To be perfectly honest, I know very little about art. I have no conscious sense of form, composition or light, nor do I have any insight into what an artist may be trying to convey. I'm not artistic or even all that creative. But I love art. In all its varied forms. I'm in awe of the skill with which an artist can impart their vision onto canvas or into stone or music or their medium of choice and am intrigued by the different emotions and feeling their work conveys, different for each and every person experiencing it.
With one of my first cheques from my very first full time job, I bought a small work from a tiny local gallery. I still have it some 35 years later, although the gallery is now long gone. It evokes some of the very same feelings today that it did when I first brought it home, along with a few new ones. Which is exactly why I bought it, and have hauled it along with me where ever I've moved, hanging it on a new wall in each and every place I made my home. I've continued to buy small pieces of art over the years, based entirely on what I like and how the piece makes me feel.
Art really doesn't have to be expensive. Some of my favourites were picked up from street artists from where ever I happened to be travelling, at music festivals, craft shows, and more recently at auctions. The common thread is always that each piece makes me feel something....happy, thoughtful, wistful......To me the sole purpose of art is elicit emotion or make a connection of some kind.
So, I don't really get the appeal of mass-produced factory art. The Ikea furniture of the art world. Not that there's anything wrong with Ikea furniture....it's just not really meant to endure beyond the average length of time it takes to complete a university degree. Disposable. Superficial. Mass produced. It lacks that special something that an artist infuses into their work . It seems to be less about making a connection and more about matching the furniture. There really is no comparison though to an original work, conceived of and executed by an artist with the talent and skill to connect people and make them feel something. What a cool way to make a living.
Originally Posted: August 23, 2015
