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| 9x9 painting (9 cm x 9 cm / app. 4 x 4 inch) by Hiroshi Matsumoto |
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/
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1 comment:
Thanks Animesh,
I think you are right about the small size works. Nowadays almost in every field it is the size that matters.
These works really leave some impression of Haiku like small but significant poetry in my mind.
Thanks and dobra noc,
Mandar
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