Project number ten: red letter day
i’ve used scarlet oak leaves stuck on to plane trees several times before, but never in this fashion. i like the endless possibilities, and that leaves looks like some letters from a foreign alphabet.
art should be dialog. i used to think that ‘real’ artists created art for no other purpose than to get rid of the ideas that happened to be chasing around in their heads, but i had a good talk with an old teacher of mine (actually he’s not old, but he was my teacher about 20 years ago) during which i realized that art is ultimately dialog. even if an artist shouldn’t care about how most people will react to his artwork, the artwork itself is a statement about what the artist thinks.
if the artist has been influenced by other artists, then his art is like an answer to a question that the other artists put. and if his art influences later generations then they will in turn continue the dialog.
i think this is probably quite obvious to most musicians, or writers, but painting can become very abstract. why an artist paints can become quite abstract, which is a shame. dialog is important.
