In the midst of our collective concerns about the economy, terrorism, health care, and global warming does art really matter these days?

I know a lot of the standard defenses of art of course – it enriches our lives, it educates and entertains. True, but the same could be said of stamp collecting and crossword puzzles. Here’s the bigger question – what is the intrinsic value of art? In short, Does Art Really Matter?

It certainly matters to serious artists, who devote their lives to creating art. Some, like Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko and countless others, literally faced their own personal hells to convey an ultimate truth that is beyond all understanding and ultimately beyond the ability of human conveyance. Was it worth it?

Art seems to matter to all the scholars and teachers and curators who have devoted their careers to helping us understand and appreciate art sometimes in the face of a scornful and indifferent public. Why bother?

It seems to matter to the fund-raisers and the donors who give time and money to public institutions that preserve and exhibit art. Aren’t there more important causes?

Art seems to matter to collectors who purchase the product of artists’ talents. Aren’t there better ways to spend one’s money?

From my years as a gallerist I know art can have a strong emotional resonance with viewers. Once, while exhibiting a Matisse etching, I noticed a woman walk over to it and within moments begin sobbing out loud. I rushed to her thinking there was something terribly wrong. But, when I asked if I could help, she said she didn’t understand why but she just felt overwhelmed by the beauty of the piece.

Reflecting on the emotional power of art, I recalled one of the first things new totalitarian regimes do is round up artists and poets and decree that art must serve the state. So art must contain the ability to change minds and inspire freedom.

While some people consider art to be about things, it is only nominally about objects. It is about ideas and emotions expressed in paint or music or poetry. It is a conversation with oneself and others and aids our desire to come to terms with our humanness and ultimately, touch the infinite. Art can be as beautiful as a photograph of a shadow falling across a wall or as agonizingly painful as the tormented faces screaming in Picasso’s “Guernica”. [By the way, If you feel the connection between art and the infinite is too great a leap then read Joyce’s “Ulysses” or listen to Beethoven or stand before a Van Gogh - if you don't feel connected to something larger than yourself, maybe you should consider a soul implant.]

So, after some thought, here’s where I stand:

Art connects us with the deepest human longing for meaning and our desire to touch the infinite.

That seems pretty important.

If finally all our politics are of no consequence and we lose the battle against our own worst nature and unleash the ultimate catastrophe upon ourselves; then arguably there were bigger issues than art. But I can envision the final person on earth tracing the shape of a flower in the dust as her last act of trying to communicate and as a cry against the impenetrable nature of what it meant to be human.

Perhaps then, art matters a great deal after all.

Eric G. Thompson’s paintings are like visual poems – spare but poignant images of the world. Here Eric talks about why he’s resisted formal art instruction and his thoughts on his work.

LM: I understand that you are a self taught painter. Did you start drawing when you were a child?

EGT:  I always loved drawing and I was good at it but I didn’t think I would be a professional artist, making a living at it.

LM: Did you read about art?

EGT:  Yes, I looked at a lot of art books and read about artists.  For some reason all the artists I loved were American realists. The first time I saw Andrew Wyeth’s work it really affected me. I was a surrealist at the time.  I had done hundreds of surrealist paintings and I had really been into Dali but when I saw Wyeth’s work I thought it was so beautiful.  I saw one he did of a wall and an oar leaning against it and that changed my life.

LM:  I can understand your interest in surrealism. The best surrealist painters were also skilled at painting realistic images.  So I can understand the transition in your work.

EGT:  Whatever I paint has to be perfect, whether it’s a glove or a chair.

LM: From a technical standpoint, the technique of applying paint to a surface, how did you work that out?

EGT:  Trial and error. An artist friend showed me the basics of how to paint with oils.  Then I figured out the rest.

LM: Did you resist the idea of formal instruction?

EGT:  Yes, I am like that with everything.  I love making mistakes. I don’t want to learn from someone, it’s really strange.  People say you can learn a lot of shortcuts if you have formal training but I feel it can also ruin you. I am really hardheaded in that area.  I want to do things myself.

LM: There’s an old saying that “there are no mistakes in art, only happy accidents”. In other words, mistakes are just situations that tell you what the right direction is.

EG: I think you learn the most from mistakes. Then you just don’t want to repeat them.

LM: So did you also go to galleries and museums to educate yourself about artists?

EGT:  Yes, but  mostly I read art books. Learning about artists lifestyles and what it takes to make it fruitful.  Taking risks.  I didn’t  have a family at the time I began, so I could take those risks.  It might have been different if I had a family, I might have said no way.

LM: Many of your most powerful pieces are very spare.  It’s paradoxical because there may not be a lot of objects in the paintings but there’s still a lot going on.  Do you want the viewer to focus on a single, specific object or more on the total composition?

EGT:  I see objects as little characters, beings, almost like spirits. I love the patina on things and how things age. Zen practice has taught me to create a space people can just be in.  There’s nothing worse than feeling claustrophobic in a painting. After a long day I want to come home to something  that gives me space, not something chaotic.  So you can just let go. Its a meditative type of focus  on one thing and I want the viewer to just see it fully.

LM: That reminds me of the Zen principle of just “resting in the moment” – not trying to impose yourself onto the thing you are seeing, just truly seeing it .

EGT:  If you really see the essence of something you almost “become it” in a way because there is nothing between you and the object.

LM: The whole idea of viewing art is that the viewer completes the process that the artist begins by painting the picture.  A painting is not really completed until a viewer takes it inside themselves.

EGT:  Yes, and they see it differently each time depending on what they are feeling at the moment and their past influences.

LM: There’s a connection between the artist and the viewer – a form of silent communication. But there doesn’t seem to be specific message in your work.

EGT:  There doesn’t seem to be?

LM: Well maybe, but the messages are subtle.  For me, your paintings are simply saying “look at how beautiful a simple coffee cup on a table top can be”.

EGT:   I do like to think that someone just left the room and they’re right outside of your view.  That’s huge for me.  Is that cup of coffee still hot, or did someone forget it and it’s now cold.  Will someone wander back into the room and get it? The viewer can fill that in for themselves. Who do they picture coming back into the painting.

I remember a painting I did with a clothesline in it. I can see someone just left the clothes on the line. Any second she’ll come back and work her way across the line, hanging up clothes and picking up her basket.

LM: So even in your paintings that don’t have figures in them there is always the idea of human presence?

EGT:  Yes, I think there’s more mystery when you don’t tell the whole story.  It can limit the imagination.

LM: Do you like painting one genre of work more than another?

EGT: Definitely the objects.  I guess they’re considered still lifes.  They have a life of their own.

LM: I think of your still lifes as interior landscapes. Is that accurate?

EGT: That’s perfect, I love that description. It explains a lot.

To see Eric’s work click here.

Leslie Sandbulte paints lush figurative work that depicts scenes from the lives of women. Here she discusses her art and her life as an artist.

LM: When were you first aware that you had artistic talent and that you wanted to create art?

LS:  As a 4 year old, I stood up in my bed with a purple crayon, I remember the color, and scribbled on the wall.  I got a spanking for it!

LM: Did that discourage you?

LS:  Not in the slightest. In kindergarten I lived for the moment it was my turn to stand at the easel. So it’s been a passion my whole life.

LM: Who were some of the artists you admired?

LS: A diverse group. I lived near the Huntington Library when I was young so I would go see the Gainsborough paintings over and over as a junior and high school student. When I went into USC’s art program Richard Diebenkorn was a presence and Wayne Thiebaud was taking off. I was very influenced by those artists – the intense colors and the freedom of the work.

LM: You majored in art at USC, what was that experience like?

LS:  I loved it when I was there but there was a time when I would start something and there was no resolve. I started printmaking, but no resolve. Unfortunately, we were influenced to do extremely contemporary art before we had the covered the basics. In other words “to fly before we could walk”.  So I never really got to learn my three loves, drawing, painting, and printmaking. I never focused on one thing because we had to take this whole smattering.

There’s a problem of being forced to be an adult before you go through adolescence.  I think people that are not allowed to go through adolescence are adolescents the rest of their lives. And that’s the danger of a “general” education. I can tell when an artist has had a complete arts education.  You see art history references in their work. I am very grateful for the USC experience. I am not critical of that period, but it was not enough.

LM: Did you always do figurative work?

LS: Yes, as a child I would take the Butterfield sewing pattern books and draw the women.  Sometimes I drew horses but mostly the human figure.

LM: You feel that each figure in your work is distinct? Do you feel that you are painting a specific person?

LS:  What I am not doing is portrait work.  I am not interested in differentiating ages, ethnicities, any of those things. My emphasis is on forms – are they angular, curvilinear, soft etc. . With the paintbrush I can feel what the essence of the form is. And that is much more of what I am interested in.

LM: So its it fair to say that your interested in form, almost as an abstract painter would be?

LS: Yes, that is accurate.

LM: Many people comment on how wonderful it is to see your brushwork. It’s apparent that you really love that aspect of creating the work.

LS: Yes, it lifts my spirits to see buttery brushstrokes . And the pleasure a painter gets out of it is …
Next year I might explore the stages of a working drawing and how it evolves into a painting.  For example, I start with pencil, a loose pencil.  I am interested in letting that show somewhat.  Some of the art work that I buy comes from the artists studios and they are done quickly and that allows you to see the process.  When I look at a painting I get right up to it to see the brushwork and the ground is underneath and then all of the other layers.

LM: Your work gives viewers a sense of  movement, even if the figures are in repose.

LS:  That is an interesting comment because my paintings start from two polarities.  The design of the work is based on Japanese woodcuts, which depict warriors, women dressing, the floating worlds, and these works have a lot of action and movement in them.  I also pay a lot of attention to the negative space as well as positive space. The forms create the action.

LM: Many artists have an affinity for Japanese art. Why do you think Japanese art has had such an influence on European and American artists?

LS:  The Japanese are known for design. They are geniuses of design.  The Japanese also brought in genre scenes, not always depicting aristocracy or royalty but scenes of everyday life.  Figures were painted very intimately, close up. And sometimes, the figures just go off the canvas – forms are moving before you but going off the page.  That was entirely different from the traditional European approach to figurative painting.

LM: You are a successful artist. What is your advice for other artists?

LS: At one point, I stopped doing art to raise my children and I was teaching art but I was not creating it myself.  So my advice is if you have the passion, no matter how busy your life is, dedicate one night a week to taking a course or a workshop.  You have to keep the juices going or you will evolve at a slower pace.

I rediscovered by passion for art when I walked into an art class by the impressionist Ron Lucas. I pivoted my whole life towards painting again.  I completed the dream that started early in my life.

I told my husband I was going to start painting and that I would be buying paints and he asked how I was going to pay for that and I replied “Ask me in 10 years!”.  In the 10th year I was, by the grace of God, discovered in an art show.

So back to the advice – separate yourself from money, acclaim from others, and don’t  look beyond the next painting.  Stay disciplined, go to your studio at the same time everyday, cut other things out of your life.  Do the work. Just keep painting and growing in those areas that you didn’t fulfill earlier, or the areas you want to fulfill.

To see Leslie’s work click here.

I recently visited the home and studio of sculptor Rob Hinds here in Santa Fe. At age 82 Rob is vigorous (perhaps in part because he used to be a competitive weightlifter) and extremely prolific. Before we sat down for this interview he showed me hundreds of his finished bronzes and wax maquettes. Here’s what he had to say about his work, his inspirations and his plans for the future:

LM: You began your artistic career as an illustrator. How did you become interested in sculpture?
RH: Well I had to have models for the illustrations and so I made my own. If I needed a cowboy I made him out of clay and drew from that.
LM: Then you gradually stopped doing illustration?
RH: I suddenly stopped – I went to Europe and never came back.
LM: Well, we’re glad to have you here in Santa Fe now. Was there something about Europe that inspired you?
RH: I got a chance to see what I’d never seen before. All the art in places like Rome and Venice.
LM: Did you live in Italy?
RH: No, I used to go there and have my work cast but I lived in Spain, on the Costa del Sol.
LM: Who were some of the influences on your work?
RH: Well, you go through a growth period as you see different forms of art. I remember when I was an illustrator, for instance, I liked Thomas Hart Benton.
LM: Some people have said they’ve noticed modernist influences on your work, specifically Rene Magritte. Like in the series you did of men in bowler hats.
RH: That’s probably where that series came from. Also, I’ve always wanted my own derby but I’ve never had one.
LM: In some of the work there’s a surrealist feeling.
RH: That’s just the way I personally look at things. I think that way, and I have to consciously tone down that influence in my work so its not overpowering.
LM: You create both large and small sculpture. What’s the major difference working on small pieces as opposed to large pieces?
RH: I do the small pieces in order to see what they might look like larger. Also, I have so many ideas that I want to get them sketched out as it were. Working small allows me to do that. The problem is I’ve done so many small pieces they are everywhere – all over my studio.
LM: Was it difficult to begin sculpting?
RH: Sculpture always seemed out of reach at first.
LM: Why do you say that?
RH: Well it is impractical, especially if you want to eat.
LM: Is that because there is generally a smaller audience that appreciates sculpture?
RH: A lot of people just don’t understand sculpture.
LM: Obviously you overcame your initial concerns about becoming a sculptor.
RH: Well I drew and painted for years but I was never satisfied with it. I wanted to get on the “other side” of the work. I saw all of the “flat” art I made in 3 dimensions. It became a compulsion to turn those paintings and drawings into sculpture. I still wake up at night and I’m already at work, I can’t get back to sleep. I’m so into it I can’t separate myself from it.
LM: Are there some themes that you keep showing up in your work?
RH: Survival. Keep your sanity and survive. Just look at the world and what man is doing to himself. I sometimes think when this planet goes kaput all my work is going with it – it will be buried in the ruble. But it’s interesting, like in Europe, in the ruins, the thing that survives is art.
LM: Aside from the fact that art its what you do and you have devoted a major part of your life to it, why do think art is important?
RH: Art is all that survives, its like writing my name, saying I was here. But I’m not doing it for anyone else. I’m doing it because I have to do it. I’m glad if someone else likes it but I couldn’t get away from it if I tried.
LM: When you look at other artists’ work…
RH: I don’t!
LM: You don’t want to be influenced?
RH: Exactly. Also, I spent a lot of years looking at art but now I’m too busy working on my own ideas.
LM: What’s a working day like for you?
RH: I work all the time. I have more ideas than I can ever produce so I am literally always in the studio. When my wife and I go out I’m always looking at my watch and wondering when I can get back. To make art you have to be devoted to your work.

To see Rob Hinds sculpture click here.

Jeff Cochran is an artist who is also an organic farmer, former tatoo artist, filmmaker and dinner guest of Jane Goodall (among many other things). Here are some selected questions from an interview with Jeff, that was conducted by and reprinted here with permission from Leslie Barton:

Q. Where did you grow up?
A. I grew up in a small town in Indiana and I won a scholarship to go to college for art and I earned a bachelors degree in Fine Art, Commercial Art, and Art History.

Q. What was your first professional art experience?
A. When I was in college I got a job as an illustrator for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette and that was alright but it was a little too structured for me. Then, I got a chance to give a guy a tattoo and I figured out rather quickly that it was not my “thing”. I’m just not that “tough”. But the money was great and I did tattoos for a little while but then I started selling painting and I liked that a lot. Painting is the best. I love it. I feel very lucky that I found something that I love to do at such an early age.

Q. How old were you when you sold your first painting?
A. I would guess twenty or twenty one or so.

Q. When did you start making a living off of your art work?
A. Well, I always had jobs that were art-related but my last job “punching a time-clock” was teaching art at a community college and it was really weird because two-thirds of the students were older than me and I was about twenty-six.

Q. Where do you live and what is your studio like?
A. I am very lucky, the art business has been good to me. I am fortunate enough to have a beautiful house and studio in Taos, New Mexico that I spend the summer at and then I have a funky little tin-roof cabin in Costa Rica that is fairly close to the ocean and I spend the winter there.

Q. What is your studio like?
A. My main studio is in Taos and it is a cool little cabin-like structure that I built myself and it is built entirely out of old, recycled wood that I salvaged from old homes that were being torn down. So, it looks like it is a hundred years old but it is quite new. The roof is fogged glass so it has a real soft natural light. I love it. I think they call it “rustic charm”.

Q. People in the art world mostly connect you with your large paintings of chimpanzees. Why Chimpanzees?
A. I started painting them in college and right away I could see that
people liked them and connected with them and I enjoyed painting them and it is a self-portrait of some sort. It’s a fun mental game too because it’s like the chimps are human without being human and I think that makes it easier for the viewer to put him or herself in the painting when it is a chimp than if it were a portrait of just some non-descript human.

Q. Because of the chimps you got to have dinner with Jane Goodall too.
A. Yeah! That was awesome. I was told that the Jane Goodall Institute has a fund raiser every year where they auction off all sorts of stuff so I sent them a big four foot chimp painting – uninvited! The next thing I know I get a phone call from Jane’s personal assistant and she said that Jane loved the painting and wanted to know if I would mind if they did not sell it because Jane Goodall wanted to hang it in her office! I told her that was fine with me and I sent them a second painting to auction and then a month or so later I got invited to have dinner with Jane at her seventieth birthday party. It was great! The best vegetarian food ever!

Q. You are also doing rather well with landscape paintings.
A. Yes, I have always painted landscapes and I paint horses
too. I’ve painted a little bit of everything. I just like to paint. It’s
the most fun thing for me to do.

Q. I understand that you also enjoy farming.
A. Yeah, I’ve graduated from gardener to farmer this past year. I am a nature-lover, tree-hugger, organic… whatever you want to call it. I have an acre of land with my house in Taos and I have always had gardens and last year I got a camper trailer and a yurt, which is kinda like a big tent, and I let young people who wanted to learn vegetable gardening live in them in trade for work on “the farm”. And then we sold vegetables at the farmers market and it was a great time. People told me I was crazy to invite strangers to live in my yard but, it worked out really well and it was a lot of fun. Some of the neighbors thought I was starting a cult with all the young hippies but, I assured them we were just growing lettuce and carrots and tomatoes and all sorts of good stuff. We learned a lot last year and I am looking forward to doing it again next year.

Q. What did you learn?
A. Well, I learned that farming is an art and that what I was really doing is a giant land sculpture. The different colors of plants and soil and mulch contrasted with furrows and beds is like three dimensional painting! I’m a real perfectionist too so all my rows are very straight and clean and I have a great view of Taos Mountain too so all of it combined is a gorgeous picture. I also learned that it is a lot easier to eat a vegetarian diet when you have 800 pounds of tomatoes and 600 pounds of garlic and a hundred pounds of spinach and on and on and on.

Q. My final question is not related to art. What is your favorite thing to have for breakfast?
A. Well, I have thirty-some chickens so I would have to say – eggs!

To see examples of Jeff’s most recent work click here.

There’s a great article by Virginia Heffernan in today’s New York Times magazine. Ms Heffernan writes an ongoing feature titled “The Medium” and this week she takes a look at some applications of digital technology to art.

Want a high resolution image of Monet’s Water Lilies on your mobile phone? The article talks about the Boston Museum of Fine Arts project to photograph high resolution photographs of its’ entire collection of 350,000 works. You can visit their site at mfamobile.mfa.org and download some masterpieces directly to your phone’s home screen. Monet-To-Go anyone?

Ms. Heffernan also writes about an incredibly detailed photograph of Davinci’s “Last Supper”. The photograph is made up of 16 billion pixels. It shows such amazing details that as you zoom in you can see individual flecks of paint. If you don’t want to stand in line in Milan, you can see this icon of Western art by visiting The Last Supper.
To read all of Ms Heffernan’s article go to The Medium Blogs.

Thanks for all your positive reponses to the blog. Kelley from Austin sent me an e-mail and said “why not allow comments”? So now, on most of the posts, comments will be open. Of course they will be moderated so anything thats offensive or irrelevant will be deleted.

If you want to comment, just click on the “comments” link that appears below each post (if no one has commented yet it will read “No Comments”), fill out the form and then send it along.

Santa Fe got a beautiful light snow last night and it gave me the perfect opportunity to get next to a fire and catch up on some reading. I came across a notebook with some art quotes that I’ve collected and thought you might enjoy them. Here are a few:

“Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.” – Rene Magritte

“You’re sitting there with your muse and your muse is telling you something and you’re following it, and you end up the next day looking at it and thinking “what the hell was the muse saying to me?” – Nathan Oliveira

“Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.” – Georgia O’Keefe

“The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.” – Willem de Kooning

“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.” – Paul Cezanne

“I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.” – Henri Matisse

“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.” – Michelangelo

“I’ve never believed in God, but I believe in Picasso.” – Diego Rivera

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place; from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” – Pablo Picasso

Speaking of Picasso, here’s one of my favorite commercials from Apple: