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I'm currently doing a Fine Art degree in London as some of you may know, and for the past few monthes I've been doing a fair bit of painting, and I have to say the paintings I've done have been the least satisfying and downright worst I have ever done. Mainly because my heart's not in it anymore, and my opinions on the value of the painted image have shifted dramatically and irrivocably.
So whats the big deal? Well, not a hell of alot to you. The world needs fewer painters, and so that might work out well for you. But personally it feels like a massive loss, of a story and a potential cut short - though, theres also the feeling this whole year has been building up to be giving up painting, and I feel releived and kind of excited for the remainder of my course.
Essentially paintings been the only real thing I've been complimented on in the past, and I've enjoyed the attention so much to a level of complacency. I am expected to continue a centurys old tradition of painters in my family and when I told my mum I didn't want to do it anymore the other day, it was if I'd just said I'd killed and ate a baby.
So whats disallusioned me with painting is this. It's what almost all art students think they SHOULD be doing. In order to validate themselves as artists and art students they beleive painting is expected of them, and GOOD painting at that. So alot of my fellow students churn out amazing paintings. They are, and I won't deny this, painted to an incredible level of skill. But the amount of portrait painters on my course is rediculous, and people are wowed by the skill in them, but it fustrates me that no one can see the the painting says ABSOLUTELY nothing about anything. A portrait of someone's uncle just says 'this is my uncle'. In any other media, where the mastery and skill of painting is not there to distract from this, this total lack of conviction, statement or emotion would not be accepted.
And the worst thing is, for the past few years I've bought into this. Whilst I've been on this forum and stuff talking about the beauty of experimentation, alternative media and claimed art to be totally about emotional conviction, I've been pushing paint around a canvas and making these ultimately empty and totally forced paintings.
So for the foreseeable future I refuse to indulge in the big headedness associated with painting, the quiet competition and snobbery involved in this medium. I'm going into installation and I'm working on something now which I beleive will be far more impressive than anything I could ever paint.
Sorry to rant. Verbal Diarrhoea
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