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Oils in 9x9cm by Hiroshi Matsumoto

9x9 painting (9 cm x 9 cm / app. 4 x 4 inch) by Hiroshi Matsumoto

I stumbled across Hiroshi Matsumoto's Oils on Facebook* and am so happy to see someone painting so well, in Oils in a 9x9 painting (9 cm x 9 cm / app. 4 x 4 inch).

I too love oils and paint mostly in small sizes too...
But unfortunately in my home country (India) artists and collectors have completely forgotten the charm of oils and small sized works. The awareness is lacking. Acrylic has taken over.. and it's ugly colours are everywhere!!

Painting in large size is order of the day. Now size is everything as it fetches more money to the artists... and as for the buyer he is too happy to boast of a large work in his office or drawing room walls?!!

I have written about this in my blogs... But this trend continues... No one has the time to look at a painting anymore.

Oils have just vanished from contemporary Indian Art!! Just visit any online Indian art galleries and you will see Acrylic ruling the roost!!

Acrylic is a quick drying synthetic plastic paint.. and paintings can be executed within hours and sold the very next moment... Flushed with new found money the buyers and the painters both are in a frantic hurry. Unfortunately an acrylic (painting) can never have the quality of an Oil...

Acrylic is a flat, unnatural, muddy, dirty, and difficult to mix... fast drying colour.. there is no lustre, no hues.. Most often the painting can look lifeless, flat, 'hard', 'dirty' especially if applied in thin coats with lots of water. I used to paint in Acrylics too.. but I would use it directly from the tube in thick impasto.... it works OK in small sizes.. as one can work on it quickly without getting dry.. but when you try that on larger size work.. even the thick paint will dry off even before you had chance to think what your next stroke or colour should be or want to mix with other colures to creat a hue etc.!!

My humble wish and urge to Art lovers across the world..(and more so to my fellow Indians) please look at Oils, and at Acrylic.. you don't need prior knowledge or training... to spot the difference!! So before buying and investing your precious funds into Art... Take some time to look at the quality of the colours of the works. If no contemporary artists are around to look for works in Oils in India (!!!) maybe one can visit Museums. There were Indian artists till about 1990 who used oils... It is no co-incidence that the art boom in India in the early 2000 and the mass productions of paintings (Art?) in Acrylic happened at the same time!!

A well executed small sized painting in Oil can look like a 'Jewellery Box'... it can have that shimmering quality. Hiroshi's oils surely has that shimmering, translucent quality!!

As painter Hiroshi Matsumoto says:

"I love oil paint, it’s texture, viscosity, slow-drying time and smell...

I never know what it is going to be until it's complete."
 
you can see his works here:
 
http://www.hiroshimatsumoto.com/
 
*
https://www.facebook.com/hiroshimatsumoto#!/photo.php?fbid=211007668941640&set=a.177745932267814.33654.177743925601348&type=1&theater

Paint-By-Night-Sell-By-Day-Acrylic-On-Canvas-Artist

'Acrylic on Canvas'

I am no 'paint-by-night-sell-by-day-acrylic-on-canvas-artist'!!

Is this the only medium available to artists in India!!?

When there are other (better) time-tested medium/s...

So why do most contemporary Indian Artists paint exclusively in Acrylic?

Is it a shortcut to fame and money?!! To paint more and sell faster? An easy way out?!! Or is it because Oil is expensive and takes more time, effort and skill to use etc.?!

While there are only a few artists in the West (especially in Europe) who would paint in Acrylic, there are only a few Indian artists who paint in Oil!!

I am no 'paint-by-night-sell-by-day-acrylic-on-canvas-artist'!!

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I have never hung on (like parasites do) to an art institutionº or go from one Foreign Aid/ Scholarship to another to stay afloat.. I have never tired to get into any art college do my 'Masters' and more!!

I didn't had to create Video Art, installation art etc. to stay in news...

I have kept it simple by the old fashion way, old school style of painting and painting with Oils (mostly) on Linen - the classic time-tested medium of the Masters!! My paintings are simple and the titles are kept as simple as possible... using the the KISS theory: Keep-It-Simple-Stupid!! I know I could have sold more if my paintings were titled say 'Metamorphosis'¹ and not 'Yellow Rose in Blue Vase'!!

I don't go into the territory of 'Fantasia Art' or 'Naive Art' (or is it 'Child Art'?)²

I don't try to take on the Folk or Tribal³ art and reinvent them!!

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Art institutions & Art Scholarshipsº

I went to art college, just after my school years.. I was young and naive then... but realised the first day in there, that I haven't got anything much to learn here... so once I complete my 4 years I ran as fast as I could!! To start my real learning of art!!

Am of course referring here to the tribe of artists; who after they have finished their basic Bachelor degrees in Art went on do their Masters etc and later latched on to any "foreign Study Aid/Scholarships/Freebies"!! Last I heard, some of them are still at it!! It's been more than 20 long years that we graduated from our art college (1990).

I had no idea one has to study (?) so much for so long to become an artist!! The fact of the matter is that these institutions/scholarships are of financial benefits and these artists manage to live off them permanently!!

Metamorphosis¹

During my college days there was a junior who had put up his paintings for our yearly college art show.. and titled them as 'Metamorphosis'.

I knew him as one who didn't know a word of English and of course had never heard of 'Kafka' etc ...so when I asked him,
Why?' and 'Does he know the meaning etc?'

"No, it's to impress the art collectors!!" was his reply with a sly smile!! A fast learner... now his works sell at astronomical prices!!

This is a very old trick in an artists' repertoire.. to keep his works and titles as bombastic, ambiguous as possible.. as display of the artists' maturity and depth of emotion etc... Once I made a list of names, titles of exhibitions, paintings... and showed it to an English professor... He was of course dumbfounded and it made extremely funny reading!! Meaningless, mindless, gibberish rubbish!!! Like most of their work!! But to art loving Indian collectors it must have made some sense.. for they do all rushed in to buy them!!

Child Art²

Example of Child or Naive Art

I don't go into the territory of 'Fantasia Art' or 'Naive Art' (or is it 'Child Art'?)²

For us adults 'Child Art' is no child's play!!
Have you seen a child's painting? They are so beautiful and I don't see any reason for us adults to steal their ideas and paint 'like them' and then sell them to art connoisseur at exuberant prices!!
Its simply not fair to the child!!...

³Folk, Tribal Art and It's Reinvention by the 'Con' temporary artists!!!



Thangka, Tanjore, Kalamkari & Madhubani Paintings (l to r)



In the same way why take the forms from 'Thangka' art or 'Kalamkari'? Let them be... they anyway do a much better job of painting a Buddha or a Krishna!! And they are much more reasonably priced than the ones copied by so called 'contempory artist'!!



These trends can only be explained with a bit of our (Indian) art history.. dating back when Nationalism was in rise during the fag end of nineteenth century 1890s) and beginning of twentieth century (1900-47). Many artist consciously-subconsciously wanted to reject anything which was coming from the West.. Western art etc and so they looked inward, in their backyard.. and to the Oriental art. Artists of that era took folk/traditional art forms and transformed them.. In Bengal this was very prevalent... artists looking for inspiration in Ajanta & Elora, taking forms from Chinese and Japanese art etc. I  don't need to cite examples here... It was a process of evolution and a kind of protest against the imperialism etc.. but that's almost a hundred years ago.. today taking the style, motifs from the traditional art form makes no sense... also if one is so inspired by Thankha, Kalmakari, Worli, Madhubani, ..why not do it the right way: go to the real source, learn the techniques and grammar from a let say, a Thangka guru and follow it like all folk/traditional artists/craftsmen do? And create genuine folk forms? No, the contemporary artist after attending 4-5 years of art college training (learning mostly Western art, style, techniques etc) would go out and make atrocious copy of folk style and sell it off as 'contemporary art'!! It is cheating. Its so unfair as the folk, tribal artists don't command astronomical prices or respect like the 'Con' temporary artists do!!!

Some Paintings Do Have A Story...

Wheat Harvest, Early Summer Noida Villages, India 

Oil on Canvas, 38.5cm x 38.5cm, April 2008. Sold

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Some paintings do have a story...
And this one sure does have one!

It was my first of series of paintings I did in plein air just before the wheat harvest, in fields along Yumuna river in Noida (UP) India.

I went in with my painting equipments et al in the late afternoon ...as in this region the April sun can be very strong early on.. I found the wheat just the right colour.. whitish yellow, ripen..and the plant golden yellow.

Finding a spot I went about starting my work... Working in oils is always messy and complicated and doing it outdoors can be sometimes tormenting!!
I was quite happy this painting came out well... Some don't and then there is a struggle to make it well, and I hate that moment - when the painting is not getting the right look!! Thus immersed in work, trying to finish the painting, I noticed a small girl standing close to my elbow... she blurted out a startled "Hello!!" I realised on the road next to the fields a big black car has quietly stopped by... Next to it her, almost behind my back were here parents. All ogling at the canvas...

Crowds, passerby coming up and asking questions is part of plein air adventure.. unless it's the police or the military, which can be sometimes complicated!!

When I smiled at them, the usual conversation followed...

"Wow! lovely!! You just did that...? We saw you when going towards our farmhouse an hour back... you paint so fast, do you sell? etc etc".

They went away promising to come over to my studio and buying... (which of course they never did!!)

By the time I cleaned all the brushes, palette and packed up, it was dark and I dumped all paints, oils, easels into the back seat and only the wet painting in the dicky of the car- the boot of a car... The biggest problem of oil is to bring back 'wet painting' home safely... My work is thick impasto, with fresh colours like a relief.. a kind of a torte!! One little touch or getting rubbed softly, brushed by anything as gentle as the end of your skirt or your shirt sleeves will completely ruin it...

I kept the wet canvas on the floor of the car dicky.

Which I generally keep empty for wet paintings.

On the way home I stopped by for some tea at my friend's small tea shop next to the fields. Back home I didn't want to open the boot/dicky in the dark and bring out the wet canvas and carry it up three floors... So left it to do so the next day. Rest of my painting gear lies always in the car.

Next day I had some work in the day in Delhi so I left in my car and after finishing my work I drove straight back to the Noida fields... I started a new work as soon as I reached without even taking out the wet one done last evening..so that once done I can lineup the two works and compare and also do the last minute touch ups..

So once done with the second painting I went to my car to open the dicky/boot... and what I saw broke my heart!! In the night I hadn't realised the existence of an old stupid empty plastic bottle!! Which had been using the wet canvas as a dance floor...

So here it was, a finished work had a worthless plastic bottle rolling all over it the whole time I was driving on bumpy roads...

Many of my works are very spontaneous and I don't rub and repaint over and over. I like the strokes to show... And here all those lovely thick layers of colour impasto were all smothered!!  It had never happened before in this scale, though it does happen.

I don't like to sit on a work which I have once finished...

Anyway with a dogged determination I went about recreating. At the end though I doubt anybody can make out that this painting had a makeover?!! Can you?

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