So I've decided to give up painting indefinately
 

I'm currently doing a Fine Art degree in London as some of you may know, and for the past few monthes I've been doing a fair bit of painting, and I have to say the paintings I've done have been the least satisfying and downright worst I have ever done. Mainly because my heart's not in it anymore, and my opinions on the value of the painted image have shifted dramatically and irrivocably.

So whats the big deal? Well, not a hell of alot to you. The world needs fewer painters, and so that might work out well for you. But personally it feels like a massive loss, of a story and a potential cut short - though, theres also the feeling this whole year has been building up to be giving up painting, and I feel releived and kind of excited for the remainder of my course.
Essentially paintings been the only real thing I've been complimented on in the past, and I've enjoyed the attention so much to a level of complacency. I am expected to continue a centurys old tradition of painters in my family and when I told my mum I didn't want to do it anymore the other day, it was if I'd just said I'd killed and ate a baby.

So whats disallusioned me with painting is this. It's what almost all art students think they SHOULD be doing. In order to validate themselves as artists and art students they beleive painting is expected of them, and GOOD painting at that. So alot of my fellow students churn out amazing paintings. They are, and I won't deny this, painted to an incredible level of skill. But the amount of portrait painters on my course is rediculous, and people are wowed by the skill in them, but it fustrates me that no one can see the the painting says ABSOLUTELY nothing about anything. A portrait of someone's uncle just says 'this is my uncle'. In any other media, where the mastery and skill of painting is not there to distract from this, this total lack of conviction, statement or emotion would not be accepted.

And the worst thing is, for the past few years I've bought into this. Whilst I've been on this forum and stuff talking about the beauty of experimentation, alternative media and claimed art to be totally about emotional conviction, I've been pushing paint around a canvas and making these ultimately empty and totally forced paintings.

So for the foreseeable future I refuse to indulge in the big headedness associated with painting, the quiet competition and snobbery involved in this medium. I'm going into installation and I'm working on something now which I beleive will be far more impressive than anything I could ever paint.

Sorry to rant. Verbal Diarrhoea

I agree and understand with much of your rant above, but I have to tell you, painters are only image-makers. we make images. an image of your "uncle" is just as valid and can be just a beautiful and interesting t contemplate as an abstraction by dekooning or a hyperrealistic painting by robert williams.

You should take a sabbatical, that's for sure. It is what I do. I left oil painting behind a decade ago, painted in watercolors and gouachem then focused solely on ink with brush or pen, on papper, and now I am back excited and hype about the possibilities in oil painting again.

I think that, in a time when images can be and are manipulated and "fabricated" to such a huge extent, painters have an especially important role to play.

creative people such as you need to be abl to express their creativity in any way they see fit, and you should maintain your skillz with the paint because you never ever know when the urge will hit you again.

I have been going to art galleries and museum shows and openings and a million other art events for the past 15 years. I have seen every media and style imaginable, and I can honestly tell you that, no matter the prevalence of digital media and photography, it is the painted works that seem to inspire and grab the attention of the audiences. People seem to get lost in paintings in a way they do not with photography, or sculpture, or mixed media stuff, or installations.

photographs do not seem to inspire the same level of contemplation. People are so used to them and so "sophisticated" in their experience twith photography that a cursory glance is all that is needed.

I am just babling now. I drank some cofefeee.

either way bro, best of luck. make art for yourself.

I suppose if your hearts no longer in it, giving up temporarily seems like a wise idea, but defiently start painting when you get the inspiration and feel up to it. And of course, you don't have to limit yourself to painting, there's plenty of other areas to explore, which you know already.

I've recently decided not to pursue an art/illustration degree basically for the same reasons. During my foundation I found the briefs pretty intense, and if I'm not motivated enough to continue a course wherein you have to be conistently creative, it just seems silly. But for the most part, getting a job in that field is a tough world for a lazy twat like myself.

Anyway, best of luck.

taking the hitler approach to painting I see? I say continue on as ever, if art was easy, then everybody'd be doin it..

right now job wize it is a tough world for anyone, especially lazy asses.
;)

too true!

I can see painters at uni being big headed but you dont just have to do portraits; you can do anything with paint. I've seen your work and you have a really good painting style. Try and experiment with it in a project and i'm sure you'd make something really interesting.

I think it would be a shame to waste an obvious talent.

It's not a question of easy or difficult, personally I find it alot easier than most people. It's a question of whether theres a point or not, whether I am getting my ideas and aims across. And the answers pretty much no. I don't think I've any real interest in myself image-making for the sake of it, though I still greatly appreciate it.

Sometimes I wonder what the artists really think of the people whose portrait they're painting. I don't know how much soul one can expect to squeeze out of Kate Moss, but it can't be that much, as photogenic as she is.

if you have a talent for painting, it might be a risky move to ditch it all; but then again, being oppressed by a century of ancestors can be quite stifling.

go ahead and rebel-- school is if anything a place where you can experiment with other things. it's supposed to broaden your mind and challenge you to try new things. my guess is that you might eventually get back to painting once you feel you can bring something fresh/new to it, rather than being stuck in a rut-- if this is a natural talent you have, it will not let you give it up. challenge yourself and enjoy the mess.

picasso did theatre set designs, sculpture, and ceramics, besides painting. matisse fucked with paper cutouts. on the other hand, alexander calder was from a family of engineers and ditched that to make mobile sculptures. maybe you'll jump forward or sideways or across the street, but it's cool you don't want to jump back.

installation is just as ridden with those kinds of things as painiting is.
it would be a shame to let your abilities go to waste, however if you aren't feeling it then maybe try something else, there's more to painting than portraits of your uncle (or if your art school is anything like mine, then pictures of a friend smoking), installation is just as hemmed in by convention as painting is, actually probably more so. i've never seen your work so i don't know if it is appropriate to say this, but maybe you need to rethink your approach to painting rather than give it up? you will surely come back to it in the future and you will kick yourself for allowing your skills to gather rust.

Ive always subscribed to the idea that art school is a massively awful idea for anyone who really needs to record themselves. Mainly because it creates a societal element to it, it creates that feedback loop that can become dissatifying when you realise youre not doing yourself right by listening to other people who are in the same system as you are.

Thats probably why i fell out with everyone doing A-Level Drama and could never join a band, but thats just me. Stick with yourself, dump the painting, nothing wrong with that, you dont owe anyone but yourself your efforts and passion. Switch mediums, start doing music (even if youre shit like me), and ive never met a decent person from Surbiton so move out!

As much as, like T&B says, you're likely to feel hemmed in by convention regardless of whether you're working in paint, installation, video, whatever, there's certainly no harm in branching out and seeing what you can do in other media. Just promise one thing: you won't get into performance art. I've yet to meet a single performance artist I haven't wanted to stab to death almost immediately.

I believe you will reconsider yr decision in the not too distant future. Maybe a year or two maybe less. Probably once you leave studies, and aren't around people trying to perfect/improve certain techniques as quickly as they can within the years of their study.

Everyone goes through 'there is no point to my work' phases, 'therefore I need to take a step back'. It is normal. good luck though! perhaps it will allow you to pursue another interest you hadn't yet looked into..

^^ my post sounds like some kind of psychic reading print out.

How is an image 'fabricated'? are you referring to digital art?

I think different mediums inspire and provoke different things within different people. No particular style or way of making art is more important or of greater worth than any other. Photography can inspire and obtain ones attention just as well as a painting can.

I do art at my school, and we have our Body of Work due in September. We can do whatever we want in any media, but everyone seems to think they have to have a concept which addresses the world's problem or is thought provoking in some way - such as "society controls you", "women are perceived as objects" and "today's society compared to the 50s/60s/70s/80s". I want to do something that interests me, so I'm doing lino printed portraits of the actors who have played the Doctor in Docter Who. Only the teachers seem to think it's a good idea, all the other students think it isn't a legitimate concept. So, anyway, kind of the opposite to TINH's situation.

maybe its cuz the english are always worried about what's proper, proper, proper. dr who = not proper. but you drunk aussies dont give a shit, right? good for you i say. the aussies ive met have always been cool-- some a bit dense, but always cool. so-- enjoy your freedoms.

eh, maybe im talking out of my ass, but it's the internet.

I agree with the teachers, and the other students work sounds trite to say the least.

dr who is nothing if not proper, particularly if you're talking about the tom baker and john pertwee eras

first of al, I don't think art in general is meant to inspire anything. it is meant for contemplation. sometimes specific works of art are intended to inspire something specific.
for example, picasso's guernica, a massive mural, all grey and black and white, which was intended as a description of the horrors of war upon innocent people, specifically franco's bombing on guernica.
that painting is more important than any photograph. (in my eyes of course), so is any other iconic painting, because there is only ONE of them.

photographs are endelssly reproducible, without loss of quality. a reproduced painting however is never ever the same a a reproduced photograph.

I love photography but I feel it's main value to us (besides advertising imagery) is in it's journalistic/moment-captured quality.

I am referrring to most "art" photography, and/or digital art.

:(

...

I mean that as a culture.

not as to individuals.
if we are affectefd by every image we see, then photography, being roughly 98% of all the images humans encounter on a day to day, becomes nothing more than visual background noise.
I wish it was not so but it is.


I love photographic art. I go tio the shows and buy the beautiful books (brassai in paris for example, I have never seen more beautiful and mysterious images of that city) but the age of actual photography is over.

it does not exist anymore. Now we are in a new age, where images made photographically or digitally are manipulated to a degree which negates their ability to serve as documentary objects.

will write more later

more valuable, but not more important, they serve completely different purposes surely? the reproduceable quality of a photo is usually plays a part in what makes an important photo important (at least in documentary photography, e.g. is that vamous vietnam photo of that running child less important than guernica?), i.e. it increases the potential impact of the image by having a larger audience.


anyway just thinking about this is getting too complicated to start writing about now, but it made me think of these things:

when was the last painting painted that could be classed as "important" probably in the 1960s, if not the 50s?

has the potency of the photographic image, and therefore it's importance been lost to the moving image? if so when?

i.e. what i'm saying is did the era of the iconic painiting end with the begining of the era of the iconic photograph, and did that in turn end with the begining of the era of the iconic moving image?

i think it is the immediacy of journalism and reportage that makes photos such as the vietnam girl burned by napalm important. the reproducibility is hjust an inherent quality of photographic images. (or most of them anyway)

those are goodquestions though toilet&bowling

painting has been around as long as humans have had pigment, which is on the order of a hundred thousand years, at least, by the earliest cave arts.

photography, the capturing of photons on light sensitive material, is nearly dead. it is just a matter of time. photography as I knew it as a kid ended the moment digital images became easy and cheap for everyone to use. polaroids, and snapshots, and film cameras will soon be as obsolete and archaic as daguerrotypes and tintypes.

this may be good for the art sense of photography though, as there are many people still using these "outdated" media to create art images.

the moving image is actually an odd topic, since there are no moving images, just a rapid succession of still images, which trick our eye into thinking we are watching actual motion.
if digital filmmaking becomes the norm, as it seems to be, then the old photographic journalistic quality of actual film will be gone too.
when it is as "easy" to create an image from the filmed elements as it is shown on 300 and on waking life, and other such, digitally produced movies, the question of what is real becomes important.

it is one thing to re-stage an event, such as the raising of the flag on iwo jima to capture an image that became iconic, and yet another thing when the actual individuyal pixels of any image have to be called into question, which is where digital imagery leaves us. (at least in the journalistic sense)

ramble ramble

oh rob you are tearing me up with these posts.

I dont know. I am completely bored with standard contrived studio shots and the like, so I suppose in part I agree.

But the photogram, the pinhole camera, the cyanotype, photo guavre(I cannot spell), the light painter! They are far from dead. For me. They are entering a stage of freedom from the masses.. being hoarded by creative minds to experiement with and create wonderful expressions and say such interesting things so far removed from journalistic photography..

check it;








I'm sure you know all this anyway. That is a shitty cyanotype I couldnt find the nice one I wanted with lovely massive silk hanging from warehouse.. a sea of blue and imagery!

Just to me... photography isn't exclusively scientific documentation. It has been in that category far too long. Moving out for so many years but why does it still linger? Just as painting isn't exclusively pigments and binders on canvas. And there is so much in photography that moves me still. Such much unexplored.

I agree!! it is so easy to create boring monotnous digital photography.. In the same breath though surely it can be used as a tool to completely recreate worlds which in the past you might have only dramed of? Probably the biggest wrong doing in digital imagery is that it is over polished. Life is not like that.. I think it is hard to suspend disbelief and be pulled into a world when it appears too perfect and sharp. That is not the medium's fault though, but the artist.

The execution and display of photography is what kills it for the most part I think. Benig a scientific or documentation medium.. there are so many unwritten rules about the way you should view them. Photographs are NOT paintings you are so right.. so why restrict them the same way? (not you... a large portion of the industry in general)

I'm too passionate about it. But the feeling I get from a dark and eerie room, with a little ambient light in corners, and with 10 foot tall torn up Bill Henson imagery. It floors me emotionally.

also there are other things you can do with digi photography if you take it in the other direction away from hi-tech that i've never really seen any artists investigate properly (that's not to say it isn't being done). and i'm not talking about taking photos on your phone and blowing it up really big to see the pixelation.
also, i guess because things like photoshop and and illustrator got picked up on way more quickly by designers artists seem to have been pretty slow (snobby perhaps) about utilising and making the most of that software

one of my teachers from art school had a little exhibition with photos that had been blown up and shrunk over and over. It was interesting.

art inspires thinking whether approving or not. I don't mean "yeah! I can do anything!" inspiring, but it does provoke some emotion within the viewer, even if it's just boredom. anyway, I think you put too much enthuses onto the word 'inspire' in my post. I could have used 'create' instead.

also, I don't think it's about the reproductivity of the artwork, but it's the initial pleasure (or displeasure) of the piece of art and the pleasure thereafter. and therefore this is endless. one can still get the same from a painting as they can from a photograph whether one medium is easily reproduced or not. I don't think people look at a photograph that they absolutely adore and think 'but... it CAN be printed again, s it loses its value to me'.

I do see what you're saying and I do think that all the great artists of the past are to be congratulated and respected for their talents, but that doesn't take anything away from the artists throughout time who work(ed) with a digital medium, be it photography or graphic design, or whatever...

There's a Brett Whitely exhibition on at my local gallery right now and it's amazing. He created some of the finest paintings and sculptures within the last 50 years, in my opinion.

Yeah I agree with this. It's always fustrated me how all the photographs I've taken have never been subect to the intense scrutiny and consideration my paintings have, though the consideration that goes into them is often equal to anything i may have painted...

Photoshop is widely used in graphic art and fashion with some great results. I wouldn't say the artists have been pretty slow, it's just that the assimilation of the work done in those fields is not considered as important by whoever has the upper-hand when it comes to deciding what's valuable art or not, which in turn influences the art market and the general consensus.