Joining an Artist Coop part 4

Yesterday was a cold and cloudy day with the morning giving us the only chance to get the dogs out for their run through the woods. As I stepped out of the ground floor door I encountered my neighbor, Ken. He was holding a piece of his work – a found piece of deadwood that he proudly says he never alters but paints in the things he sees, i.e. animals etc.. In this case it was a castle built out of this enormous craggy wood. His question was whether he should leave a painted snarling dog head or take it out. Now to put this all in a perspective, he is a primitive, self taught, artist and yet he has never tried to be "more" than he is, so he has managed to create a number of very interesting pieces. I  bought one that sits in my living room called the sun bather. Here was an easy suggestive fix. Never, I told him, allow your work to be inconsistent. And the beauty of the work lies in consistency. That all he paints is organic to the shape of the wood and when a knot is formed and it becomes organic like an eye then he has painted it such, but here he painted a snarly dog head without any wood appendage to help that idea along, thusly becoming inconsistent with the general idea of his work, that is to find natural wood pieces that look like "something" and paint that something out of or into the wood. Here is the essence to coops. They raw talent exposed to a public that doesn’t have a chance to see this raw talent, a group of local artists serving themselves to their public without the official gallery owner/manager. Ken hasn’t joined and as yet I can’t see what benefit he would derive from it except his three pieces on the group site.

Advertisement