Craft
A week or so ago I made my first purchase from etsy.com. It's an online market community for handmade material, including art, stationery, clothes, furnishings and jewellry.
As you might expect, it's not a bastion of manliness. If you want a strong, aggressive painting of a truck or a bushfire, you'll be trapped in a world of disappointment. If, however, you want innumerable pictures of doe-eyed waifs wandering dolefully around folk art woods searching for lost kittens, there are enough here to wallpaper an aircraft hangar. There are also a lot of ill-trained housewives intent on immortalising their pets through art, with results so unholy that you are tempted to grasp your computer monitor and hurl it through the nearest window, lest your soul be forever cursed by their awfulness.
But in life there is always a speck or two of gold amongst the dross. In this case, I bought a small work of portraiture from the Garage Sale of Dr Moreau - an oil painting of a bunny woman named Loretta. If you understand me at all, you'll appreciate why the opportunity to buy a painting of a bunny woman named Loretta had to be grasped with both hands, especially as she was going relatively cheap.
The work has a sense of surreal simplicity that appeals to me, and the fact that it's painted on a jagged scrap of masonite just adds to its charm; it lends it an aura of misappropriation, as if it's been snatched from somewhere and somehow shouldn't be available for our eyes to see.
When buying art over the internet you generally can't see all of the subtle detail that separates a talented artist from a mediocre one, but fortunately in this case I seem to have backed a winner. It's hard to explain, but a good artist has a natural grasp of light and composition that leads him or her to make the best decision with every brushstroke. Loretta has tiny hints of colour and texture that convey a sense of reality and solidity, and personality, that an untalented artist could never achieve.
He says, as if he has any idea what he's talking about.
As you might expect, it's not a bastion of manliness. If you want a strong, aggressive painting of a truck or a bushfire, you'll be trapped in a world of disappointment. If, however, you want innumerable pictures of doe-eyed waifs wandering dolefully around folk art woods searching for lost kittens, there are enough here to wallpaper an aircraft hangar. There are also a lot of ill-trained housewives intent on immortalising their pets through art, with results so unholy that you are tempted to grasp your computer monitor and hurl it through the nearest window, lest your soul be forever cursed by their awfulness.
But in life there is always a speck or two of gold amongst the dross. In this case, I bought a small work of portraiture from the Garage Sale of Dr Moreau - an oil painting of a bunny woman named Loretta. If you understand me at all, you'll appreciate why the opportunity to buy a painting of a bunny woman named Loretta had to be grasped with both hands, especially as she was going relatively cheap.
The work has a sense of surreal simplicity that appeals to me, and the fact that it's painted on a jagged scrap of masonite just adds to its charm; it lends it an aura of misappropriation, as if it's been snatched from somewhere and somehow shouldn't be available for our eyes to see.
When buying art over the internet you generally can't see all of the subtle detail that separates a talented artist from a mediocre one, but fortunately in this case I seem to have backed a winner. It's hard to explain, but a good artist has a natural grasp of light and composition that leads him or her to make the best decision with every brushstroke. Loretta has tiny hints of colour and texture that convey a sense of reality and solidity, and personality, that an untalented artist could never achieve.
He says, as if he has any idea what he's talking about.
posted by Blandwagon at 3:09 PM
5 Comments:
So you finally caved!
Loretta, shield-maiden to Big Bunny.
It isn't an online auction site, the prices are set by the seller, there's no bidding. Just by the way.
She certainly appears to have a colourful asshole. Cant see the personality tho.
Fair enough, Anonymous, if that is your real name. I've changed it to something more accurate.
And colossalgirl, if that is your real name, the artist told me that she has a boil on her bum. I'm sure that means something in the overall narrative of the painting. Maybe that's why she looks so pensive.
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