Artists

There are many artists in this enormous world that stick to a niche, or one segment of expression, but there are also artists that get their hands into all of arts beautiful forms. The artist, whose work I saw, is one of those special artists who has used every type of art. This artist has told me why settle to one form of expression or even one view. I guess that he is one that believes that variety is the spice of life. He has many works that go back to the age of 12, when he started to take art a little more seriously than his fellow students. He enjoyed art class more than any other subject and loved that no matter what was on the paper there was no right or wrong answer. As he grew so did his art ability along with what was being portrayed in his works. He loved the feeling he got when someone would come up to him and tell him that they really liked his piece of work. This artist grew up in a small town, which is very near this school, and can remember every art teacher he had ever had and what art pieces are from that class or time period. This amazed me because there are college professors, who I have had recently, and I can not even remember their names. The artist grew up with the typical American family having two younger siblings.

To depict a better image of the art work that Travis has done, I wanted to get some idea of what he thought about art, politics, and mostly what drives him to create works of art. By asking Travis some questions I thought that it would give me a better chance at understanding his work. The first question that I had asked him is how he felt about the hurricane disaster in New Orleans and if he thought that the government was doing a good job at handling the situation. He told me that he was happy to see that Americans were joining together to help each other out. He says that many drawings or works of art on Bourbon St. are going to go up in value because he feels that it will never be what it once was and that to rebuild it to half of what it used to be would take much more time and money that the government does not have. He thinks that the art will be close to that of September 11. To try to get an idea of how he draws I asked him what he thought of this quote by Monet. "When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before youÐ'--a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you (Sayre 43)." He said that there is truth to that but that may be the simplest form of a drawing or painting and that a piece of art goes much deeper and more complex. He said just painting shapes seems like a Picasso picture, but he is not putting any work by Picasso down and stressed the point that he actually likes some Picasso drawings.

That brought me to my last question and that question was what inspires you to create any piece of art. He paused and thought a moment, probably to reflect on past works, and told me that all things that are done well are done when the person doing the feat is doing it out of pure passion. He told me that he creates best when something moves him and he is passionate to start a new piece. With that we got up and started to look at some of his art work. As I saw the first piece, I thought about what we had talked about. Thoughts of what had inspired him and why he was so passionate about this drawing were filling my head. The first thought that jumped into my head about this picture was amazing. The detail that was in the picture must have taken an unbelievable amount of time. The picture is in black with the background white and shades of gray, which to me it has the full chiaroscuro spectrum. The lines in this drawing were both expressive and analytical. The shape and mass were dead on in this drawing as well as the scale and proportion. Yet anyone could tell you what the picture wasÐ'...it was a man, who looked to be sixty to seventy years old. The drawing was only of the head of the man. I thought of why the artist would only draw the head of the man. This could mean many things to me. That the importance of this man is his mind, or that this man was a mentor who was very knowledgeable. He could be a very powerful man in some way. The face was so well drawn that I could almost imagine him as a young man. The focal point on the drawing had to be the eyes of the man. I believe that you can tell quite a bit about a person by looking deep into their eyes. The eyes seemed to be looking directly into yours as you looked as this drawing. Even from every angle, the eyes seemed to be their staring right back into yours. This brought up a thought about what the artist was trying to say with this picture. I believe that he was trying to unveil a hidden truth.

When you see a picture as beautiful as this you tend to see your own art as extremely inferior in every aspect. Although the art work differs in artist ability, the artist and I do share some similarities in the elements and design of our art pieces. Like the artist my drawing had many analytical lines. The full spectrum of chiaroscuro was used effectively in both my and the artist drawings. The scale in which my picture was drawn was within the size and shapes of what I was drawing. My drawing had a concentration on a specific portion of what I was drawing. I also chose to draw only the upper region of my still, whereas the artist just to draw the head of the man. Both pictures have a focal point, at least in my opinion. My focal point in the drawing happened to be the yogurt container and the artist's focal point happened to be the man's eyes.

There are many differences between my drawing and Travis' drawing. There is the obvious difference in which his is of a human being and mine is of several different objects. The formal elements of art are very obvious in his drawing. The lines that are on the face all have a purpose and they have a definition of being expressive and at the same time each line had to be carefully drawn which would lead you to believe that they were analytical lines. To understand the purpose of this drawing and emphasis of the eyes in this drawing you have to know the history of the man and what he went through.

The man in the painting grew up in a small town with is father, mother, and his younger brother. Here is where he learned how to be a man. His father was a very strict man and made sure that his two sons fit the mold of a perfect gentleman and soldier. As the two boys grew to men they both enlisted into the military like their father before them. Then the time came for them to serve their country. The war started with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We all know the story and have seen movies made about it. We know that Hitler was the face of the German army. That Ann Frank wrote a diary depicting her time in interment camps.

...