December 19, 2008

Is Painting Obsolete?
by George Allen Durkee

People file through the gallery and out the door. My life's work receives only fleeting glances. Has technology made painting obsolete? Has eliminating art from the schools and the proliferation of video images flashing at the rate of one every five-eights of a second resulted in a culture insensitive to pictures unless they move, change and talk?

Probably not. Looking back over my more than forty career, I know it has always been this way. A few people will pause as they pass by. Every so often someone tweaks to my particular interpretation of the world. After several of those, a painting reaches out and grabs someone by the throat, or simply lays a hand on the heart.

Many of us artists need to get paid for what we do. We don't need to make excuses for that, but marketing needs to be kept separate from the act of creating. Nothing dumps more mud into the creative flow than asking, "What can I paint that people will buy?" That’s like saying, "How can I appear to the world so people will love the mask I’m wearing?"

It is a maddening paradox that it is easier to sell a painting before it exists, to allow someone to tell you what or how to paint, to attempt to express someone else's vision - as in, "Paint me a picture of my house, my childhood memory, my dog. Be what I want you to be and I'll give you money." This is poison to the creative spirit. Imagine you have been given an assignment to write a paper on a particular subject and prove a particular thesis, whether you agree with it or not. Compare that to writing a letter to a friend. That's the difference between a commission and your painting, painted your way. Every painting is a self portrait. A painting done for the market says either, "Please love me," or "Just give me the money.”" This is not art. It is either co-dependence or commercialism.

There, dammit, I said it.

George Allen Durkee

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