painters paint

Lets talk about standards today.  You see I think there is a weird thing that happens in the art world and that is that there has been created a kind of feeling or thought that we normal people can't understand great art.  It has some sort of gibberish associated with it, don't it?

There is some thought that -at least I think so- that great artists first go to school and they all study art history and research in detail all the great painters of the past.  Then they move to New York and the great ones find their own voice, and in painting, they discuss their relationship to this hallowed history.

They absolutely cannot paint without this revolting dead skin hanging off them.  Each of them, that is if he wishes to be part of hallowed historical art, must first show that he can spend years, preferably a lifetime, starving and poor.  Then at the very very end of this arduous and delirious existence we can celebrate this by now sort of saintly soul and pronounce his (or her) work as insightful and beautiful - though of course we cannot as humble servitors begin to understand its relative beauty and whatever.

But this just ain't true.  They put paint on canvas or paper.  They use brushes or buckets and any kind of paint they might like, from wax to ink to oil to acrylic to watercolor.  And they even paint in different sizes.  They don't all like the large corporate size.  Many of these artists like small sizes, though you wouldn't know it from most museums.

Now I'm not complaining about any of these painters, they each have something they are trying to do though they don't know really quite what it is.  All I'm saying is, the rest of us must know and believe in ourselves.  They put stuff on paper or linen or board, and when they are done there is a painting.  Its that simple.

All we need to know is do we like it?  Does it touch us in any way?  Can  we respond to it?

If not that's alright.  Lets move on.  But if we are open and sovereign we will find one that sets off a response in us.  And that is all you can ask.