dailyvision

I have often been confused about how to refer to photos of two-dimensional artwork like paintings and drawings, especially my own. While assembling my digital portfolio for my college applications I worried that my artwork might be misinterpreted in a thousand different ways by someone seeing only photographs rather than the work itself. This is an edited photograph of a painting I did in my senior year of high school. I find this image to be visually engaging and when I look at it I’m proud of both my painting abilities and my photo editing skills, but I’m not sure which of the two has more impact on this final product. I enjoy looking at my original painting, and I enjoy looking at this photograph of my painting, but I absolutely believe that there is something to the idea that the “aura” of the painting has been lost. There is so much that can’t be known or felt through viewing this photograph on a screen. For example, the paint on this canvas is incredibly textured when viewed in person, and when viewed at different angles there are bumps and divets in the paint that cast interesting shadows that cannot be seen in this thoroughly two-dimensional digital rendering. Also, this painting is actually five feet wide. The impressive size of it conveys something emotional that can’t be conveyed by the image on the screen. These are concrete examples of differences. However, for me, as a painter, there is something deeper as well. Obviously I love the accessibility that comes with the digital reproduction of paintings. Being able to view any painting from my computer no matter where the original is physically located is an amazing thing that is incredibly valuable, but there is something unreproducible by even the most high-resolution photograph. Viewing a painting in person, really looking at it, being able to lean in and smell the medium and see the intricacies of every single brushstroke, is an experience in its own right.

Peek-A-Boo, Peek-A-Boo Golly jeepers Where'd you get those peepers? Peepshow, creepshow Where did you get those eyes?

Before Hampshire, most of my artistic experience in the visual arts was with drawing and painting. More specifically, much of my artistic education was in more traditional drawing and painting, with more emphasis on technical rendering and rules rather than the meaning of work. Composition is a very important part of traditional painting. The rule of thirds is one of the most important rules of a composition. Creating a balanced yet engaging picture plane requires that the focal point of the composition never be perfectly centered, the only exception to this rule being a portrait composition, because in a traditional portrait the face is horizontally centered. Still, because of my background in studio art I feel that a traditional portrait composition is boring. In this photo I chose to place the mouth on a crash point due to its vibrant color, and the face and torso lie on the right vertical gridline. It’s hard to explain why this is more visually engaging than it would be if the person were centered, but I believe that Adams is correct in his assertion that an artist’s compositional intuition is a powerful tool.