lesart-theory

The Business and Production Line of Art

2006-10-07T04:14:00.000-07:00

As part of my theory of Art here is my plan to make a kind of production line out of my works of art: Making a business of Art without prejudicing the spontaneity and art for art sake nature of the works.

The Business and Production Line of Art (Paintings)

Getting the inspiration for the painting: Saving and manipulating images being inspired having visual resources. Making and recording in writing the stories and the various philosophical and “religious” issues that arise. Noting subjective responses to those issues and any prompted memories that come up. This is my way of beginning and continuing a picture.

Paint a piece of found cardboard white

Make a drawing on the dried white painted cardboard out of No More Gaps . It can be completely “abstract” (having no discernible intellectual idea behind it) or it can be an comprehendible symbol such as a mathematical symbol, e.g. the symbol for infinity or a number such as 8 (the chess board seems to be an inspiration for some artists and the infinity symbol is an 8 on its side). Or it can be a representational drawing of some identifiable image or images. There are a lot of crosses in my pictures.

Paint the piece of cardboard with other colours. The raised background picture and what has been painted need not make a coherent story but often they do.

Write the “Certificate of Authenticity”

Photograph the painting.

Frame the painting.

The above order can be varied.

Write up an art work blog and “hang” the picture on the internet with some remarks.

Start Telemarketing to Galleries. “I’ve got a rather remarkable body of work – would you like to see it? May I send you an email with my details and a link to the website.”

Long time no art theory

2006-09-07T14:44:00.000-07:00

Anyone trying to see from this blog if I know how to do it will know that I don’t. If I manage to hang a picture in it, it happens by itself and the only way I know to update the blog is by writing an email to myself. Since blogging is an art (and I’m still defining Art) what sort of an artist am I? The thing about Art is that you need an idea and the skill to bring it off. So if this blog is a work of art it is not very good.

A Music Analogy

2006-08-03T13:46:00.000-07:00

I play the guitar in a church band. I’m not very good. One year we were playing Christmas Carols in a Shopping Centre and one of our number was a keyboard player we borrowed from a big church. He was the quintessential artist. He was a twenty year old music student. He could play anything he heard and he read at sight. Not only that but if we had the music written in G he could transpose it to D flat (or anything) in his head and play on in that new key.

I’ve said he was the “quintessential artist” but that could be artist as technician. I don’t really want to make a case that a technician is a better artist than a person who is not technically proficient because my own art akin is to my guitar playing. Mind you I can play in any key – given a capo and a place to stand. I play the guitar how I like it – a little bit country and my art is the way I like it too.

My latest picture

2006-07-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

A Short Sighted Man Looks at the Cross While

(in the background the Universal Soldier takes a step in the wrong direction).

Acrylic on found Cardboard 72 x 57cm.

The Universal Soldier is Bush/Rumsfeld who believe that they must make war and treat prisoners another way than the Geneva Conventions. Im the shortsighted Christian.

This is a variety of junk art. The frame is made from found wood. In this day and age when people are antiquing things and hitting wood with bags of nail to distress it this wood was distressed when it was a pallet or a fence paling, whatever.

Les Thompson 6/5/43

0414949901

Art or Propaganda

2006-07-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

I’m a Christian so some of my art contains Christian Symbols such as the cross and Christian Ideas such as being in Noah’s Ark is like being in Christ or being in Babel or the Titanic is like not being in Christ. In Christ there is safety but in Babel there is danger. The idea behind Babel and the Titanic is that man can look after himself.

I am working on a picture now which has the idea behind it:

A short sighted man (me) looks at the cross while the Universal Soldier

(Bush/Rumsfeld) takes a step in the wrong direction.

The finished work may be considered political propaganda against the war but since I am a Christian and Bush is a Christian it cannot be considered Religious propaganda surely. Mind you I regard myself as a Christian without borders (African Christianity is as valid as British Christianity for example) and Bush is an American first and a Christian second. By contrast Jimmy Carter was a Christian first and an American second and that did not seem to help the hostages at the time.

2006-06-02T16:40:00.000-07:00

Painting by Numbers vs Painting.

Both are Art especially if you are painting by your own numbers.

2006-05-28T15:58:00.000-07:00

Translating is Art not Science.

There’s an old joke about a translating machine that translated “Out of sight out of mind” from English to Russian and back and came up with “Invisible Idiot”. There’s an Art to translating that humans do best.

2006-05-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

Art vs Science 2

Art is not the opposite of Science. Scientists are just as inspired to their discoveries as we are. In relation to hermeneutics now that “science” has taken over in certain Theological Schools it is easier to misunderstand the scriptures the more you study. The things I admire about science are (1) the clear ability to say when an experiment fails and (2) the ability to repeat an experiment and all things being equal get the same result. Science has it’s drawbacks though. There is a conventional wisdom in Science that can be behind the rejection of and persecution for a new discovery. And you cannot figure out how to live and get your daily needs on scientific principles. There is an Art to living which is encapsulated in a verse of scripture that you cannot get from Science, “…He has shown you o man what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God…” (Micah 6:8 LKJV – Les’s KJV old words changed to current usage e.g. “shewed” = “shown” and “doth” = “does” and no other changes.)

2006-05-24T17:31:00.000-07:00

Art and Science.

”…hermeneutics was once understood to be the Science and Art of Biblical Interpretation. Science because there were some important rules and principles that could be applied to the task, and Art, because there were many calls for mature judgement borne of experience and competence.” (p. 10 D. A. Carson, The New Bible Commentary, IVP UK 2004 emphasis mine).

2006-05-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

This is a self portrait.

2006-05-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

I was writing an essay examining the reasons I have certain prejudices. I was going through my life deciding why I held certain views. Why I think the Right is wrong for instance – I’ll get into that later. But one of the prejudices I have about writing or drawing on walls is that if it is “good” you can get away with it. I formed this prejudice because when I was a little kid I had to repaint my room because I drew on the walls. But when I was a teenager I drew on my wall again (some illustrations of a radio serial) and it was so good it was let stay there. The fact that the rule givers were different when I was a teenager may have had something to do with it also.

Theory of Art - What is Art

2006-05-19T17:32:00.000-07:00

Art is a human endeavour. Small children do it (probably best). I started doodling absent-mindedly when I was out of work in the 60’s and it was so “good” I kept it all these years. I did not know how good it was until I whittled the scrawling into a piece of wood. That’s when I got the idea for “Wooden Things” a business name for making saleable decorative items in the form of Wood Carvings and Sculpture. One day when I was thinking about a sculpture of The Three Crosses I started painting in acrylics on A4 80 GSM Bond Paper using toothpicks to lay on the paint and after I got through making The Three Crosses sculpture I began to paint on anything I could get. I painted many pictures on corrugated cardboard that I found and I made wooded frames for them out of pallets and fence palings until I amputated my left hand with a compound mitre saw. After the surgeons sewed it back on I relearned to play the guitar.

The Photo

2006-05-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

The Photo was taken by one of my grandchildren after she had dressed me up in her scarf and handed me a small book. I am not conducting some sort of religious service. I’m not into religion in any case. I’m Christian.

2006-05-17T17:20:00.000-07:00