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The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.
–Edward Hopper
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Felt like a little Edward Hopper this morning and realized that, in all the years of doing this blog, I had never shown his most famous painting, Nighthawks, above. Can’t say why I had failed to display it. Maybe it just felt so obvious that it overshadowed other works from his career that also moved me. Regardless, it remains a defining painting, one that never fails to be striking.
His words just below the painting above are equally striking for me.
I often write about artists trying to find their voice. By that, I am talking about painting (or working in any other medium) in a manner that matches up with and captures the artist’s point of view, their thought process, and the many facets of their personality. Not every method or style jibes with every artist, allowing them full expression of the truth of their own personality.
And method alone only goes so far. Method is transient and without endurance, as Hopper points out, without personality.
How does this happen, this insertion of personality into one’s work?
I can’t really say. I guess it starts with having a point of view, an opinion, an emotion, a thought. I tell high school and college students that technique is important but it is even more vital to have a base of other knowledge to draw from. Art is not technique or method, it is expression of the self so have a fully realized self to express.
Don’t know if that’s right for everybody but, hey, it feels right for me.
Work on that and get back to me, okay?
Redtree Times 