The Art of 

		Learn to recognize that the greatest happiness in life comes in moments of the purest simplicity.		"The first thing God created was the pen" (Koran) "Painting is but another word for feeling" (TA)
		"I believe neither in what I touch or see - Only my inner feeling seems eternal to me" (Gustave Moreau)

Imagination

Memory is the great touchstone of art. When art springs from the recollection of the beautiful, memory is spoiled by outward imitation.
The whole universe is merely a storehouse of images and signs to which fantasy, imagination and association assigns place and value; it is a kind of raw material, which imagination has to work over and transform.
Art is not nature. Art is imagination. Imagination is master over nature.
"Without actually taking opium - as Edgar Allan Poe recommended - who has not known those glorious hours, festal moments of the brain, when the better sharpened senses perceive fuller sensations, when the sky breaks through in an improbably transparent blue to infinite depths, when sound make on the ring of music, colors begin to speak and scents tell of the world of ideas?" (Charles Beaudelaire)

About Art & Life My chief interest lies neither in still lifes nor in landscapes, but in the Figure. It is the figure that best enables me to express the almost religious feeling that i have for life. I don't try to depict in detail all the facial features, or render them one by one with anatomical precision.
If I have an Italian model, who at first sight suggests only the idea of a purely animal existence, I nonetheless discover certain essential features in her, I explore the lines of her face, those which reveal the lofty gravity that exists in every human being.
A work must inwardly contain its whole meaning and convey it to the spectator before he he even knows its subject. (Henri Matisse, notes d'un peintre)

My own theatre is life; in it i find everything, actors and scenery, the noble and the trivial, tears and laughter. Often when I am moved, I cease to be the auditor and become the actor. One could not believe how, in the primitive life, one's opinion change or how the theatre widens. Nothing troubles my judgement of others. I look whenever I, and I alone choose it, without any constraint, without even a pair of gloves... (TA - Thomas Adam)
Music is the most direct way of expression - Maybe then comes painting & drawing, but certainly not words... (TA)

To discuss: The artist is not apart from his work -or- The artist is apart from his work. (TA - tadam@datacomm.ch)

About Art Critics and their Theories

Artists are people who make images. Aestheticians are people who tell other people why artists make images and what the images mean They also tell people why they - the people themselves - either like or do not like the images that artists make.
The artist's point of view is entirely one one of foresight, he has enlisted all his faculties in the making of something that has never been seen in this world before.
The aesthetician however, views the whole process with hindsight. He cannot be expected to anticipate the artist's purposes, he can draw conclusions only on the basis of already existing art, and upon the aesthetic accomplishments of the past. That being the case, the artist is likely to want to claim full tutorship of the work he has produced. But in reading works on aesthetics, he is likely to come upon the theory, that the deeper the meanings of art arise out of some remote source, perhaps on that "passeth understanding" - or at least one presumably beyond his humble grasp.
Thus it remains for some intermediary body of opinion to rise the occasion and to supply the hidden meanings. Such opinion has never been wanting! (Ben Shaw)

Her huge eyes half open like almonds in their shells Burning with the pleasure that her gaze compels

Poem from Alfred de Vigny on the French symbolist painter Gustave Moreau's "Godly Women"- Salomé, Helen of Troy, Delilah, Semele "Godly Women"- Salomé, Helen of Troy, Delilah, Semele

About Seeking and Finding

I seek and then automatcally find - Picasso said - while on the contrary Max Ernst said: I autmoatically find, I do not seek. In his own words, 'the fact that he has succeeded in not finding himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only "achievement" '. The works of art that have resulted from his strange non-quest are the subject of his absorbing survey.

I personally seek and find intuitively and spontaneous at the same time -- this is how I approach my work. It is the seeking after visions that honextly represent my feelings. Iconographic images of primitive man and the idiosyncrasies of post-modern life serve as my inspirations. These sources enable me to transform something mysterious into something tangible. Muted color, purposeful line and a passion for form help to elucidate the psychology of my subject.

About my mixed media and oil painting techniques

 

The surfaces of my mixed media paintings are worked with a combination of techniques applied in various layers. Pigments are thinned to a liquid consistency with different solvents and manipulated, thus achieving diverse effects. Sometimes I mix the gouache and watercolors up with glue, ink, chalk or whatever the academic art professors strictly have forbidden! :-)

I learned very much by studying the great innovations in technique by surrealist artist Max Ernst - collage and rubbing, frottage, grattage and decalcomania -

Scrapings, dry brush, scumbling, palette knife application, and glazes ensue. Glazes capriciously trickle in different directions.
All definitively aid in giving my images a life of their own.

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Last modified on:12-Sep-99 © by TA CyberSultan Webdesign - I try to keep it up to date at all times