Consider the early painters, who acquired their colors from minerals and other obscure sources such as the dried urine of cattle fed on mango leaves. I’m not kidding! A bright, golden-yellow color called “Indian Yellow” was produced this way until recently it was determined it is cruel to the cattle, causing urinary discomfort. Another color, called “Egyptian Mummy,” was actually made from–you guessed it–the ground remains of ancient cadavers.
Historically speaking, visual artists of past generations were limited to the kinds of art they could create by their medium (or mediums) of choice. These mediums were often hard to obtain and sometimes costly and therefore limiting to the artist.
Renaissance painters (and some die-hard purists to this day) had to labouriously grind and pulverize these minerals and substances then mix them with the addition of a binding medium, such as flax (linseed) oil.
Today’s artists have a much more readily available array of mediums to choose from than their predecessors did. Those same colors or approximations of them, such as Indian Yellow are now created with other minerals or synthetic compounds and are mass-produced by artist supply companies and can be purchased just about anywhere–including online.
The most recent advancement in the creation of art is the personal computer. Now, one need merely flip the switch on their computer and paint with pixels displayed on a screen. No more grinding, mulling, mixing, and tubing of colors before one could even begin to apply it to a support (which was also much more labouriously acquired). Computer processing power today is such that beautiful works of art can be created in short order, without the burden or mess of working in traditional mediums.
I truly believe that the resulting product that comes from computer digital generation is, indeed Art. It is not, however (IMHO), painting, which requires a physical brush, dipped in a liquid solution, then applied to a support, such as a panel or canvas. While I use both the traditional and digital mediums to create my art, I would never consider a digital work to be a “painting” even when I use a digital stylus and digital brushes.
Consider the image above, which I titled “Bird of Paradise.”
This is a photo I took with a quality lens on a Canon DSLR camera. I then manipulated the image using filters and hue, saturation, and value curves in a digital image manipulation software. My hands didn’t even have to get dirty! But the resulting image is absolutely stunning and worthy of printing on fine art paper for framing and hanging. I think it is art. It took my artistic aesthetic sensibility to frame up the photo, crop it, then decide my approach to achieve the end result. All of this falls squarely in the realm of the artists role and the creation of art.
Let me know what you think. Is it art…or something else?
“Bird of Paradise is available as a fine art print in your choice of sizes and supports at:
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/bird-of-paradise-ronald-lee-oliver.html
Ronald Lee Oliver is a self taught artist creating plein air, studio and digital work in Southern California