When Does it Become Art?

When Does it Become Art?

I’m asking you!

When do you think it becomes art? Let’s look at the possibilities. It could be the moment the brush touches the canvas or the chisel touches the stone. It could be when you’re laying in bed in the middle of the night and you have a blinding flash of creativity and the next day you bring it to fruition. Or maybe not until you sign your name to it, or any where in between.


For me, it becomes art when the break has taken place between reality and someplace else, when you want to go to the place in the painting even if it’s not a real place. This usually happens at the point when I stop looking at the subject and look only at what I am painting.

What about you? Have you ever thought about it? Do you ever break away from the subject and paint what you feel, not just what you see. I think Janis Sanders achieves this strikingly well. I want to go there to experience what he did.

I have asked some of the artists in the gallery and this is their take on the question, “When does it become ART?”

I have never really thought about your question as you put it, but I have noticed over the years of painting that there seems to be a certain time, while working on a painting, that "something happens."

That "something" is hard for me to put into words.  As silly as it may seem to some people, I have, for lack of a better term, called it the "magical moment."  It's not planned or something consciously orchestrated on my part, but for many of my works, it happens at some point.  I think that this is really the point that determines whether the painting is a successful or unsuccessful work of art.  It's my opinion that all works are art from the very moment you put brush to canvas (or paper or board or whatever). It is in the final execution that determines if it is a successful work of art.     Bill Tomsa

When does my work become art? When what I am working on begins to speak back to me. What begins with a subject that captures my interest/imagination and continues as I strive to capture it's form and substance, starts to take on a life of its own, leading me and urging me on, and giving character and direction to my strokes. The painting ceases to be a work and becomes an experience - an experience of light and depth, moment and color.    Bob Grant

I wrestle with the word "art."  Is it form, function, skill, innovation, ad infinitum?  What defines one as an "artist" instead of a "painter"?  Simplistic perhaps, but art is communication.    Claire Vigneau

I think of art as looking at life and the world through someone else's eyes.  I think my work becomes "my art" when I'm no longer thinking of the technical aspects of painting and I let my inner self take over.  The painting then takes on a life of it's own ,and if it is successful, it's because I stayed on that course.       Celene Farris

The artist sets out each time to hopefully create a work of art — a work of art that will in its entirety and at a point in time express and capture the artist’s feeling that art has been achieved.  A work becomes art  when, on the one hand, it satisfies the artist’s criteria of proportion, composition, color balance as they relate to the interpretation of the subject matter; and, on the other hand, it captures what the artist thinks and imagines is the intrinsic essence of the subject matter.

Art to an artist is a Sisyphian endeavor.  Art is the symbiosis of the artist’s craftsmanship and interpretation at the perceived moment of ideal communication.
Art to an artist is the moment of falling in love with a work at hand.  Art is dependent on the egocentric recognition by the artist that the art work he is working on has become art — the image desired and imagined realized or perhaps another unexpected image more beautiful in his mind’s eye; regardless the realization is unique to the artist and to no one else.    Henry Bonner

Think about it and leave a comment.
 Allen