To conclude this little series I would like to make a distinction between the art of narrative painting and what is the most popular dramatic art of out time: the movies.
Thomas Grimball 1780 (detail) Collection Mr and Mrs Paul Grimball Marshall Jr.
on permanent loan to the Old Exchanges Building, Charleston, South Carolina
A film maker has thousands of frames to tell a story, hours of screen time and with the aid of sound, dialog and music, his cameras and crew. A painter must put the whole thing across on a single canvas, with his tubes of muddy colors, a few brushes and what wits he has been given.
Four colors for mixing skin tones
But by the same token, painting offers the artist and viewer time to pause and reflect at leisure on that single, beautiful moment, soak in its drama and consider its meaning. In a painting one can stop and gaze upon each character to love, pity or despise him. To consider what each element that’s been included adds to the picture. Attitude and gesture, light and dark, color and form, content and style. All these things can be taken in as a whole or considered individually.
David and Goliath (detail) 2007 collection of the artist
The degree to which these things are possible, both in the making and in looking, are unique to painting; in no other artistic discipline can a single moment be taken hold of, ordered and held up for all to see. Nowhere is there so much freedom for artistic interpretation without doing injury to the meaning the story.
This is what I do, or at least what I attempt to do, and this is why the practice of painting holds my attention and my affection and why I think it should hold yours as well.
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