Go back to the basics in art

                                   Go back to the basics in art  

 Dr Abe V Rotor

Composite Landscape in acrylic by the author using the 

three primary colors; brush and finger painting, 2022

Go back to the basics: use only the three primary colors, and white freely for base, shade and hues;  water-based paint rather than oil for amateurs or by preference, and use simple brushes, your fingers, and other devices.

Go back to the basics: use imagination rather than copy others' works or photographs, better still go for on-the-spot painting; painting is leisure, a breakaway, expression of freedom, nature-friendly, peace, reverence.

Go back to the basics: there is no wrong art; art is theory, your own and no one else's; and you are the primary judge to its meaning, quality, and interpretation, eventhough there's a saying "it's in the eyes of the beholder."   

Go back to the basics: "Carpe diem"* (seize the day), capture the fleeting moment, and subject, its freshness, relevance to time and space (periodicity), for true beauty is ephemeral - and it will never come back again.

Go back to the basics: don't be a conformist per se; break away from the conventional  and impasse in search for a meaning, in "fighting for a cause" that will set you free through art, as in Luna's Spolarium** and Picasso's Guernica.***

Go back to the basics: never desecrate,  rebel without a cause; art is an epitome of values, treasure of mankind, for which art is referred to as humanities (humanus), integrated into various forms - spatial, auditory (music), literature (prose and poetry) and performing arts (drama and stage/screen play).

Go back to the basics: don't be limited to a school - evolve, adapt to change without losing your expression and freedom; learn from Goya, , Rembrandt and Monet - their golden years yielded their masterpieces; leave ultimately to posterity and providence the fate of your art and you as the artist.  

*Carpe diem suggests “enjoy the present while it is ripe.” On its own, carpe diem is recorded in English in 1817 in the letters of another famed poet, Lord Byron. The expression is quoted from the movie, Dead Poet Society.

** Spolarium or Spollarium is the depiction of Roman cruelty in the painting by Filipino artist and hero Juan Luna, interpreted as an allegory for the state of the Philippines under Spanish rule.

***Guernica is a large 1937 oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history. It is exhibited in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.