Art is everywhere, and a significant portion of the population creates art work in some form or another. So what makes one creation a masterpeice, and another just a nice painting.
I believe that talent is a myth, or perhaps not as significant as people may think. When people suggest that an artist has a lot of talent, and that they could never do that, what they are overlooking is the fact that he or she has worked for a long time to get where they are today. What seperates the true artist from the spectator is the drive and desire to create. To take the failures and setbacks and learn from them, and to carry on. It takes many hours of practice to become really good at anything, from playing the violin, to writing novels, to painting, but even then a person may have superb technical skills, but still may only produce lifless work. Many studies suggest that as many as 10,000 hours of practice are required to become an expert. The people that are at the top of their respective fields are there because they never gave up. But being an expert is not a guarantee that a masterpeice will result.
I feel that what makes a masterpiece is the emotion that comes through when it is created. A landscape painting can easily be nothing more than a painting of mountains and trees, or it can evoke deep feelings in the viewer. How does this happen? First of all the artist has to have an emotional attachment to the subject he is painting, and if he feels it strongly enough it will show itself in the finished product. Think of it like this. When you look at a painting what do you feel. Does it trigger a strong memory, do you hear the birds singings, feel a breeze blowing, imagine yourself there. Or do you go, oh, that's a nice picture? A masterpiece is something that a viewer keeps coming back to again and again because it days something to him or here. It may not be the same thing each time, but there is always something that brings them back.
Okay, so now that I think that I have figured out what may or may not make a masterpiece, how to I make my paintings masterpeices. Well I am not sure. I think that I may have touched on works that almost trigger that feeling, but usually I create paintings that people go itsn't that a nice painting, and not more. The trouble is that I can looks at the painting and get the feeling, but does anyone else. Well there's the problem. I guess I just have to put my heart and soul into all of the works that I make, and hope that it comes through in the finished product. Art, like anything else, can either be a job, or it can be a passion that you are driven to do.
