You’re in a cave, it’s pitch dark, you’re holding a silk thread, and you move one inch at a time forward, because the secret you want is deep inside …
You have to make a choice each time you draw. It is striking how different artists will be attracted to different landscape elements. That is one of the exciting aspects of landscape drawing and painting.
I started Berlin Collective because there wasn’t an international artist network platform, and there seemed to be a great need for this to promote international discourse and advancement in the arts.
Executive Director Ira Goldberg interviews Frank O’Cain, abstract painter.
I think it’s important to be able to paint exactly what you want. For me that meant not having to do illustrations or take portrait commissions for a living. I had to be independent.
“At this moment I find myself political just by painting. Every time I paint an abstract picture that relies on color I think it’s a political statement.” —Pat Lipsky
“In my view, one’s strengths are incredibly important. That’s where people should go, not to their weaknesses, not to the things they have the greatest difficulties with unless, for some reason, they must.”
I believe my contribution is in the realm of innovative design and idiosyncratic skill. I understand how to be effective in process; I understand the impression that is on its way and how to avert potential compromise.
An artist makes art, and he demands the credentials of art. He’s investigated art, and he knows what art is. It’s not anatomy; it’s not proportions; it’s not brilliant execution; it’s not photographic likeness; it’s not journalism; it’s not individual pain. It is opening up the elements that make those pieces of art perpetually fresh, timeless.
What factors make a painting worthy of the term “great”? A video presentation by painters David A. Leffel and Sherrie McGraw about “abstract realism.”