Now, let me see if I can irritate a few artists out there. The art of putting brush to canvas seems to be dying. Or maybe the pencil and brush artists have found better ways to get their art out there.
A few months ago I went to the Boulder City art festival, Art In The Park. I must say I’m getting a little disillusioned by some of the things I’m seeing at fairs like this anymore. The weekend before I went to the Summerlin art festival and it was the same thing.
It used to be that when a photographer took a picture that they intended to sell, they would shoot it, make the corrections, blow it up to a print size they wanted, mat it and frame it. This is how they did photographs way back when.
What I’m leading up to is the plethora of photographers that take a picture and then have it ink-jet printed onto a canvas and sell it as fine art. Now, some may argue that it is fine art, but I would respectfully disagree. To my mind it really isn’t. And I won’t even get into giclees here. That’s for another post altogether.
I realize that it does take quite some skill to get the right shot to begin with. Then it is run through various computer programs to enhance color and exposure, brightened up in one section, darkened in another. Then sent off to Fine Art America and printed onto a stretched canvas and sold as a fine piece of artwork.
The booths set up by the photographers appear to outnumber the booths of the pencil and brush artists. There were maybe 100-120 booths set up in the northern part of the park, which was supposed to be set aside for fine art and there were maybe a dozen painters and pencil artists there. There were probably twice that many photographers and the rest were taken up by crafters and such.
I guess what it comes down to is “art is in the eye of the beholder.” As it always has been, is and always will be. There is just something ethereal about being able to run your fingertips over a canvas and feel the peaks and valleys of each brush stroke, to see how one stoke blends so well with the ones next to it and to know that the artist looked into their heart and put something on canvas that touched them.
Well, that’s my little rant for the day. Hope I haven’t aggravated the photographers too much.
