Why do you paint?

[dennis]

Excerpt from a book "ODDESY - Pepsi to Apple" by John Sculley:

"Marketing is an art form. When I go to the Museum of Modern Art, I see not only paintings but artists who were driven by powerful ideas and who went through the identical process to what we do in the marketing theatre. The power of it was not trying to duplicate an image realistically, like a photograph, but trying to capture the feeling of a striking idea or moment and then presenting an image of that feeling in a powerful way. The canvas becomes a mini stage production alive in a different medium."

We would like to hear you think and how you feel about this comment.

[nolan]

I suspect that John Sculley is also an artist himself because he has realised the importance of not trying to paint so your painting looks like a photograph - a mistake that I feel too many people, especially new artists make.

For me it is pointless trying to paint so that it looks like a photograph, especially today with the technology freely available to print an actual photograph onto a canvas it has become even more important to NOT paint too photo-realistic.

Years ago it was awesome because, yes it is very difficult to paint super photo-realistic, but paintings were the only means of capturing something forever, so it was important to create photo realistic paintings to capture the exact likeness and memory. That need has fallen away now with the invention of photographs and wide format ink-jet printers.

People now want to see the brush strokes.