Two weeks ago I sat in this exact position staring at a blank canvas waiting to be inspired. Now as I look at the same canvas half filled with the colours of a dying sun setting over the busy streets of Dublin city I wonder how I am going to finish off this painting I have been working on for so long. Normally, I would have continued on as I started off, accurately applying shade, blending the colours accordingly but since this summer, my whole opinion on art has changed.
On visiting the Museum of Modern Art in New York in August, I came across a painting called ‘White on White’ by Kasimir Malevich, a painting of a white square on a white background. Painted in 1918, this type of art was innovative. My initial reaction to this apparent blank canvas was to laugh. This was not art! Anyone could paint a white square on a white canvas, that does not take talent, but anyone didn’t paint it, no one had thought of painting a white square on a white canvas before, and that’s what makes it art. That is what makes art art.
I stood studying this painting until the museum closed, hardly making it past the entrance lobby. In those couple of hours looking at the white painting, my views on art changed dramatically. Whereas I would have always appreciated beautiful scenic paintings, full of detail and colour more than modern art which I often found boring, I was now beginning to see another side to it. I realise that art is not always about how accurate the shade is applied or the colours blended. Art is about doing about what no one has thought of doing before. Before Malevich there was no painting of white on white, not because no one thought it would make a good piece but because no one thought of it before. The reason it is such an extraordinary piece of art is because it was so revolutionary for its time.
Now looking at my painting before me, I decide not to finish as I started off. I no longer feel that the most beautiful painting is the best work of art. Anyone with half a talent can look out the window and paint what they see. It takes a true creative genius to create new concepts in their work, so wanting to be a creative genius I take up my brush, dip it in red paint and begin to splash it across the canvas.
