Introduction and my relationship with art

        This is the personal and academic blog of Shawn McCarthy. For those of you familiar with me you will know that I have a hot and cold relationship with art in general. I have very intense eras of creation and then there are times when I cannot make any type of art at all. Some of it has to do with the fact that for me art is about an emotion that I am trying to express. If I don't have anything I want to express then I don't. The last time I did anything consistently with art was in North Pole High School's AP art program, in 2006. My primary medium was graphite and charcoal. I started to move into acrylic painting with some mixed media, but I found that to be altogether awful. Acrylic dries incredibly fast in the Alaskan air. Art to me is a refinement in technical skill, a visual organizational tool, and a therapeutic process. If the medium interferes with either of those items then I am not interested in it. It doesn't serve me. I should have perhaps tried oil painting or something where I could potentially change what I had made later on. 

        

       I work as an avionics mechanic out at Eielson where I have been employed for about the last 15 years roughly speaking. I am pursuing a degree in Justice so that I can hopefully attend Law School and eventually become a Public Defender in the State of Alaska. I have dabbled off and on with art. This blog will primarily be focused on evaluating and critiquing art. Before I can really dive into that I need to explain some prolegomena so that anyone reading this can understand why I choose the pieces I do.

        1. Technique: that is the artist has a technique I admire and I would one day like to learn. Not only that, it's a technique that I know if I am patient with myself, I might be able to attain one day. 

        2. Historical significance: I like paintings, sculptures, and drawings, that are significant to a facet of history. 

        Art is a pretty good mirror of the time in which it was created. It can serve to reinforce ideas or express concepts that are important in the given context. It is also a window into the mind of the artists. Sometimes these ideas have historical significance. I appreciate art that expresses those historical flashpoints tactfully in a medium. One of these that I would like to share to emphasize the point is this piece by Willem van de Velde. When I was in Amsterdam two years ago I was at the maritime museum there. They had an entire section dedicated to naval art but also a subsection of Dutch painters. I don't know a whole lot about naval history, especially as it concerns the Dutch. My bailiwick has typically been in studying Byzantium, so I am not as familiar with Dutch Naval history, but I can appreciate what he was able to communicate to me using pen and ink. To see this art in person, to put some perspective on it, it's about 9 feet long and about 4.5 feet high. It's a wall. It's paper, with the medium being pen and ink. We can get into why I like that in a moment. So this wall that he made, probably took him about a month or two to make. The level of detail is astounding. He is drawing a naval battle with conservatively about fifty ships. There is a high contrast between the white blank sky and the incredibly busy ocean with the fighting ships on there. This drawing has been folded a couple of times once in the middle and every quarter, which is a shame. I am not one for taking lots of pictures so the fact that I stopped to take even a few of this masterpiece means that it enamoured me.         

         

       

        What I mean by enamored me is that here was a medium I actually enjoy,( pen and ink using an inkwell is something I enjoy) from a master in the medium, telling me a story I don't know, and teaching me if I am open to it how to take my technique to the next level. I didn't know this person existed. I didn't know this work existed, and if I hadn't been on temporary duty in my military career I would have never known this existed at all. I wasn't looking for something like this when I saw it. When I saw it, I recognized that this might be someone I might be able to learn from by researching their portfolio and could potentially give me inspiration. I haven't tapped into that yet, but I recognize a good source of technical skill and historical rooting that I appreciate. This art makes me want to know more about the Dutch Navy. It reminds me that I am still learning in my art journey and that when I am ready I know where I need to focus to attain the next level.