Remembrance about what this blog is all about.

Art is the expression of one's understanding and vision of reality in a technique of his choice (technique that he masters). Technique and content are thus the two components of whatever art form. This was true in the past, remains true today and shall remain true in the future.

Mastering a technique does not mean having been schooled, mastering a technique means virtuosity in the practice of a technique. Schooling can help someone to master a technique but it is the individual who in the last instance will exercise and as such, the exercise, the practice of a technique is what after some time will give the individual the mastery.

Speaking of art, we know for a sure fact that technique and content are inseparable. Good technique with poor content results in shallowness and poor technique with interesting content results at best in unfinished works. Thus technical mastery + rich content is what gives art works.

With the 20th century came an accelerating rhythm of technical changes that led to an overflow of information. Humans were gradually plunged into a maelstrom of noise and images. Total confusion resulted, art lost its meaning and we humans lost our way.

Observing this reality is not enough, we have to understand it to be able to orient ourselves in order to find back our way.

This blog is about my understanding of our human reality (total confusion) and my own search for our human WAY. Surely enough my thinking centers on visual arts, to be more precise painting for this is what I spend the most time at. In my first sentence I wrote "Art is the expression of one's understanding and vision of reality in a technique of his choice". So my work centers on my understanding and vision of reality. But this is not given by the movement of the brush or by my painting technique. My vision of reality comes from the effort that I consciously make at understanding this reality through reading and searching for answers and this passes through the study of history, culture, economics, politics and science.

Our human reality is made of total confusion and thus it is only natural that the arts have been for some time now mired in confusion. But when it is clearly established that confusion reigns what becomes paramount is the search for a way out of this confusion. Knowledge of the confusion is not enough, we have to give sense to our lives and this is only feasible through knowledge of our human histories and civilizations. Modern sciences do not bring sense they only make sense when they come as an extension of historical and civilizational understanding.

In other words, I believe that the artists' mission in the 21st century is to bring sense to our reality and thus it ensues that artists have to be thinkers and philosophers.