Dude, You Suck

Good Or Bad?

When is it appropriate for someone to tell a painter that their work isn't quite up to snuff?  You know, drop subtle little hints that maybe their work is horribly amateurish, and if you were them you wouldn't show it in public without a bag over your head?  The answer:

Never.

But, according to a recent blog by Finearts Views writer Lori Woodward  Simons (at http://woodwardsimons.com/blog/23965/magnificent-artwork-is-easy-to-market ) let the galleries do it.  To sum up Lori's insightful post, if you can't get into galleries, maybe it's because your work isn't good.  Go back and really assess your paintings, and always strive to get better.  Good points and sound advice.  But there is a problem with that.  Yes, we should always try to improve and make our paintings as good as possible, but who holds the all-defining yardstick that everyone can use to measure their work?  Who's the final arbiter to say what's good?

I was recently looking at paintings on the internet with my daughter when I chanced upon an artist whose work I didn't like.  I thought that the colors were horrible, the design was atrocious and the execution sloppy and entirely unappealing.  Beyond that, they were lovely.  I pointed them out to my daughter who holds a degree in Art History, would love to open a gallery someday and in general has rather conservative tastes in art.  She disagreed with me wholeheartedly.  She loved them.  The very elements I thought were poor, she thought were well done.  If I ran a gallery, that artist would never get in.  On the other hand, that artist would be welcomed with loving arms in my daughters gallery.

So what should the painter do?  Keep painting.  Keep trying to improve.  And keep putting your work out there.  Let me be the first to say-- Ugly is in the eye of the beholder.