Tuesday, 24 April 2018

The feel of a thing.



 Image result for prokoImage result for john darnielle face close upImage result for I only listen to the mountain goats







The feel of a thing is a pretty abstract thing to be thinking of. And I've been thinking about it a bit lately. The concept first came to me when I was watching a Proko video (He's the white guy in the black dress shirt) I think it was about painting en plein air and he was saying how some landscape artist actually add in or leave out certain things into a landscape to make it as true to the feeling of the landscape as possible, whether it be color, tone, objects, gesture, that kind of thing. which was a really cool concept to me and brought up some thoughts about art and the world. Its just such a cool concept to me, that everything, it doesn't even necessarily have to be a landscape, has a truth to it. It could be a place or a face, a group of people, an organisation, a country, pretty much anything. Deep as shit, right?.

The black guy, Mario Robinson, does mainly portraits but also some landscapes and whole body stuff. He is such a serious guy, this video illustrates it really well. His art is all about capturing a simpler time, his art reflecting an era of solitude and reflection, where people grew old without trying to be young and people had deep and lasting connections with other people, which I guess is why he does a lot of portraits, I love his portraits because even though they are just water and pigment, his people have such a depth to them, like their souls are painted right on their skin. Something that I think is really powerful about art is, as Mario says 'The real power of art is the ability to galvanize and organize all those pigments and materials and pour a soul into it'. Which is also what I love about art, the ability to express complex thoughts, concepts, questions and ideas into a physical space, into the material plane and that our brains have the ability to process and link and relate that to ourselves and the world around us and everything in between. I think that's amazing.

Lastly, the third guy up there is John Darnielle, singer songwriter of the band 'The Mountain Goats'. He co hosts the podcast 'I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats' with writer Joseph Fink of Nightvale Presents. It is a podcast dedicated to the Mountain goats music, each season they cover an album, each episode they cover one song. I think it was the song 'absolute Lithops effect' or maybe it was 'source decay' but he was talking about how it was his favourite song on the album because it was so generic, so nonspecific. because he used musical techniques to capture the aura of the song, of the moment its describing rather than to be more heavy handed and specific in his storytelling. because, in the case of john Danielle, he tends to treasure these unknowns as a tool in his story telling, being non specific and general causes his audience to focus on what his songs are trying to say as opposed to what his songs are literally describing.

This all leads me to my final point, what is it that makes such an abundance of individuality and soul to this world? is it the multitude of idiosyncrasies that fit together to make no two things identical? like snowflakes or finger prints, or is it more of an undercurrent, a soul to this earth that some are more adept at seeing and bringing up to the surface of the world? Is it the poets, the painters, the dancers, the actors, the sculptors, the artists whose objective it is too see the world through soulful eyes and get others too see it too? maybe.