FAQ: Do I work from photography?

Though the public likes to hold onto myths about an artist's seemingly magical ability to pluck color and form and composition solely from the depths of the imagination, painters have continually sought ways to make the purely technical problems of portraying reality easier to solve.  English artist, David Hockney, did an interesting study a few years back where he searched the internet to compile thousands of digital images of portraits painted from as early as he could find up until the present.  He printed them all out and pinned them to a wall in his studio in chronological order forming an elaborate time line of the history of portrait painting.  He was not surprised to find that at around the year 1420, portraiture took an enormous leap towards realism.  He theorized that there was no coincidence in this leap happening right around the time that the concave mirror was developed.  The invention of optical lenses and later photography only propelled this leap exponentially.  Is this cheating?  I guess that depends on what you thought the rules were to the game that we artists are playing.

Personally, I would never put limits on my own means for arriving at a desired image.  I use my sketches, my memory, and my imagination, and, yes, I do also rely very heavily on photography and digital manipulation of photography through Photoshop and Flash and whatever else I can get my hands on.  In the end, though, what you get is a painting.  Canvas, gesso, and layers of oil paint and medium.  Out the other end of the hand-eye-mind continuum comes a work that is some part mastery of technique and some part shortcoming.  Some part calculation and premeditation and some other part spur-of-the-moment whimsy.  For me, the image is the boss, and I'll use whatever is required to get there.