Inspiration for Artists Wk 103 Gregg Howard

Nice pics Paul beautifully done, but not bowled over .

Figures in the landscape - always give me nagging doubts; I have included them, but only rarely and certainly not as a matter of course.  I don't quite see their purpose in some of these, but obviously should visit his website.  The watercolour artist Steve Cronin - who can produce a painting from apparently incoherent splashes of strong wash from the hake brush, and transform them into a convincing whole - nearly always includes "a little man and his dog"... so Mr Howard is not alone; but I don't think I'll be joining either of them; just as an observation, it's not useful criticism.   He's caught the wildness of the landscape, but .... well, I don't know; just "but" - I need to take a proper look at more of his work. 

Had a look at his website and couldn’t find many paintings without figures in them.  (I tend to find the figures rather distracting and not entirely convincing.) Not keen on his paintings in general, although I do quite like this one which does have more of a ‘fine art’ feel to it.  Interestingly, he says about 80% of his work is purely from imagination.

I need to preface this comment with two caveats.  A) If you like a piece of art, you like it, doesn't matter what anybody else thinks.  B) Artists have to make a living.  What unsettles me about this artist is the shear volume of work, there are nigh on 1000 watercolour paintings available as fine art prints on his website.  I have selected the two below. "Off to walk dog" and "Off for the morning paper".  The question at the back of my mind is when does art devalue itself by simply becoming a vehicle for making money?  Think of the artists slapping paint on canvas for tourists every day in the Place du Tertre in Monmartre.  We have one contributor to this site who has about 500 or so digital images on his website and it almost seems as though he is prepared to print them on anything that doesn't move.  It isn't simply a question of volume.  They say that in his short working life (about 10 years) van Gogh produced about 900 paintings as well as 1100 drawings and sketches and I don't feel troubled by his output.  As I say, if you like a piece of art you like it, no matter what I or anybody else thinks.  I should perhaps add I quite like the paintings below but they seem to me variations on a theme.  I wouldn't buy them even though Mr Howard's prices are quite reasonable (I recently bought a giclee print from a local gallery that charges more on a size for size comparison).  So I suppose the question is (and I do not know the answer)....is art devalued by cranking the handle?

Hmm… sorry guys but I don’t like any of these, including Tony’s two submissions.

Interesting comment from Tony (well, his comments usually are thought-provoking).  It's the dilemma of the professional artist, I suppose; I have sold paintings over many years, but have never had to rely on painting for a living.  A colleague - won't say friend, he was a very prickly character - of mine did paint for his bread and butter, and admitted that he hated it; customers always wanted the same thing, which in his case was "bloody yachts!".  To a  degree therefore, cranking the handle does degrade your art, which should be what YOU want to paint, not what you know will bring in the cash.  I think as well that we compartmentalize far too much - I remember telling a business colleague that I painted; "but you're a journalist!" he said, as if the one precluded the other. Back to Mr Howard: I'm still stuck on "but" - this work speaks to me only in the sense that it might represent Wales, whose landscape strongly appeals to me.  I am wondering, however how, in the last painting shown, that figure could possibly manage to get into the cottage: it looks to me as if he's so tall he could reach the eaves - you could say the bottom half of the building is concealed, so the proportions might work; but ... well there we are again, "but".  Nothing wrong with working from the imagination, though - it is a bit more difficult, you have to understand how shadows fall, for example, which isn't always obvious.  We all use our imagination when confronting a scene anyway: there was a book entitled "How to Draw and Paint What You See" - a very good book, but it didn't advise that we just act like cameras, we still have to manipulate any scene in front of us to make it work as a painting; I really do not like paintings that are absolutely accurate renditions of every drain-pipe, leaf, brick, chimney-pot.  But however figuratively you paint - the proportions do need to make sense, unless deliberate distortion is part of their point and key to your method.