Illustration versus Fine art?

My distinction between a commercial approach - an illustration is commisioned to accomplish a specific goal within a time frame at a price. Time is money, the quicker you can finish, the more relatively you are paid.

This inevitably affects how you work. You have to bypass any possible road that might lead you to a mistake for it will waste time and money. You have to rely on what you have done in the past, what you are as being a sum of your History, avoiding the possibility that your client might reject your work if it does not fit in with his/her preconceived idea of what you do, of YOU.

It follows therefore that if you do a fine art painting purely to promote gallery sales, that once something sells, best to stick with the formula. Become commercial. This will affect how you work. The painting thus becomes an illustration in the sense that an illustration fills someone elses need to communicate graphically an idea to others in the most economic way.

This is Marketing. The definition of the types of artworks that sell to whom and for what reason is the topic of another blog perhaps. Most painters I know don't worry too much about this, as long as it sells and the gallery does not take too much of a slice.

This is ok as long as you are aware of what is happening to your creative process.

With pure fine art you can take chances, take risks, explore the unknown and in so doing, grow.

Putting it simply: If you can say:" I dont care if this sells or not, I am doing this for me". Only then can it be pure fine art and not illustration.

Idealistic? - Of course!

On my latest paintings: These minute aspects of ecosystem, slices of life and death.

Small pieces of ecosystems, captured with a digital camera, interpreted/modified on the computer and used as a basis for paintings.

The basic images have little to do with the reality that I experience when I am inspired to capture. They are mere visual records that remind me. Somehow I am able to see beyond the visual at the time of capture, this is the inspiration that I want to communicate in my painting.

But the difficulty is recapturing that inspiration later on when I get around to doing the painting. Practically speaking, this can be months, years later.

Maybe in defense of this, the time between capture and art creation serves as a creative intellectual sorting process, determining not only what it was that inspired me, but how I am to execute and communicate.

I want to then glorify, iconise the subject: Nature as it is, although heightening the interest through use of composition or strong dramatic shadows. To draw the viewer in, to make the viewer want to stay and absorb, as I felt when I first saw the scene and then experienced the long creative process, hours of my own time captured in every brush stroke.

These minute aspects of ecosystem, slices of life and death. Often quite humble scenes that most would ignore. The paintings would then not necessarily be overtly "in your face" - they may be quite quiet and subtle.

I aspire to the creation of "majestic grace" - an artwork that has its own strong life as per many of the paintings I saw at the Louvre - that transend time.