This fall I have been studying Asian art extensively. I came across this video that struck me deeply. Artist Qu Leilei eloquently describes the struggle that visual artists have as compared to other literary artforms. With every new artwork he has to ask these two questions:
- What do I paint?
- How do I paint it?
I face those same issues with photography. What do I point my camera towards and then how do I interpret it with my camera. I think this is why I tend to create work as projects. With each project I think about an idea (subject) and a visual interpretation that involves choosing the medium and the technique.
Minor White taught his students to meditate on the subject and let it reveal the appropriate technique for rendering it into a visual image. This is what I try to do in my own art practice.
