WORKING IN MY JOURNAL OF "FACES"

"EVERY ARTIST DIPS HIS BRUSH IN HIS OWN SOUL, 

AND PAINTS HIS OWN NATURE INTO HIS PICTURES."

Henry Ward Beecher

I had a very interesting conversation with a 94 year old friend of mine who has some very old fashioned ideas about a myriad of topics, in particular "ART."  We happened to be talking about how we define "art."  This all came about when I started to tell her about my journal of "faces."  She quickly interrupted me when I got to the part about finding my inspiration from photos of faces that I find on the internet.  She said "that's not art."  According to my friend, art is drawing or painting from real life figures or landscapes and not from, in her words, "copying a photo."

I think that we can all agree that my friend's definition of "art" is a very narrow and shortsighted view which would leave out many of the masterpieces hanging in art galleries today but yet she is not wrong.  Art is personal...It is whatever appeals to the viewer and what the viewer or artist considers to be art.  If you look on the internet you will find many definitions and no two are alike. There is no right or wrong.  So my question is...why did I feel that I had to defend my position as an artist?

INSPIRATION PHOTO:

For this painting I used Derwent Intense pencils, chalk paint for the highlights on the skin, Molotow yellow paint pen for eyeliner and hair and pan pastels for the blue background.  I love the way the Intense pencils worked on the hot press watercolor paper.  Nice and juicy!

Thanks for stopping by and until next time...

Hugs,
Ginny