It is without a doubt, important to give younger artists of this generation a new perspective on art and a sense of direction with the possibility of a new vision. While there are a vast number of creative and original works being produced today, the youngest artists all too often seem to be copying marked stylistic identifiers of famous artists from the past. You can always tell this. Their work is wooden and stultified. It lacks originality. The subject matter may change but the stylistic identifiers do not. I think younger artists are in a position, more than most, to benefit by taking a concrescentist approach. At present I'm aware of so much student art that extensively borrows elements and stylistic techniques that were implemented by artists from the past. In essence this amounts to copying. At least, anyone with a minimum of training, or just a good eye can identify this. The problem is that by neglecting to alter stylistic differences they are copying, if not a particular artist, the characteristic stylistic nuances of a particular school. This not only stultifies the work it dates it in such a way that anyone looking at it has to "suspend belief" so much so, that it often seems as if you're observing a third rate horror movie. My observations of student art have been a course in frustration. Either they are copying someone else's style, or they have decided (and this all too often) that amorphous areas of paint applied to a surface "with feeling" somehow imbues their work with the qualities of modernity. Somehow younger artists have gotten the idea that you.

     Younger people who have decided they are artists are somehow under the impression that all they have to do to produce art is to pick up a brush, have paint, and apply it to a surface in whatever way their "feelings" dictate. To the irate youngsters that have absorbed just enough "artspeak" to excuse their antics and sneeringly reply that what they do is art simply because they are expressing themselves and expressing yourself is legitimate, I reply, "fine, somewhere along the way, while you are throwing paint, hopefully you will learn some technique, acquire some expertise in craftsmanship, and become an individual artist." Anyone can throw paint! It's not my job to convince you to the contrary. I haven't the time, I'm not your teacher, and I'm too busy building art to waste time trying to convince you differently.

Until you deliberately alter something stylistically or interact with its "accidents," you do not "own it," it is not yours!

Back to Articles