Essay on the "Rules" of Art: Don't Drink the Turpentine!

By M.C. Poirier

When we are labouring with unmastered tools and techniques, we create interesting images, because we are interesting people. When we GO, as only someone at ease of usage with his tools CAN go, we create our own brand of magic. Beginning or untrained artists, are, for the most part, still fascinated with their tools, not their thoughts. There are many books written on this subject. This is an area I'd like to explore more. I have explored it for myself, to some extent, and for the artists I have taught and re-taught - the most difficult of them those I had to free from iron-bound misconceptions. It's easy to question whether I just handed them another set of misconceptions, rather than free them from all misconceptions. The answer is different for each individual who went through my full 30-class theory course, then at least one year of workshops after that. The ones who haven't finished this program yet, are still moldable/unmoldable. The answer depends more on what the individual was willing to receive than in what I was willing to teach. The more rules they applied to non-art areas, the more difficult they were to free in art. There is some truth to the basic bohemianism of artists. What I teach is based on these principles: A visual artist's work is based on, and aligned with or against, the human eye and its perception of environment via light. The eye uses light to gather information, which the mind then interprets, and re-interprets, and uses as raw material for imagination and memory. The light has source, direction, intensity and colour. The artist's main tools to communicate thought are LINE, COLOUR, and CONTRAST. variations and juxtapositions of these create effects. the artist knows and chooses the effects to be created and uses them to communicate thought, emotion, reality, unreality, etc. The only "rules" an artist should follow are those pertaining to the technical usages of materials: eg don't drink the turpentine; to make your oils crack and fissure like old paintings, break the 'fat on lean' rule; and, if you prefer that the colours in your paintings be the same ones you painted into it, 5 years later, use permanent pigments and professional materials. All other 'rules' aren't really 'rules' of art, they are rules of critics and cultures, and are to be seen as such and replaced with the factual data concerning the subject of the 'rule'. Example: "you should always have 3 objects in a painting" as a rule, makes no sense, on any grounds. The data: there are specific effects created depending on the number of objects made evident in a painting, based on normally functioning human stereoscopic vision, and these are: one object, centered: motion stopped, target fixed one object, off-center: target in motion even number of objects: 2,4 or 6 (some can span attention that much), gives a sense of closed spaces and intimacy, the degree of tightness depending on the proximity of the objects one to the other odd number of objects: 1,3, or 5, gives an openness, a sense of "the missing wall", and a reaching beyond the middle-ground space into the back ground, giving a sense of depth orientation. (Note: this can be used with other factors in a painting to create special spatial effects eg: a solid, impenetrable back-ground to make the viewer bounce back and forth quite rapidly between the fore and back- ground spaces, creating a breathlessness of motion.) objects numerous: many made evident: effects of (confusion and chaos, anarchy) or (comfort, security in numbers) or (disassociation and anonymity) etc etc. depending on lines, colours and contrasts used. The rule that 'there should always be 3 objects' can now be integrated into a scale of effects created and deliberately chosen or mutated (eg three objects in uncomfortable juxtapositions). It is no longer a dead-end, cast in concrete and not fully comprehensible. As to styles, detailed realism is one, as is ultra-realism, expressionism, cubism etc etc. These are stylistic preferences and do not reflect artistic skill. The more that computers can be programmed to create realistic objects on a 3D matrix of pixels, the more a 'picture maker' will have to express some 'soul', (meaning emotion and thought), to ever classify as an 'artist'.

Who I am: M.C. (Mc, Mic, Mick or Mickie, it's still me) POIRIER. An Algonquin/French who writes and paints at my studio in a wooded country environment. Writing has always been part of my life, as the cardboard boxes of old poetry attest. Painting, I started in 1987. Returning to nature full-time after a successful 18-year career in an another creative field, systems analysis, I have taught myself to paint in oils, acrylics, and watercolours. Be sure to visit her official site as well! Image: Self-Portrait, 20 x 24, collection of the artist