Still thinking about what this older artist told me at a gallery opening 3 months ago

She looked at my digital piece on a tablet and said 'you kids forget that a painting needs to breathe', then walked away. Anyone else get a comment from a traditional artist that totally changed how you think about your own work?

2 comments

2 Comments

kair6526d ago

Gonna push back on this a little. That old artist was being rude, sure, but they had a point you might not want to hear. Digital work sits on a screen that glows at you, it's active and demanding all the time. A real painting on canvas or paper has texture, it catches the light differently depending on the time of day, it doesn't scream at you from a backlit rectangle. Your tablet piece is basically a computer file that'll look the same on any screen anywhere. There's zero physical presence, zero material life to it. You can't walk past it and catch a new shadow or see the brushstroke up close. Maybe that's why they said what they said. Don't you ever feel like your digital stuff is missing something that a real object has?

gavinh2626d agoMost Upvoted

Feel that, man. I get what you're saying.