I love John Pototschnik. If you don't know him you can find a link to his work here. And while you are there sign up for his monthly newsletters. They're wonderful!
John is an artist whose values I really admire, and I am proud to call him my friend. He’s made his living as an artist almost- if not all -of his adult life. He's also one of the most respected artists in the United States today, and we had the pleasure of having him and Marsha, his wife, here last year for a workshop that my husband Jackie and I hosted. He will be coming back next year to teach with me- in April of 2011. While he was here last year I purchased one of his beautiful light filled landscapes. Every day when I look at it, I am aware that there is a reason his painting prices are triple mine! He is an amazing! He's also smart. I get his newsletters and he recently had lots of interesting things to say about “painting movements.” I’m including a small quote from that newsletter and contrasting that with a confession that Picasso made about how the art world is sometimes a little pretentious.
Here is John's quote:
"In the art world ........there is a definite move toward rep-resentational art. Young artists recognize the devastation of the last generation and are demanding something different. They want sound training. They want their vocabulary restored so that they can speak with a clear voice once again, as artists of old, to an audience more than ready to listen."~John Pototschnik
Contrast that statement with this quote from Pablo Picasso in 1952"
"From the moment that art ceases to be food that feeds the best minds, the artist can use his talents to perform all the tricks of the intellectual charlatan. Most people can today no longer expect to receive consolation and exaltation from art. The 'refined,' the rich, the professional 'do-nothing,' the distiller of quintessence, desire only the peculiar, the sensational, the eccentric, the scandalous in today's art. I myself, since the advent of Cubism, have fed these fellows what they wanted and satisfied these critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my mind. The less they understood them, the more they admired me. Through amusing myself with all these absurd farces, I became celebrated, and very rapidly. For a painter, celebrity means sales and consequent affluence. Today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the work: Giotto, Titian, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown – a mountebank. I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest."~Pablo Picasso, 1952
It is so interesting that they both are celebrated artists- but there is a big difference...John paints honestly and he is a fulfilled person. He is a blessing to know and I feel privileged to know him.
Here is a Link to the Art Renewal Center's -2004 ARC Salon's Winning Landscape Painting by John Pototschnik that won in 2004.
