What is Painting? — The perspective you never had.
People don’t need Art. They want Art.
6. A Painting?
A textured surface coloured in images and patterns.
Yes, the design of your dress was inspired by some work of Art — known or unknown.
Colours and Images have meaning and concept.
Often, Red and Yellow are auspicious colours, and Fish depict fertility in Indian paintings.
Glue, like Oil, Water, Acrylic, and Cow Dung, are used to stick colours permanently to surface. But Paintings can also be temporary, like rangoli on house floor, where no glue is used.
Handmade Paintings use organic surface & colours, and natural tools for drawing patterns.
Folk and Tribal Artists often paint using their fingers, twigs, sticks from grass, brushes made out of bird’s feather, or hair from squirrel or cat, or bamboo silvers buried in ground until they turn fibrous. Such a process gives the paintings fabulous micro-patterns that connect naturally with a viewer’s subconscious mind.
5. Why should you care?
Kings, Rulers, and Royal families engaged artists to paint beautiful images and their portraits to adorn their walls and diaries. Painting, or any Art for that matter, gratifies and satisfies the yearning for something non-essential.
People do not need to buy Art. They want to buy Art.
Nudged by intuition or by higher intelligence, individuals can’t resist appreciating a piece of Art. Beauty of Art is in the eyes of beholder.
Art can resonate with the your life’s experiences. You might be attracted to its craftsmanship, or to Artist’s point of view. Or simply appreciate for its beauty or as a symbol of your success or as indication of your intellect or stature or wealth.
4. The secret Ingredients?
Brain recognises colour through an electric charge in our neurones.
Nature outside (colours) is interpreted by Nature inside us (neuron). So, we might just be a medium — something that occupies space?
Historically, Artists have extracted colours from Flowers, Leaves, Stones, Cow Dung, and even from soot of a Chimney. And have used Combs, Toothbrush, and Brooms to give rich texture fo paintings.
3. Spread the Gesso; but where?
Painting is most appreciated, yet less owned form of Art.
Rocks and Caves were the original canvas of Homos on their way to becoming Homo Sapiens.
Civilisations initially painted on walls and floors, and then progressed to paintings on leaves, wood, and cloth. Painting our skin, through Mehendi or Tattoos, makes us the Living canvas.
India, being an multicultural society with rich inheritance, obviously has names for each painted surface in its different languages. Wooden kavads, Henna or Mehendi on hands, Jharnapatachitra scroll paper, Madhubani walls, and Pattachitra palm leaf paintings are few examples of painting surfaces of India.
2. Artist — the original Doer
It takes an Artist to appreciate Art.
We all appreciate something or someone.
Does that makes all of us an Artist? Yes and No.
Yes, the Doer — anyone who creates / appreciates / criticises art, is an Artist.
No, the one who does not engage with Art is not an Artist.
1. Art
Art is relative.
For some, the cut of a diamond is Art. For few a box of poop is Art.
For others a splash of colour on a white surface or a coloured geometric pattern is Art.
Art can be beautiful and inspiring, or can reveal our deepest fears and saddest thoughts.
Art can be affordable, or expensive.
Arts can set us free of doubts and inhibitions and complexities and tiredness.
But it can also leave us spellbound and confused, gasping for explanation.
Do you think Art can really do all this?
No, Art is just a projection of thoughts passing through Artist’s mind into our consciousness and sub-consciousness.
Artist and viewer are just medium. Space and Time are the real Artist.
__The_Curator__
Originally published at kalantir.com.
