I would like to gather every artist on the planet together, perhaps along the coastline of some sea (I'm working to resolve the problems of notification and transportation) where they would be supplied their own easel and chair (they would have to bring their own paint).
Whereupon I would proceed to ask them all to paint the same scenery (I would participate of course), just to see what all the paintings looked like. By doing this I could have a fair chance of getting just a peek at what art truly is, or what it's about. Or maybe it isn't as mysterious as we think. Maybe art is not something as complex as that.
I know that painters work a lifetime to leave their work behind. They could never live long enough to see the results of what they did. But then, isn't it the same with us all? One guy builds a deck. One guy paints a bridge. Will what we produce wind up on the Antique Roadshow? Or a museum in Washington, DC? Who knows? Do you know? I don't know. Stranger things have happened.
Why does the artist do what he does? For fame? Wealth? Maybe he is just trying to get by. Maybe he is just "expressing" himself. Maybe it's a thousand and one things. Or maybe it's just one.
I believe you could narrow art down to "just" one thing....it is what we all leave behind, and man are there a lot of mediums. Just maybe, maybe, we are the ones painting on those canvases next to the sea. I know what I would see from all those pictures. I would see the expression of uniqueness, individuality, how we each see things, who we are, what we believe, in essence, I would see something of the artist in every painting by that sea. We all leave something of ourselves behind (And I'm not talking about our chair or our easel).
An artist is hardly more than what we all are in the truest of sense. We invent, we create, we express, we produce, and share, together, as a species. Creating and producing a "visual" effect that will last, perhaps for generations, is not an exclusive dream, reserved only for eccentric artists. It is nothing like that. Art can be the dream that brings about a tree house, crafted by the gentle hands of a carpenter, whom we just might call Dad.
