Ahhhh.... memories

Maybe you're like me, and some things people say to you stick in your head and pop into your awareness years later. Here are two of them for me:

1. I don't paint. I generate my pictures digitally.

A friend of mine works with a guy who went to the Ringling College of Art. My friend showed this guy some photos of some of my pictures. The guy apparently said, "He's making those pictures on a computer. He's not painting them." I told my friend I keep countless photos of my pictures when they're in-progress and that his co-worker was more than welcome to stop by and let me show him some. Or, better yet, let him come over and see some of the actual partial pictures. I finally got to meet the guy a couple years later. He didn't say a word about it. He made a big point to tell me he was a graduate of Ringling, though, but when I asked him whether he was still making any kind of art he sort of changed the subject.

The funny thing is that the possibility that an exhibition juror might suspect the same thing has been a concern of mine for quite a while. (If you've never heard about the mini-scandal involving a "painter" named Sheryl Luxembourg, feel free to look on the internet.) The thing is, it's common now to find "paintings" that are actually printed on canvas and passed off as genuine work. After all, that's what giclees are all about: they're just prints on canvas.

I personally knew one "artist" who freely admitted to those who knew him that much of his work was straight out of his computer, printed on his huge inkjet printer that can print on canvas up to 48 inches wide. He takes a paint brush and applies "impasto" to the prints, puts them on stretchers, and sells them in various galleries. (He's fairly successful on a local level.) I asked him if he discloses to galleries or buyers that these things aren't actually oil or acrylic paintings. His answer: "No one has ever asked."

I was at a gallery opening one time a few years ago and there were these very attractive small pictures, but the little information cards said nothing about the medium. The guy who made the pictures was there for the opening, so I asked him what medium and support they were made with. He looked around before answering. "They're prints on watercolor paper. I take photos and alter them to make them look like paintings." Do people buy that sort of stuff without asking? Is it all just a matter of a picture looking nice and the price being in the right range? I must be doing something wrong if I'm sitting on the floor making pictures that take months or years when I could be banging them out with my computer instead.

An anecdote about some of mine: I once mailed about half a dozen small pictures to a couple I know. The pictures were very monochromatic, either gray or sepia/bloodstone. I told them to keep one as a gift and send the others back to me. They did that, but they also scanned each of them and made printed copies on watercolor paper of each one and they included the prints when they sent back the originals. (They told me they also made prints for themselves, which was fine by me.) The funny thing was that the prints were so good that a couple of them I could not distinguish easily from the originals. That was a little bit disturbing, to be honest.

2. Don't I have any other colors?

Someone said that to me. I can't remember what else that person said, but it was something along the lines of, "Don't you ever use red or yellow or green or....?" Well, I won't bore you with this one. I think I've already mentioned why I use the colors I use for most pictures. I know I own some tubes of yellows, although the only one I can recall using is Naples yellow. I also own some reds, but other than Alizarin Crimson and Indian Red I don't know when was the last time I used red in a picture. I have about a dozen tiles with blobs of gray, umber, sienna, bloodstone, sepia and Van Dyck brown. I only have one tile with some blues on it, another with some greens, and one other that has red and yellow.

I have a ton of paintings on my walls. Someone visited one time and the painting below is the one she immediately went right up to. Later, she came back to it and said, "I really like this one." Not a word about any of the ones that were brown/gray/neutral. Again, I must be doing something wrong.

Wow, this one's showing up with a lot of contrast and saturation. Something about this blog site really has been doing a number on my pictures lately. This is actually a pretty picture in person, I admit. It's about 10 X 13 inches.