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Impression, Communicating without being too Literal

Enlarge Houses on the Hillside - Digital Painting - 2005

This is the last piece of last year.  Upon returning from the San Jose airport, I looked over to the left and saw all these white houses nestled in the hills.

To me they looked almost like stones - yet clearly man made. I didn’t look long - a glance really. I was driving on the hi-way - not a time to sight-see really.

But more and more, I think that rendering an impression is less about what I physically see and more about what I want to communicate about what I saw. And then of course, it is every bit as important that the piece itself is interesting, enjoyable, beautiful in its own right.

One of the things I have come to realize - though might seem hard to believe with my style - is that I have actually made the mistake of being too literal and missing the aesthetic opportunity.

Curiously even photographers can feel this way - note quote from book review at amazon.com:

Adams maintained that color photography had no legitimate place in the art of photography because it was too literal to be an art form and that it was not possible to practice it interpretively.

See Also

• From Snapshot to Fine Art
  Notice comments about “too literal” in cropping section - also interesting
• Photograpy Quotes, Sayings for Photographers
  Pertinant quotes to the “too literal” concept - plus fun