Courage to paint

A recent feature on art in a blog caught my attention. It was about showing or exhibiting original art on blogs or websites. The blogger said it was basically a waste of time and energy putting original art anywhere on the web in public as it would be scraped, copied, stolen, or somehow duplicated somewhere else. The point was well made. But for an artist to decide to undo the process of showing one's art to the world runs against the artistic temperament. As artists, we all need to show our creations to the world. One thing we can also do is watermark our art and make it so that if it appears anywhere else, we know it is our original work because of that tag or attached security created for it. Adobe Photoshop would be one such place to start, as this software has watermark creation technology. Let's face it. There is a lot of stolen content on the web. But that should not stop us making original art.

Search engines can allow us to find out if our art has been copied, by simple searches for the title, name or date of our art. Do a  search of your own name under images in all the major 5 or so search engines. They should help. Copyscape is another place to explore with detection of theft of our content. This website also has notices that can be administered on pages. Always protect your art.

"Conversation" by Kadar Bela

In the world of art and great paintings, we are used to certain typical great names standing out. Degas, Dali, Picasso, Van Gogh, and so on. Their names instantly transport us to a frame of mind of their artwork. What comes from their eyes, from within their imagination - is the sum of their dreams, vision, emotions, memories and talent. What usually results, is whatever influences them, no matter how amazing or unusual, or dark that imagination.

In this painting Kadar Bela's "Conversation" is a classic painting, but much less well known when compared to some great artists. He lived from 1877 to 1956, and his art is quite revolutionary. He is one of the reasons that Hungary is famous for great paintings and painters.

Some artists paint something safe and pleasing and reassuring, while others choose a more darker subject or theme. Edward Munch chose some dark subjects to paint, as his painting "The Scream" eloquently shows.

Bela was not afraid to depict his subjects, in this case, 2 nude ladies sitting in apparent conversation, seemingly oblivious to the artist who sat painting them, just feet away. The immediate sense one gets from looking at how it is created and framed makes us think of many modern precepts in art and design, even logos of MTV, and modern art of the 2000's. The arrangement of the seated women, the odd yet amazing framing of one woman inside a blue frame, the unusual object that divides colours in the center of the work, but which somehow harmonizes the painting, and the rendering of the women - so much like the abstract style of Picasso and other figure painters. Bela's art is so revolutionary, that the consequences of just how transformational his style is - still rings true today in many kinds of art and across many creative mediums, from advertising to TV to motion pictures and more still...

In art, we begin learning by painting what we see. but when we have practiced this for long enough, and hopefully become bored with it, we progress beyond formal drawing and painting by rote, or rule - and we venture into the unknown. That place is the dark and strange recesses of our own imaginations. It can be a scary place. it can be confusing, having to ditch all those rules on how to draw and compose. But when we see art that stops us in our tracks and makes us confront a different kind of thinking, that is because that artist is revealing that imagination to us and we have to work to decrypt its meaning or massage. The potential rewards of this are endless, for a true lover of art.

The courage to paint well, and transform our work from the mere "usual" we produce - into something more - requires a change from us. That change consists of a conversation we have with ourselves, where we decide that we have to migrate to another plane as artists. That other place is the base from which we forge that new "self". Art is an amazing medium. It is hugely forgiving, and accommodates this transition, provided we understand the few conditions of having to produce works of some kind of value. We can study the Greats in art, like Kadar Bela, and become more than we thought we could be.

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Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads. ~ Erica Jong

I could have put any great painting or image by any of the usual great artists in this blog. I chose Bela because he doesn't get the credit he richly deserves. By studying the thinking and the techniques and works of masters such as Bela, we become better at appreciating quality art, and as artists, we can grow and be inspired enough to follow in those footsteps. We can emulate their way of creating and enable them to inform us as to how we can evolve as they did. Learning the rules of art - and then bending them. Or even breaking them.

Alan Mc Keogh - March 2013, Singapore.