Sunday, October 7, 2012

Real Life

I seem to be pulling through my little crisis on the energy front having nodded off only once today, and that being to Copland's Billy The Kid suite which I always find a touch soporific (in a good way!) And I must put on record that yesterday was by no means entirely wasted as I spent an hour or so of it viewing the art works on display of those of our graduating students who opt for Art as a subject. Sadly there are only about ten students who did so for this cohort; happily they all produced work that more than justified their option.

Whatever energy I lacked was compensated for by the abundance of it not so much on display as inherent in every detail of what the students had produced. One or two of the artists were strikingly single-minded in their choice of medium and subject; others notably more eclectic, unfixed. Virtues in both approaches, methinks. Similarly there was a wide range in terms of emotional investment in the work on offer. Some of it overtly, almost painfully, expressive; a fair amount, in contrast, wryly, almost wilfully, detached.

As with last year it wasn't difficult to find something from each artist that I would have paid good money for. And, yet again, it would be no surprise at all to hear of one of them making it big in the future. Yet, curiously, that didn't seem to me to be what the work was all about. They'd made something big and splendidly alive now, which is all that really matters.

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