Dear Mom, my favorite artist is….
So here is something I said I would write a billion years ago and did not. My mother and I said we would write about our favorite artists, I think mostly so she could make fun of me for my uneducated writing style. I could be wrong ;)
At first I would have said Monet is my favorite artist, however upon greater reflection I realize that just isn’t true. Monet’s work is my favorite style, but my favorite artist is Robert Bateman and not only because I got to meet him.
I was in Grade 9 when Robert Bateman came to my art class and told me a story that I will never forget and that changed the way in which I approach my own art. He told our class the story of one of his most famous pieces, The Snowy Owl.
The Snowy Owl was one of Bateman’s first commissioned pieces and from the beginning he approached it with great apprehension, he didnt want to get it wrong. It did not start out as a snowy owl, it was simply an owl and he hated it. One day, in a fit of exhausted rage, he stepped back from the painting, grabbed a can of white paint and threw it at the painting. Almost immediately he realized his mistake, his deadline was approaching and he certainly did not want to start again.
Frantically, he attempted to remove the white paint without upsetting the work beneath it and suddenly, like a vision, a masterpiece emerged. A portrait of an owl, witnessed through a snowy landscape.
This story changed the way I make art. I don’t have a passion for Bateman’s work, as stated earlier, I much prefer the pastel, romantic, realism abstract that is Monet. But Bateman taught me to just go with it, that art, like life cannot be contrived.
