What do you want from Art?

[ohheckyeah]

53. I think art is very personal for the artist.

We recently had a photo contest, one I thought about and did a lot of preparation for. I bought a flower that I thought was interesting in form since it was a black and white photo contest. I set it up in my light box, adjusted the lights many times, took many photos and finally got just what I wanted.

A couple of days later I walked outside and noticed that the fruit tree, the one I often scorn for it's lack of fruit, was in bloom. Blooms were cascading down from the tree and I had an emotional response to the vision of those blooms. I photographed the blooms and that's the photo I entered. Did it do well? No, it didn't. Maybe the other photo would have but I had no emotional connection to it - I knew it was contrived. The moral is I entered the one that spoke to me (and pretty much just me, LOL), but it was an honest photo full of emotion and even gratitude for the silly non fruit bearing fruit tree. It was personal even as the telling of this story is personal and hard for me to share.

When I look at art, I want to feel the artist's emotional connection. I don't have to like the actual subject matter, but I want to know the artist felt something.