"I like it when one is not certain of what one sees.
We don't know why the photographer (painter) has made such a picture.
If we look and look, we begin to see and are still left with the pleasure of uncertainty."
"It is not where it is or what it is that matters, but how you see it."
Saul Leiter
These are interesting notions in which I find much truth, at least from my perspective.
What 'makes' something interesting? Is it surely not Form in a work? How else can we experience something in the visual world if not through our eyes? And what makes Form? And, can we not find it already-made out in the world, man-made and/or natural? Hence the first image above but rotated on its side. Below is a painting made last year which I have grown to like even if I don't have a clue as to its own. Doesn't an artist want to make something to be seen in a new way? Alas, I personally feel that art has been hijacked by those who simply want to present an image which is easily understood, and one which only confirms our understanding of it. (and I include in that not just those who paint pastiches of flower pots and cypress trees but uber-cool contemporary artists who exhibit LED messages in an otherwise clean empty gallery space.
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