true in mathematics and any other talent that I enjoy. Even if I were one in ten thousand, I would still share the stage with 700,000 others (because there are 7 billion people on Earth), and I am thoroughly comfortable with working at my own ascending level of proficiency. Some of us resort to planned obsolescence but I don’t want to do that—not because I expect these paintings to be around in 500 years, but because I don’t like the look on my own easel.

That’s not to say I don’t bring everything I know to bear on every painting. There is so much to learn in the pursuit of this calling; and whether it is from books, or looking at the art of others—from the cave paintings to museums to the web—or from practice, a committed artist will never stop striving for the mastery that eludes us.
​
I just want to do genuine work, real work, authentic work. I want my goals to be purely artistic, and not polluted with the attempt to be anybody else’s idea of fashionable. I resent any pressure—and it is everywhere—to be unique, to be shocking, to be sensational. Each of us is already quite unique, and the world is sometimes shocked at those of us who let it show. It’s not easy to be authentic; it’s sensational when we succeed. I am working very very hard at sticking to my own inspiration.

​
Coming up: What do I want from this? and What makes the great so great?
6 Comments

On Connecting

3/8/2016

1 Comment

 
Picture
Lost Dog; Acrylic on Canvas; 20x28
During last spring’s Augusta (Missouri) Plein Air Art Festival, Lon Brauer and I were wrapping up after a day of painting together by an old house. (Not this one. This painting is new.) He said, among other things, that it was essential to figure out why we do this painting thing. It was not clear whether he meant that as a personal question for me, as a personal question for each of us, or as a general question for the art world; and I didn’t ask because I like that question, have asked it of myself in all its forms, and didn’t want to limit its scope just then.

All three versions are worthy of exploration. Tackling the first version of Lon’s question and speaking for myself, I lament our huge isolation. We connect only in the absolute identity of Atman in all of us—God peers out at and through us from every pair of eyes—but we are unable to realize the fact, and can only compare experiences with each other but never live the experiences of another. I don’t know if that lament is universal—the behavior of some indicates the possibility that it is not. On the other hand the work of many artists suggests that the lament is widespread.
I first used painting to reach out for connection in a long series of imaginary geometric landscapes, begun at age nineteen. The shapes would appear as three dimensional forms perceived in their entirety (not as “seen” from a point of view) as I relaxed into a near sleep. When viewers told me that they responded to the paintings with feelings that mirrored my own, I accepted such a communion of affect as a goal. I did not, however, plan my paintings to that end; the plan was to represent the visions objectively.  Here is the very first one, which came with an epiphany that was ecstatic.

All but four of that model are sold and long gone.
Picture
Painted more than 50 years ago--be gentle!
I was talked out of that series by a RISD student whose work in retrospect was a rather trite juxtaposition of good and evil, but I succumbed to his opinion because he was in art school, which I was never able to attend (well, until age thirty-five, very part-time, but that’s another story). Clearly I was excessively vulnerable then; but with no schooling, mentoring or support of any kind I didn’t know better. That episode and others have everything to do with my current studio work in seclusion. Not that I was afraid of criticism, but that I wanted to find out what I was really doing without distraction.

For five decades I have read voraciously, looked at art everywhere, and practiced painting and drawing whenever I could. I studied and practiced color theory, perspective, composition and aesthetics, but somewhere along the line I lost any interest in the communion of feelings. Art was properly concerned only with purely visual components. Narrative, expression and symbol need not apply.

So guess what I’ve discovered! You have probably figured it out already.

Nothing has changed; I am still the same person. For the last several years I have been unintentionally engaged with depicting evocative scenes. As far as I can tell at the moment every other artistic skill I have been developing has been in the service of my unconscious objective: attempting to close the gap between you and me.
​
More on the ancillary pursuits in future posts.
1 Comment

    Verbiage

    Sometimes you just have to talk about ideas. Well, I do anyway.

    Archives

    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly