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July 2, 2008 Maybe
I need to re-think Maybe I need to re-think what I think about the way people talk about my work. There is what I set out to express, and then there is what the viewer gets from what I've done. These are often not the same. And it is hard make room for language with a different meaning than my own. "Content-ism is the art's version of materialism," my friend Vic once said. Frustrated by viewers who cannot go beyond what a painting is a picture of, I wonder if that's why Turner, Kandinsky and even Monet gravitated toward the abstract. Why do I? It's
just that I want my riverscapes to be more than water sliding downhill.
The river is wet; it's cold; it's noisy. Those rocks are hard and
coarse. Notice how each of those trees occupies its own space, never
encroaching upon its neighbors. I
suppose I could take a lesson from those trees – never encroaching,
never venturing in-your -face art. But is that what art is? I
don’t expect others to have the same ideas, or to use the same language
to talk about art. So no matter how much skill or know-how or emotional
energy I bring to my work, I know people will see it the way they see and
not necessarily the way I intended. George Allen Durkee This blog may not be reproduced in any form whatsoever without permission from George Allen Durkee
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