Why Must I Paint? Why Must You?

There is no other activity in life that gives me so much satisfaction as creating a beautiful image in paint. Creating a beautiful image is one part of the equation; creating it in paint is the other.

Artist with Soft Drink . . . Really!

One can make beautiful images with a camera, and many of the same skills that are required for creating successful paintings are also necessary for good photographs: imagination and a good sense of design being the two most important. But even the best photograph lacks the compelling presence of a painting. Regardless how much technique and darkroom (or digital editing) work goes into creating a fine photograph, the hand of the photographer is never visible. Even multiple exposures and other forms of photographic manipulation do not reveal the work behind them, not in the same sense that the arrangement of paint on paper reveals the brushwork of the painter.

The same is true of computer graphics. Many computer-generated images are beautiful; some are downright amazing. As with photographs, however, the hand of the computer artist is largely hidden, and many of the effects are algorithmically generated. Two computer artists using the same software for creating their imagery can differ in their choice of effects, how they are combined, in what order they are applied, and where in the image to apply them. But once those choices have been made, the computer algorithmically manages the actual rendering. The imagination of the artist is there to view; the hand of the artist is nearly invisible.

This is not to denigrate digital artistry. I practice it myself, using Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop Elements, but however well executed, digital paintings do not carry the same weight and visual impact as their physical counterparts.

"Battle Weary," created in Corel Painter 12

Paintings, like sculptures, exist as unique objects generated by a craftsman. As such, they have presence and weight, which are appreciated only in the presence of the artwork itself. A printed image, whether it be a computer graphic, photograph, silkscreen, or other type of reproduction is not only not unique but does not itself embody the creative act that produced it. A print, rather is an artifact through which we can infer the creativity that produced it. With traditional prints, the original created object from which the prints are drawn is tangible and concrete. With photos and computer images, however, there is no tangible created object. The creativity resides in sequences of ones and zeros within the computer, or within the slurry of chemicals from which the original negative was created.

Painting considered purely as a craft has no special claim to greatness. It is, like whittling, crocheting, or basket weaving, simply a set of skills that humans can learn to do with their hands. Millions of well-crafted illustrations perform valuable functions but are quickly forgotten once they have served their purposes. Whatever it is, then, in great paintings that continue to seize our imaginations over and over again, it is not the product of craft alone. Therefore, a painter does not aspire to craft alone but to some kind of transcendent statement. If the endeavor is to be more worthwhile than, say, playing bridge, it must serve some larger purpose than mere entertainment.

Modernism argued that the statement was everything. Not only was the craft of painting irrelevant to modernists, many or even most went out of their way to hide what craft they had or to avoid acquiring it in the first place. To draw or paint skillfully suggested that you were paying attention to the wrong things.

If one has to choose between craft and content, then I suppose content must win out. But the choice is unnecessary. Craft and content can and still do reside together in the work of many painters. We do not need to settle for painters who have something to say but lack the tools to say it effectively.

What is it that I want to say in my paintings? Nothing obvious, that’s for sure. I have no love for the polemical in art and have no particular message I wish to convey in my work. But I am smitten with the beauty of the world and use painting, I believe, as a way of participating in that beauty more fully. Drawing and painting are my favorite ways of being mindful, of being fully present in and responsive to the world. When I am engaged in making art, I am in an altered state, though not necessarily a blissful one. It sounds corny, but when I paint I feel more “alive.”