Motivation to paint
Introduction
Explaining the unexplainable
Existence
I think therefore I am
Impressionalism
Visualise the feeling
Self-portraits
Who am I?
Art that I like
Australia
Beauty in the wasteland
Europe
The underbelly
Iconography
Picture writing
Chinese Art
Traditional and modern
Motivation to Paint - To Exist
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Hands – The Kimberly (Australia)
As an artist, I like to think about the value of art in non-commercial terms. In some ways, I see art as the gateway to the experience of humanity. No other creature on earth creates art. It is what separates humans from animals. Some people may disagree with me here on the grounds that monkeys have been given art supplies and subsequently produced “artwork” that is not distinguishable from many abstract painters. However for me, this is more of a sign that many abstract artists are not in fact artists, rather than a sign that monkeys are empowered with great insights into their own condition.
If you go back to the caveman era, an era of artistic creation in its purest form, you can see the beginnings of what art should be. When humans lived in caves, there were no auction houses keen to make a profit on the sale of a painting. There were no cavemen holding exhibitions to confront the government of the day. I also presume that there were no cavemen picking up ochre in order to impress a lady.
I am not sure what motivated these cavemen, but I guessing it is that feeling that resides in all true artists. When they held up their hand to the cave wall, and spat out pigment to make a silhouette of their hand, they were in a moment of reflection upon their own existence. Subsequently, when they painted animals around the silhouette of their hands, they were reflecting upon how their existence fitted into the existence of the animals they fed upon. In these moments, they realised they existed. After they died, the art left a reminder to others that they once existed. In a way, it was their gateway to immortality.
Although such creations were deeply personal experiences, they probably served value to other members of the tribe. These members might have looked upon the creations, and through them they also felt those emotional triggers of their own existence. They felt their world had some meaning. They felt connected to a tradition. They felt that when loved ones died, they were not completely gone.
As I now look at those caveman hands, I wonder about the people who made them. What did they feel? What did they think? Although the answers to these questions could never be found, speculating upon what those answers might be is gratifying in itself. If I came across those hand prints, my natural feelings would be to raise my own hand, and place it upon the silhouette and so feel a connection to a person that no longer lives anywhere but within my own mind. If they were seeking immortality, in a way they achieved it.
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Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam
Just as hands featured on those cave walls that recorded the genesis of human self-awareness, hands have featured prominently in the religious painting depicting spiritual creation. In Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, one of the most immortal images of all time, it was through the outstretched hands that God bestowed upon Adam the qualities of life: the spirit, the soul, and the intellect.
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Brett Whitely –Self Portrait In the Studio
Australian artist, Brett Whitely, also infused hands as his gateway to understanding his life with his Self Portrait in the Studio. With one hand, he holds a mirror of his own reflection, while the other hand paints an impression of himself. To the side are his paints. For Whitely, the motivation to paint was quite simple:
“The fine art of painting, which is the bastard of alchemy, always has been and always will be, a game. The rules of the game are quite simple: in a given arena, on as many psychic fronts as the talent allows, one must visually describe, the centre of the meaning of existence.”
Whitely is dead, yet like the 30,000 year-old hands prints on the cave walls of the Kimberly, his moment of reflection lives in all those that gaze upon his work.
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Walking Hand (Oil on canvas)
For me, painting has also been a way to reflect upon the meaning of my existence. One of my earliest memories is of pre-school, when a teacher taught us to swirl some paints around to make a pretty picture. I remember making an image that was different to everyone else’s, and I liked the fact that it was different. Since that time, I have always felt a desire to create. Unfortunately, this desire was suppressed under more rational pursuits like playing sport, studying, socialising and drinking. It wasn’t until I was 23 and confused about my job in sales, and the girlfriend I was with, that I finally bought a canvas. I then painted my first painting, and like the caveman, it was the hand that was central to my inquiry.
Walking Hand was my first painting. It is clichéd in a way in that it uses simplistic imagery to represent a feeling of confusion that warrants transition, yet is unable to achieve it in any other way than creativity.
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Strong Hand (Oil on board)
Following on from Walking Hand, I created a series of paintings with hands as the focus. Strong Hand is also quite clichéd as it elevates the hand as some kind of robust statue dealing with the melancholy of life.
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Geometry of the hand (Oil on board)
In Geometry of the Hand, I harmonised the different parts of the hand, with the products of their creation.
Judging Art