COMMENTARY ON PAINTING

WHETHER A SUBJECT IS BEAUTIFUL

or ugly, appealing or revolting, matters little. The fact that it moves a sculptor to
sculpt, a poet to write, a musician to compose, or a painter to take up his brush and
paint is important. Beauty and ugliness are relative and painting is the expression
of that which the artist feels, lives and knows. The very earliest Biblical paintings
are not stories from the printed Bible, but a spiritual part of the artists’ lives, by
their having heard them and lived with them.

The most common painting medium of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies was ‘‘fresco”’ (painting into wet plaster) or mural decoration, influenced by the
great architecture and under the patronage of the Church. This was chiefly an
Italian Art. Michelangelo’s, ‘“The Last Judgment’ and decorations in the Sistine
Chapel in Rome are frescoes.

Oil was first used as a painting medium by two Flemish artists, Hubert and
Jan Van Eyck, in the fifteenth century. A gradual revolution took place in the art
of painting. Oil was less hard and linear than fresco and capable of more lyrical
and poetic effects; and color could be handled more sympathetically. Depth and
luminosity came into the color and the great Venetians developed out of this new
medium their sumptuous grandeur of Baroque.

Oil, too, was more suitable to the intimate painting of small objects and the
Flemings turned to their jewel-like, realistic painting. Rembrandt, Greco and Rubens
are the great and noble exponents of this medium—where a tremendous surge of
the spirit was set free.

New horizons, in similar ways, are constantly appearing and the spirit finds
new channels of expression.

Since Impressionism, and since the the Industrial Revolution, the modern
spirit has developed. We have tried to sense this bond with our contemporaries, to
understand the spirit of these times; so that, while we are aware that many of us
may never be considerable painters, by participating, at least, in the practical attempt
to create paintings of worth we have enabled ourselves to make some insight into
this art spirit of today.

Time and a little reflection, plus the enjoyment of communal effort, have
proved to us the great worth of these painting classes.

COMMENTARY ON PAINTING

WHETHER A SUBJECT IS BEAUTIFUL

or ugly, appealing or revolting, matters little. The fact that it moves a sculptor to
sculpt, a poet to write, a musician to compose, or a painter to take up his brush and
paint is important. Beauty and ugliness are relative and painting is the expression
of that which the artist feels, lives and knows. The very earliest Biblical paintings
are not stories from the printed Bible, but a spiritual part of the artists’ lives, by
their having heard them and lived with them.

The most common painting medium of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies was “fresco” (painting into wet plaster) or mural decoration, influenced by the
great architecture and under the patronage of the Church. This was chiefly an
Italian Art. Michelangelo's, ‘The Last Judgment” and decorations in the Sistine
Chapel in Rome are frescoes.

Oil was first used as a painting medium by two Flemish artists, Hubert and
Jan Van Eyck, in the fifteenth century. A gradual revolution took place in the art
of painting. Oil was less hard and linear than fresco and capable of more lyrical
and poetic effects; and color could be handled more sympathetically. Depth and
luminosity came into the color and the great Venetians developed out of this new
medium their sumptuous grandeur of Baroque.

Oil, too, was more suitable to the intimate painting of small objects and the
Flemings turned to their jewel-like, realistic painting. Rembrandt, Greco and Rubens
are the great and noble exponents of this medium—where a tremendous surge of
the spirit was set free.

New horizons, in similar ways, are constantly appearing and the spirit finds
new channels of expression.

Since Impressionism, and since the the Industrial Revolution, the modern
spirit has developed. We have tried to sense this bond with our contemporaries, to
understand the spirit of these times; so that, while we are aware that many of us
may never be considerable painters, by participating, at least, in the practical attempt
to create paintings of worth we have enabled ourselves to make some insight into
this art spirit of today.

Time and a little reflection, plus the enjoyment of communal effort, have
proved to us the great worth of these painting classes.