Hey Ross--

I do think it would be better if you posted two or three at a time instead of the video (but the music does seem to go with it). I'm speaking way outside of my expertise (for all I know there are tons of stuff out there just like this), but it seems you have a real voice in your work (sorry, it's the lingo I'm comfortable using). The second is by far my favorite, and I like 10 and 11 a lot too. The few that followed 11 (with the lines through-- I dunno how to say it-- digital static ??), not so much.

JB

Ross,
Intrigued by all the discussion about the validity of you posting this video, I had to look.
I was originally misled by your comment concerning Alice Spring. It led me to the expectation of paintings done by the members of the community; I have looked at artwork by the aborigines in your neck of the woods before.

These remind me very much of outsider art, and that is not a negative comment. They are very two dimensional, and there is a wonderful use of strong color.

The music, which you say is an integral part of the video, is not what I expected. Easy-going guitar when I expected something more tribal. Who knows, maybe the music is typical of the community as well? This makes me think of haiga where there is to be a juxtaposition of the visual and the written. The sometimes riotous colors could be perceived as screaming for those tribal drums while the music you chose to play is quiet; a juxtaposition of elements in the video.

I leave it to others to comment on other elements of the video.

OK, I've looked at 'imagined seascape', and in my opinion it is somewhat better than what you've posted here, but only by a hair. I don't think this is the place for me to go into detail explaining my lack of enthusiasm.

If you feel you can only benefit from "appreciative" comments, and your response to less enthusiastic comments is "I don't expect to thrill everyone," I suppose I don't understand the function of this forum. There must be a critical vocabulary available to make the case that there's more going on in these pictures (and in the imagined seascape) than I'm seeing. I do not rule out the possibility that someone who takes the time to explain what I may be missing could actually teach me something and lead me to appreciate this more. I have benefited from "art appreciation" courses in the past, and the teachers didn't just order me to like things, but instead offered insights that helped me to see what I had been overlooking.

Ross,
I looked at 'Imagined Seascapes' as well when I read your suggestion.

It also reminds me of Outsider Art, not a negative in my book. I think that in any kind of art, whether written or visual, the reader or observer wants to be able to take his own experience and relate it to that which he reads or sees. And isn't that what we, as artists, want to have happen with our audience?
'Imagined Seascapes' requires less of me in order to understand it; it is something identifiable. 'Alice' requires more of me: It requires that I look beyond the identifiable toward the use of color, shape, texture, movement. I think immediately of my great love of black and white photography that requires the same of the viewer.
'Imagined Seascapes' is nice, but I like 'Alice' better because it is more open-ended. 'Alice' allows you to look and imagine more outside the box. To some, 'Alice' will be like art made by a child; aren't all of us visual artists child-like in seeing what we see and not as our grown-up minds tell us what we're seeing?

There's a huge difference between an adult creating art that has "child-like" qualities and the art a typical child will produce. I don't agree with you that children see more accurately than adults, as a rule, or that adults are more likely than children to be fooled by their minds into seeing something that isn't there. More often than not, a child's drawing will reflect lack of artistic skill rather than a true sense of what the child is seeing. A child is not seeing more truly than an adult when he draws a house as a square with a triangle on top, or a person's neck as a single straight line. I have observed talented artists develop from childhood over the course of years, and just as with any other art (writing, music, etc.) they tend to get better, not worse. When they really have talent and drive, it's a beautiful thing to watch.

Please remember, folks, we are critiquing the video, not the individual images, because the video is one work. Let's discuss the images only in how they relate to, add to, detract from the video as a whole. The "art" is really incidental to this. What if it was a film about waste management? I'm not saying Ross' art is not lovely, just that it's not the point for this critique. Is the video well made? cohesive? is it sequenced well?

Later, if Ross wants to post images one at a time, we can go into detail about single pieces.

Michael, you said, speaking of commenting about the art..."believe me - I don't believe that my comments would help our relationship." I am assuming this means you don't like Ross' art. Ok, well, brutally honest comments are what will save this art board from being a vanity board. We NEED that.

Will you please critique this video as a single piece and use that skillful, scalpel tongue of yours to the art forum's benefit, speaking only of the video and not the videographer? Pretty please?

James, the term "voice" is used in visual art too.

Lorraine, I completely agree with you about the contrast of the images to the music. This seemed disconnected to me on my first viewing. I plan to watch it again and see if I like it or not.

The individual images are most of what comprise the video, so I don't see how commenting on the individual images isn't also commenting on the entire video. If a sonnet were offered for critique, it would certainly be valid to comment on individual lines even though they are presented together as a single poem. There's no way that the video can be successful if the pictures that it uses are not successful.

Roger, this is true, however as you can see further up the thread, we have had a spat over this, so this is why I ask that we please address the video. Yes, the art is part of the video. Is it presented well?

Lorraine, thanks for your comments. The piece is titled Alice Paintings, 'desert paintings' appeared in the YouTube but that was just the name of the uploaded file. While I was in Alice Springs, there was a lot of greenery around, the Australian desert 'blooms' occasionally with both flowers and grasses and so 'desert' is slightly misleading.
Also I did at no stage set out to 'paint the desert' so the works are simply influenced by where I was living.
The guitar work is similarly more reflective of my mood while in Alice Springs (my mother had died the year before) and despite my many aboriginal friends I was very much alone and a long way from family.
Technically the piece is rather amateurish, I have no technical expertise in this area and the music is too soft and I did not know how to edit out the several mistakes in my guitar playing. (If anyone is wondering the music is an original composition.)
Similarly the paintings are not in any one style nor do they tell a story.
I hope the piece 'hangs together', that the mood of the music does compliment the paintings and the piece overall conveys something of what I felt, both joyous and sad.
Central Australia is an extreme environment, both socially ( Alice is a 60% aboriginal town ) and environmentally no place seems more inhospitable. But it is glorious in it's grandeur and sense of freedom, you feel as little as a bull ant and yet as immense as the sky.

Roger, it is perfectly fine with me if you don't like the paintings within the piece, but as you admit you know little about modern art, so you unable to say why you don't like the paintings, to do so you would need to have the expertise, to know the history of art and where my different styles ( 5 in the piece) fit in and how they compare. Someone who knew what they were talking about would immediately see for example that some of the paintings are influenced by Rothko, some by the op art of Riley, many by impressionist techniqes developed by for example Monet. But this is the sort of expertise not found here at Erato, so I don't expect crits to be of that nature.

Thanks Sharon. Really had no idea.

I think, Roger, children's art has been studied, and some of it is genius. So, you could have thrown away a masterpiece. Who knows...