Good Art - Good Imagination
by William E Young
Imagine - the world is what you make it when applied to the arts. An artist uses the creative process to reflect experiences through a chosen medium. Ideas are the raw materials that feed the creative process. The degree to which an artist develops an idea into an image is relative to the depth of the artist's imagination, a depth fathomed by the world the artist creates. Imagination is a personal manifestation that is in a constant state of redefinition as the conscious mind experiences life. From these experiences artists create any kind of world they can dream of and reflect that world through art.
Art can represent an idea with simple forms or complicated structures or to any degree in between. What makes good art is not its simplicity or complexity. Nor is it a matter of abstract versus realism or avant guard versus classicism. An artistic statement's merit can be judged simply by answering the questions: does the work successfully convey the artist's intent and was the artist's intent worth conveying? These questions allow both the artist and audience to measure the artist's work on both a piece-by-piece basis and on the work as a whole.
Here is a scenario for creating a painting: Driving along the road, a painter comes upon a bend in the road that frames an old house in a meadow. He stops and takes a picture with the idea of making a painting of the photograph. This is where the measure of imagination comes into play. On a basic level, he can set up the photograph and copy it on the canvas in the best photorealistic technique he can master. It is a superb representation of the photograph. The painting successfully achieves the artist's intent to reproduce the photograph, but was it worth conveying? The artist's imagination has gone no further than reproducing a scene his eye caught through the window of his car. Looking at the photograph would work just as well.
On another level, the artist interprets the photograph as the basis for an image that is rich in color, contrast, and character. The barn gains character by becoming monochromatic with exaggerated doors and windows that suggest the face of the former residents. Clouds in the sky suggest animals flying as a cat stalks through the grass in the yard. Now the painting has come alive because the artist saw the photograph as a key to another world filled with color and shapes of his own making. The painting has captured the artistic intent to embellish the scene with his own unique style, and the painting's pleasing effect cannot be captured in any other way, certainly not simply in a photograph.
On perhaps another level, the artist goes deeper into the house in the photograph, and in his imagination finds a perfect doll in the midst of a room that has not seen a soul in decades. The doll is lying on a tattered quilt, the batting pulled out by mice in search of a nest. Above the doll is a pocket watch floating in the air suspended by a blue ribbon tied to the tail of a Luna moth. In this painting there is no reference to the photograph at all-the intent is to evoke mystery that is enigmatic, interpreted a bit differently by each viewer. The old house triggered the artist's imagination, but the resulting work comes solely from the artist imagination, and that is the only place it resided before it was rendered.
No matter how simple or how complex, good art is the result of good imagination.
by William E Young
Imagine - the world is what you make it when applied to the arts. An artist uses the creative process to reflect experiences through a chosen medium. Ideas are the raw materials that feed the creative process. The degree to which an artist develops an idea into an image is relative to the depth of the artist's imagination, a depth fathomed by the world the artist creates. Imagination is a personal manifestation that is in a constant state of redefinition as the conscious mind experiences life. From these experiences artists create any kind of world they can dream of and reflect that world through art.
Art can represent an idea with simple forms or complicated structures or to any degree in between. What makes good art is not its simplicity or complexity. Nor is it a matter of abstract versus realism or avant guard versus classicism. An artistic statement's merit can be judged simply by answering the questions: does the work successfully convey the artist's intent and was the artist's intent worth conveying? These questions allow both the artist and audience to measure the artist's work on both a piece-by-piece basis and on the work as a whole.
Here is a scenario for creating a painting: Driving along the road, a painter comes upon a bend in the road that frames an old house in a meadow. He stops and takes a picture with the idea of making a painting of the photograph. This is where the measure of imagination comes into play. On a basic level, he can set up the photograph and copy it on the canvas in the best photorealistic technique he can master. It is a superb representation of the photograph. The painting successfully achieves the artist's intent to reproduce the photograph, but was it worth conveying? The artist's imagination has gone no further than reproducing a scene his eye caught through the window of his car. Looking at the photograph would work just as well.
On another level, the artist interprets the photograph as the basis for an image that is rich in color, contrast, and character. The barn gains character by becoming monochromatic with exaggerated doors and windows that suggest the face of the former residents. Clouds in the sky suggest animals flying as a cat stalks through the grass in the yard. Now the painting has come alive because the artist saw the photograph as a key to another world filled with color and shapes of his own making. The painting has captured the artistic intent to embellish the scene with his own unique style, and the painting's pleasing effect cannot be captured in any other way, certainly not simply in a photograph.
On perhaps another level, the artist goes deeper into the house in the photograph, and in his imagination finds a perfect doll in the midst of a room that has not seen a soul in decades. The doll is lying on a tattered quilt, the batting pulled out by mice in search of a nest. Above the doll is a pocket watch floating in the air suspended by a blue ribbon tied to the tail of a Luna moth. In this painting there is no reference to the photograph at all-the intent is to evoke mystery that is enigmatic, interpreted a bit differently by each viewer. The old house triggered the artist's imagination, but the resulting work comes solely from the artist imagination, and that is the only place it resided before it was rendered.
No matter how simple or how complex, good art is the result of good imagination.