I haven't had time to do too much physics, because I am preparing for another art show this weekend. The idea is to make as many small paintings as possible and sell them at low prices. If art is valued by its size, these are not very valuable. I do them as "experiments," opportunities to work out ideas, and if they work, that's fine. If they don't work, that's fine too, I'll just sell them at a lower price or even give them away.

An artistic "experiment" isn't at all like a scientific experiment. There is no quantitative factor, no way to measure whether an artistic experiment has proved anything or not. I could say that it's a success if someone buys it, but that really doesn't prove much, because I have known people to buy bad art, even my bad art. An artistic experiment is judged aesthetically, not quantitatively, and despite the praise of "beauty" and "elegance" among mathematicians and theoretical physicists, this is not what art aesthetics are about at all, at least not these days. What are the data from an art experiment? What does an art experiment prove? For me, it comes down to a combination of technical factors, aesthetic judgement regarding color, texture, and composition, and finally, how people react to the picture.

Regarding art technicalities, here's an example. Some of the pictures I have been painting, the space ones, are painted over the remains of an old unfinished picture on illustration board, which I cut up into smaller pieces. I like to paint space pictures on black backgrounds, but instead of using my airbrush to spray artists' acrylic paint on them, in the name of expediency I took a spray can of Krylon ultra-flat black interior/exterior paint and quickly laid on a coat. I think this was probably a bad idea. The paint dried with a granular texture and when I tried to paint over it with acrylic, it either didn't adhere too well, or it picked up the granularity which I didn't want when doing smooth space textures. So I won't be using Krylon again on my paintings. I guess that could be considered an experimental finding.

When it comes to aesthetic judgement, things get more complicated. Some viewers may like a picture that I think "fails." Why would a picture "fail?" Because, in my judgement, it doesn't show up well, its compositional masses are unbalanced (wait, isn't that physics?), or the colors are dull or clashing. And the ultimate failure of a painting, at least for me, is that no one likes it and no one will buy it. That means that it isn't communicating anything to possible viewers, and for me art is a form of communication. My dusty closets have some of these losers hidden away in folders.

I hope I'm not creating too many of these for my upcoming show. After Thanksgiving, I'll be going up to the Baltimore area for a small fantasy convention show this weekend. Here are two more of the small pieces I've done for this show.

This one's called "Double Planet." Acrylic and Krylon on illustration board, 8" x 10".

I have also produced some fantasy pictures for the non-space fans. These pretty, trite castles and maidens never fail to appeal to buyers. Here's one called "Twilight Castle." Colored pencil and acrylic on blue paper, 9" x 11".

Happy thanksgiving, everybody!

Posted at 2:59 am | link