For me it's not how you say it it's what you say. I was at the Sue Ryder exhibition opening evening in the Mall Galleries last night. There was quite a mix of work and a lot of weird highly abstracted work. One thing that struck me was the way the method of making some of the artwork was given great importance. I was told that one used pigment blown onto a wet ground using the dying breaths of old people(!) and one used icing sugar and food colouring squirmed onto the canvas with the artists' feet, as if paint and brushes were inadequate tools.
I think those artists have the wrong idea. How a painting is made is not relevant. Skill should be admired, and there is always room for a new technique if it adds something new to the end result, but an artwork should stand on its own even if the viewer knows nothing about how it was made or who made it.
Insecurity Grasping For Freedom is currently on sale for the benefit of the Sue Ryder charity.
