The Berkeland Studio

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.

FAQ: How does the struggling economy affect the struggling artist?

The other day, somebody dropped $45 million on this Henri Matisse painting.  I bet a lot of you look at this painting and think to yourself, "I could have done that!"  I know I do.  With a headline like this, it's hard to see all doom and gloom in my profession.

I've never tied my interpretation of success to my economic situation.  And that's not some high brow moralizing I'm doing.  It's an actual gut feeling.  Probably some primal survival mechanism for artists.  I was talking to a fellow artist about this just the other day.  We've both been penniless at many points in our lives but we've always maintained a steadying sense of accomplishment through what we've achieved through our art.  We don't really worry about unemployment.  We just wake up and work, whether it bears fruit or not.

It may change in the near future, but at the moment, I don't really notice an economic crisis as it relates to my painting.  I've had better times and worse times.  Surviving on art is always a struggle, and I'd say that the amount of struggle right now is not abnormal.  The way I see it, the internet gives me potential access to 6 billion people.  If I can connect with a handful each month, I'll keep my family fed.

So, though the happy days of selling ice to Eskimos and spending the loot on four dollar lattes may be over for now, the painting goes on.  What else am I going to do?