| Re: Sphagnum moss in sea water | ||
by Stephen Shires ![[sms SITOme]](/sue/imgs/sueid/suebar-sms-id.gif) ![[email Stephen Shires]](/synergy/imgs/ico-email.gif) |
2002-05-04 14:50:56 | [4457] |
| Sorry for the delay in responding. I don't check my SITO mail often enough due to my current involvement with physics related installation projects. Yes, my emphasis is still in painting, particularly oils. I don't feel the same imperative towards a figurative approach when using oils that I experience with watercolours, and after ~40 years of it I'm tired of engaging with purely figurative imagery. The emphasis on the conceptual as opposed to the technical is an important shift in emphasis, broadening the gap between those who regard the imagination and its potential for rediscovering originality within an artform and the commercial but amateur version of art expounded by the WEA funded local art societies, with their continued emphasis on 'technical excellence'. Unfortunately, commissioned work tends to be figurative in nature around here, Kent still being fixated on watercolour landscapes as far as the majority of the public are concerned. That has meant foregoing experimenting with my media in order to fulfill outstanding commitments for a time. As I am currently free to experiment with both painting and model-making I have chosen to concentrate on pieces that are potentially useful to the developement of scientific concepts. Although this may appear to be superfluous to any serious artistic objective I have become convinced that concepts in general originate within the artistic avant-garde, gravitate towards mathematics and then get into fundamental physics, reappearing as new cosmologies. This influence is in the opposite direction to that perceived by Professor Lewis Wolpert, who thinks discoveries in art and science are simply unrelated, regardless of their common cultural context. However, brain studies have shown that subconscious artistic activity takes place in the primitive hindbrain whilst conscious scientific problem solving is perforce restricted to the higher faculties of the cerebral cortex. The mass of restrictive parameters schooled into this part of the brain are largely absent in the hindbrain so there is more potential for the development of original concepts in the latter region. | ||
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