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Five years ago, I posted about seeing a Rembrandt exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I wrote about art reproduction and the Internet/digital age, but the crux is this: "My point in bringing all this up is to remind myself (and maybe you) how the physical presence of a painting can be so moving, and how complicated it is that a lot of the art we see today is only viewed online or in books. So much of the importance and content of a painting is not found in the image or subject matter, but in the texture, atmosphere, gesture, mark-making, smell, weight, thickness, layering, sensitivity, and... humanity" (Read full post here:
My Thoughts on Rembrandt, 19 January 2012).
Not surprisingly, this topic has only become more prevalent and complex. For the past 5+ years, in my own artistic practice, I have only studied paintings
in person in museums/galleries around the world. I categorically avoid studying paintings online (I'm fortunate to travel often and live in Philadelphia and close to NYC). The ins and outs of being a painter in the Internet/digital age come up all the time in my
workshops and
mentoring program and
Innernet e-course. This also came up quite a bit in a couple of recent podcast interviews I did with
10,000 Hours and
The Studio. It's critical for artists to figure out their relationship to new technologies, while always keeping the conversation ongoing about how we can do that while also continuing to hear our own voices and stay in alignment with our core values and interests.
P.S. If you look closely there's a self portrait of sorts in the glass bottle reflection (
here are a bunch of other reflection self portraits, too).
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