About

When I started this blog in 2008 I wrote that I was about:  “…my art:  Creating a working space to place painting-making stuff; color, shape, brush strokes, spray paint strokes, rollers, collage, line. You add to this list whatever floats your boat regarding what you think paintings are these days. I have lost my compass direction for any form of definition. At least I am trying to shed definitions and just paint. I think! I like the notion of making paintings as an experience in flatland.
I define my paintings as working spaces. I want to keep the process of Automatism alive. It is hard wired to my process.”

A lot has changed since 2008.  My ideas about art have changed.  In many ways my changes are radical.   There seems, on the surface, to be an about-face in how I connect (now) to the art making profession.  In 2008 I considered myself a “hardcore” “Abstract Expressionist” in all things idea as well as the process of making art; a throw paint concept.  When I stopped painting in 2009, my art making process went digital and my process became more conceptual and less ideal than before.  I liked the imaging that was forming when I started using a digital camera  as a tool to make my art.  After awhile, I discovered a presence of Surrealism in my imaging.  This is an evaluation after the fact… Surrealism was never considered while I was snapping digital pics.

I remain not interested in creating narratives in my art.  I don’t want to tell stories.  However, when one uses any form of realism in their art making, narrative naturally pops up.  Good for you, not for me.  This aspect of my art I still don’t care about.  You want a narrative, knock yourself out!

I digress.  Sorry!  KISS.  Keep it Simple Stupid!

I wrote this morning:
9:21 AM 7/15/2016

The stuff of it

dpn definition of collaboration

I have always defined art as a collaborative event between the artist, the artist’s product, and the audience (singly or group) who choose to engage in the art work (however defined at the time of engagement).  In my scheme the artist does not need to be present for the aesthetic experience/collaboration to take place.  Obviously the artist needs to be present re performance or theater art .

How to define the art itself depends upon how the maker (artist or non artist) defines the product.  In today’s postmodern terms the art product could be anything the artist considers to be a work of art.  At the same time, anybody can be an artist by stating he/she is an artist.  In this sense there is no paradigm influencing either side of the art making-art experiencing equation..  I don’t care what the product is so long as the collaboration completes a connection between the artist, the product, and the audience.  This trio = aesthetic experience as I define it in 2016.

In light of the above conversation, criticism now becomes one of “I like it” or “I don’t like it“.  No paradigm, no rules, no criticism as we used to know it.  Art making, art experiencing, art criticism now becomes, or is, a matter of personal opinion and is shared with the greater world in these terms and or conditions.

Those of you who know me and my art making past, this thinking is profound!  And to those that know me, this base has always existed.  I never, or couldn’t express it properly in words.  As I look back on my Iowa City years for both undergraduate and graduate degree studio work, I appropriated AE and placed its structures into my painting and drawing.  I simply like/d what I saw in AE artists and their work; especially Philip Guston.  Then, if an artist’s work was copied too closely it was called plagiarism.  Today it is called appropriation.  I rest my case!

As this blog progresses, I will present my ideas.  Please engage!

dpn 12:40 PM 7/15/2016
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davidnovakDOTcom; a website devoted to my work and ideas.

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