Delight

DH Lawrence in his Making Pictures realizes that everything that can be painted has not yet been painted. This is something I love about paintings. you can have four paintings of the exact same park from the exact same spot. But each artist brings something different to it. If I were to paint, my goal would be to show the viewer how I see something. Something can look completely different to two different people. I feel like painting is an insight into the artists mind. I really like how the author said “the picture happens.” That is a really cool thought that once you get going the picture just happens, not necessarily just through your efforts. I also totally agree that he says a picture isn’t a picture unless it has delight in it. Even the saddest picture I can still delight in it, mostly because it is a work of art I appreciate. When he discussed that words have a more unconscious delight and paint was a more conscious one. Those really made me think for a minute. And I agree that the two medians do different things to you and we react to them in different ways.
My favorite line from the Zervos piece is “There is no abstract art. One always has to begin with something.” I like this a lot. The reason I don’t really like abstract art is because I don’t know what the artist is trying to convey. I’m not getting a good look into their minds. If I have the story behind an abstract piece, that makes it more meaningful to me and I enjoy it a lot more. I also really loved when he said “ Everybody wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of birds? Why does one love a night, a flower, everything that surrounds a man, without trying to understand it all?” I think art needs to just be appreciated. And it needs to be appreciated individually. Nobody else can tell you how to appreciate a piece of art. For me, having the meaning behind an abstract piece of art isn’t me trying to understand it, its me trying to really appreciate it for what it is.