Master's Theses

Document Type

Thesis - campus only access

Date of Award

Summer 1960

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Art

Advisor

Committee Chair

Abstract

Within the creative act, I find that words are inadequate to describe the mysterious process of creation or even the finished painting. One can only speculate on the reason why artists follow one direction or another. Never-the-less, one is struck by how much their intentions have in common and by the similarity of problems or experiences referred to. Sometimes expressed with obvious difficulty, they will never-the-less tell something of the passion, struggle, adventure and discovery that go into the act of creation. There remains the most important thing of all, the work of art itself. When I paint I have no idea or prescribed formulas about painting: forms, color, materials, and their synthesis are beyond words, inexpressible. What l write is just an attempt--only an attempt at comprehension of what affects ma end what is for me a necessity. I believe that a painter reveals more of himself in the way he works, by the description he can give of it, than by stating his intentions or his ideas on art. As for me, I have not what one would call an imaginary model nor even a precise intention: I work, guided by an inner impulse, a longing for certain forms, colors, materials, and it is not until they are on the canvas that they tell me what I want. Within my painting there is not an associated pictorial image, but a concrete sensational image, an image of an indeterminate shape, and imprecise colors, which perhaps come from a deeper layer of the unconscious, with no immediate perceptual associations from the external world; thus, having life, and existence of its own. I paint in response for harmony and unity and for vitality and pleasure; to produce visual images of sensuous and physical experience. It is from this sequence of desires, this series of impulses that are almost instinctive, and the interrogative of the combined forms, colors, and materials brought to me by these impulses, that the picture is born.

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Rights

© 1960 Arnold D. Flesher

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