Windy Dress Girl in Moonlight (Acrylic on Canvas)

I feel like I’m being trolled. Here we have yet another painting with way too much black, blue and purple. I blame Smart Phones and their pesky apps and the companies that market them. Have you SEEN how many phone app icons are blue?!? It’s insane. I wind up searching and searching for an app that is right in front of me, because almost all of the icons on my phone’s screen look the same: 75% of them are BLUE! 

In advertising and logo-designing, blue is everywhere because it tests as a soothing, relaxing color for most people. It’s true. Google it!

Blue, and black, and purple have the opposite effect on me. Especially when on a canvas. What is the opposite of soothing? Enraging. And relaxing? Agitating.

Anyway, this is fairly typical “young girl” art. I’m willing to bet money that the artist is somewhere between 13 and 18 years old. I could be wrong though. I’m not right 100% of the time. It’s probably closer to ehhh somewhere around 94.5% of the time.

So anyway. Sue. Listen to me. Stop painting this Bratz doll / Billie Eyelash / TikTok Junk Food art. I’m almost certain you have something within you that is actually worth saying with paint and canvas. 

You can do it!

Birds in Tree (Acrylic on Canvas)

Sigh. Okay. So…it’s not awful. But it is bad. In the sense that this, and so many paintings like it, are seemingly representative of what I’ve decided to start calling The Wayfair.com School of Art. Which is to say art that is just…THERE…man. Its purpose is to take up space and to not say much of anything useful and to be totally benign, much like an unsuccessful tumor. Art that is only marginally better than…empty space on a wall. And sometimes, sometimes it’s not even that. In lots of cases, I’d rather have the empty wall.

Damnit. Okay, the branches aren’t bad. The silhouettes look like birds. But…there’s too much black and too much blue (see my previous statements regarding black, blue and purple.) And not enough of anything worth saying or doing.

Try harder next time Kat. Don’t let me down.

Sky, Fence, Stars (Acrylic on Canvas)

It’s just not that great. And what are those yellow balls in the air? Sorry. 

Michelle, I feel like you can do better. I have faith in you. Next time maybe…

Aurora Mermaids (Acrylic on Canvas)

Again with the black. Too much damned BLACK. Why does this black keep happening? Amateur artists everywhere: please listen to me. Stop using so much black, and blue, and purple. But mainly: stop it with the black. You’re killing me with the all the black.  

Bears (Colored Paper Cutouts on Paper)

It’s decent, nice. I wasn’t sure I would include it but I decided I would. We have a handful of “not painting”-type art here, the occasional wood carving or mosaic, etc etc. So there’s a precedent. Still. As okay as this is, as I look at it I begin to feel that it is out of place here.

I may have it expelled at a later date.

Mirror and Sink (Acrylic on Canvas Board)

(Value Village Art Gallery Favorite)

Why is it that the most amateurish of art is signed whereas the really good stuff, like this, so often isn’t?

I’m generalizing of course. 

But this painting, right here? It MOVES me. It is alive. It is organic. Organtic. Real. From the Gut. There is movement though nothing is in motion. There is emotion. This painting is a moment in time that we can all feel. Here before you right now is ART. The real deal, despite how understated it is without being affectedly, poseurishly, faux understated. 

All this going for it and…there is no…freaking…signature.

I want to know who painted this. And where their head was at, at the time. And if they are going to keep at it, painting-wise. 

Artist: paint more. The world needs you.

Rural Scene (Acrylic on Canvas)

Really nice bit of Americana / American Gothic here. Legitimate, effort-expended, doing-one’s-best art. We need more like it. As usual, I find myself wondering what the story is here? 1983 is practically an eternity ago in post-SocialMedialandvilleburgshire terms. Who was Hazel Merchant? What has become of her? Why did this painting wind up at VV?

We may never know.

Repeat Offender? (Acrylic on Canvas)

This soooooo feels like a painting I’ve already installed here in the past, but if it is I can’t seem to find it. It has the usual overabundance of blue and black that we see so much of (blue and black being the most common go-to color scheme for amateur artists hereabouts.) Other than that, this isn’t a terrible painting per se: it’s just kind of blah. 

Which I just now wonder: is “blah” short/slang for blasé? 

The More You Know  💫

Abstract (Acrylic on Canvas Board)

Arguably the worst painting of the day. But the others were so darned GOOD (well, most of them) that this one is, well, kinda sorta maybe not bad, relatively speaking. If the artist had ditched the butterflies and if the blank canvas had been filled in with red or orange, I actually think he or she could have been onto something here. But that’s just me playing Armchair General. It’s still not bad (even with all that blue!)

Branches (Acrylic on Sheet Metal?)

This one is a little odd. Painted onto some kind of metal and then framed. It’s…unusual: not bad or great per se, just kind of out-of-the-ordinary. 

It’s…something. I think it’s okay.

Tugboat (Acrylic on Canvas)

Another nice one by the person who did the cabin painting below, I believe? This is “not bad” in a way that very few of our recent paintings have not been “not bad” recently. Which is a very left-handed way of saying it’s good, I suppose? But I really do like this. It feels…real. Organic. I’m not saying this is old, but it feels un-jacked-up in the way that the entirety of the 21st Century (and even some of the 20th Century) exhibited so much jacked-up-ness.

Nice job, artistic-type person!