Do you ever wonder what viewers are thinking when they look at your work? It’s totally an individual process what they are thinking and it always makes me wonder when people are really looking.

When you paint some weird things like I sometimes do, you REALLY wonder what people think. You ask for opinions and people have some nice things to say, but you never really get a critique. Not a critique in the sense of contributing to my changing anything in the work, or even wondering about it. There have been a few rare in-depth conversations about the work I will say, but this is rare. I’ve often thought perhaps it is because those viewers don’t know anything but if they like it or not. They don’t know how to really engage in a conversation with the artist to talk about perspective (viewpoint or otherwise), technique and such. So, its best left unsaid.

When everyone is standing around looking at the piece, they have something in their heads for sure, all are different. This is ok, I am not saying that, but it truly is in the eye of the beholder.

If you are not a painter or artist of some kind and you visit a gallery, watch what you say. If you say something like “my two year old could do that good” and the artist hears it, it could be a little embarrassing. Sometimes you don’t know who the artist is, and we do like to mingle in the crowd of a show to hear what people are saying.

Everyone’s art is personal to them. They have created that piece of art from the heart. Give respect to the artist even if you do think it’s weird, you totally don’t understand it, or your two- year-old could do it.

Not on a soap box, just making personal commentary from an artist’s point of view.