Airbrushed Art

We all live in an airbrushed world, all advertising consists nowadays completely of photographs which represent a world which does not exist. Or rather only in the minds of advertising executives. At one time, before the age of the computer, messing about with photographs was a highly craft orientated business and took a long time to learn. Nowadays every photograph is so manipulated that it is easy to fall into the trap of comparing it with one's visual experience and finding the latter sadly inferior. When we think about it for a moment we will realise that not every road is completely free of traffic or that every model's skin is completely flawless. It saddens me that looking at many painter's work today I continually find that the subject is a single person or object mathematically in the centre of the frame, very often surrounded by a background of one colour. This background is obviously of less importance than the main subject to the painter because less care has been taken in painting it. What isolates the main subject even further is that often the background is often vignetted. It is very understandable that this represents a great deal of hard work on the part of the painter who is still only learning. However, many of these depictions are painted with close to photographic accuracy. Surely by this time, having achieved this standard, a little arrangement and composition should be evident, an attempt to create a relationship to the frame. Just an observation by a picky ex-teacher. John

Hi Robert, Another thought occurred to me about your question. I was really talking about the rarity of graphic composition in much painting. A good painter was kind enough this month to feature a flipbook version of a booklet of mine on his Blog which I think describes what I mean much better than my first post. You'll find it here: Into Composition Hope this helps, John