Amazing Artist

I don't know anything about art. Other than my own photography, I only own one piece of original art.

I certainly don't have the artistic skills or knowledge to be able to critique works of art and tell what's good and what's bad about them.

But like most people, I know what I like. To be honest, I'm unimpressed by most of the stuff that passes for art.

"Hmmm. So this side of the canvas is all black, the other side is all white, and there is a red, squiggly thing in the middle. Interesting. And you went to art school for how many years?"

I hardly ever see a work of art that gets a "Wow!" out of me.

The work of Pamela Sue Doty really blew me away.

I just spent a couple of hours exploring her web site. I was amazed. I can honestly say I liked everything I saw, and that never happens.

There were a couple of pieces that really hit me hard.

One is called "Death by Pressing" which she describes as "A vanita describing the unseen emotional weight that can slowly bring about the death of imagination". It's a very haunting work that touched me deeply.

[NOTE: Out of respect for the artist, I decided not to copy some of the images from her site to display in this post. You should visit her site to see what I'm talking about.]

But the one that took my breath away is called "Light Weave". It's difficult to describe. As I said before, I don't have the training or vocabulary to critique art. But I can tell you what I like about this piece. It's almost as if "Light Weave" isn't the work of art. Rather, it's an object through which art occurs. It's very dynamic and what you see depends on the angle of the light and the texture of the surface. I can imagine being mesmerized by it under different lighting conditions. How would it look at sunrise, or sunset, or during a lightning filled thunderstorm?

It's very, very cool.

One of the things that really hit me was her versatility. Most artists seem to do one thing really well. They paint, or they sculpt, or whatever.

But there doesn't seem to be anything that this artist doesn't excel at. If you appreciate art, I encourage you to visit her website and have a look around.

Poetry

I don't get poetry.

Never have.

I'm not slamming poetry, or people who appreciate poetry. My best friend couldn't live without poetry. It flows through her veins and sustains her. Many bloggers I know are either poetry lovers and/or even poets themselves.

Not trying to denigrate them or the art form they love. Just saying I'm different and I fail to see the point of poetry.

I ran across a quote from the physicist Paul Dirac, who shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger. He sums up my feelings about poetry quite nicely.

"In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand.

In poetry you are bound to say...something that everybody knows already in words that nobody can understand."

Exactly!

If you have something to say, if there is something you want me to know, just tell me what it is! Don't make me guess, don't leave it up to my interpretation, don't cloak it and hide it in obtuse phrases. JUST FUCKING TELL ME!

Same goes for abstract art of any form. Anybody can sling paint on a canvas, stick it in a frame and hang it on a wall. As far as I'm concerned, all abstract art is one big Rorschach test. None of it has any objective meaning, everything is left up to the viewer to decide what it means. Which means it doesn't mean anything at all. It is meaningless. It has no content and therefore no relevance.

The purpose of this blog post is to express to the reader why poetry doesn't speak to me. In order to express my feelings, I choose my words very carefully. I go back and re-read what I have written. If I find parts of it to be vague or ambiguous, I will re-write those parts to make them more concise.

My goal is for the reader to come away with a clear understanding of the point I am trying to make. I write this way so as not to waste people's time by making them try and guess what I mean. It's a courtesy to the reader.

I apologize that I will not spawn an industry of critics and apologists who spend decades hunched over my scribblings and writing their own interpretations of what they feel I was trying to say.

Sorry to break your rice bowl Sparky, but I say what I mean. I don't need no stinkin' interpretation.