NOTHING HURTS IF YOU'RE ANGRY ENOUGH Print

I am a professional artist and I find myself adrift in the current world of art; I just don’t know what’s good or bad anymore. What I consider beautiful has been replaced by unlovely daubs and deliberate gaucheness. Nobody draws anymore, they practice the trendy art of ‘mark making’. Immature drawing is lauded and sure, graceful lines born out of years and years of practice don't seem to be considered any more. I thrill at the drawings of Degas and Picasso, of Raphael, Gericault or Ingres and the raw, urgent lines of Egon Schiele! I love the sanguine studies of Italian old masters. Who now can master the foreshortening of a face in three-quarter view? I look at and study art the whole time. If I'm lost, how baffled is the general public? The rarefied, self satisfied art world is busy tunnelling up its own backside and in so doing is alienating artists and art lovers alike. I'll continue to draw in my own fashion, hoping that one day I’ll be able to produce work just half as competent as artists who lived 400 years ago! Martha sounds younger than Margaret, my real name!