Decision-making

The title of this started out as “Seize the Space/Define the Shape”.  To “seize the space” means that you examine the problem or issue to learn what information is available to you.  With that information you can begin to make decisions.  As an artist, I want to look carefully at what it is I want to draw or paint.  It might be a sketch from life or a series of studies in a sketchbook that I want to use as elements in a final drawing.  My first decision is to determine what I want to present as a finished work of art. If I want all those elements of the landscape, what do I want it to look look like?  It’s making this decision that will shape the the next decision I make and all the rest of the decisions that I will have to make to create my composition.  Do I have tall vertical elements that I want to emphasize?  Do I want to work low and flat?  These questions are based on my ideas about the things I want to draw – cityscape with high sky scrapers or landscape with restful ponds.  Will my composition be primarily vertical or horizontal?  (I have heard some instructors say that there are no vertical landscapes.  That seems like a very global sweeping statement to make about the nature of artistic composition. But I’m only an artist with an opinion…)

Next, I want to want to consider what I will say with this work.  Do I have a message?  Can the organization of my composition enhance that message? Will  a strongly vertical arrangement of tall buildings add to the feeling of isolation and the diminutives of the individual in the “big city”?  Would the vertical arrangement of the elements in a landscape place the viewer in the deep infinity of space and open him to wonder and imagination?  How does this artistic choice add to the experience of the viewer in his seeing of the work?  What choice do I make?  How do I make it? What do I want to say?

If the viewer has experiences that he can bring to the work of art, I think it’s important to prepare a place in the artwork for him to root around and find his own meaning.  That might be in the use of perspective – providing a deep infinity of space for the viewer to wonder where he is or where he’s going.  Or it might be in the choice of a shallow perspective that limits and binds him to the immediate moment.  I am saying that the choice of spacial organization is truly an artistic choice.  That an artist distorts it from what we recognize as “real” perspective” it might be an example of artistic decision-making in an effort  to create context for the content of his work.  I once drew an individual seated in a chair.  It was a frontal view with his arms and hands coming out towards the viewer.  I purposefully exaggerated the arms and hands making them appear larger  as they came closer to the viewer creating the illusion of a fish-eye lens.  He was a potter.  I thought his hands were important,  I also  thought it was a  successful drawing.  However, invariably, when people looked at the drawing they commented that the arms and hands were out of proportion.  I would like to think that it had more to do with their lack of artistic experience than my talent as an artist.  But what each of them did was to go into my decision about the perspective of the hands, move through their own knowledge of how hands should look, determine that this was not a photo taken with a fish-eye lens, and find their place of discomfort with the abstraction.  I used to tell my students that it was hard to draw portraits from a photograph.  Sometimes the ‘correct” drawing of a full-frontal portrait didn’t “look” right.  It was usually when they were trying to draw a picture of their dog’s face.  I told them that what a viewer will accept without question from a photograph he will not accept in a drawing.  The photo HAS to be correct because, after all, it’s a photograph.  But a drawing is PROBABLY wrong because the artist didn’t get the drawing RIGHT.  Operator error.

Did I, the artist,attempt to  manipulate the viewer?  Yes (but not well enough).  Can an artist bring viewers into the work of art and make them respond in desired ways?  Propaganda art relies on this.  That we can be easily manipulated by visual images is evident in most advertising.  What we need to be aware of is that it is not the content of the message  that is the only working element.  Simple images and words are easily dismissed.  It is the elements by which the content is presented such as the perspective, the relative proportions of two comparable elements, the placement on the page.  These are all subtle things that make the brain to move towards one elements or away from another.  We might say that it is the negative space in an advertisement that leads our eye to those things that are most important.  It is the negative space in the perspective of a deep landscape that draws us in, deep into ourselves and our imaginations.  How interesting it is that we call it “space” when it has substantive power over our perception and understanding.  Why don’t we call it negative shape?

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