karen joyce
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Second thoughts?

7/5/2014

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Why I would never make a good critic parts 1-4.

One. 
I don't really like saying nasty (even constructively nasty) things about specific work - there's (nearly) always something to like for some reason or other.  Ok, sometimes a very small something, but it's someone's artistic endeavour and I don't know that anyone should be discouraged too much.  Besides which I don't feel that I have the right.

Two.  Or the knowledge.  It's generally seen as a mark of ignorance to say anything along the lines of 'I don't know much about art but I know what I like', but broadly that's always been my approach (go on, say it, so I'm ignorant).  Yes, I can see consummate skills and still not like where the work ends up, but if I like something I'm liable to be far less critical.  Not a terribly objective observer.

Three.  As I've mentioned before, I don't always pay sufficient attention.  If something doesn't grab me, I don't necessarily look at all, and thereby miss a lot of quiet beauties and slow burners, I'm absolutely sure.

Four.  I change my mind a lot.  Which is where this chain of thought began.  Having flipped my way through it a number of times since Saturday, I'm staring at the Printfest exhibition catalogue

and realising that what I really need is a return visit.  Preferably in a slower, emptier hall and without a tedious drive behind me and another one ahead of me.  I'm pretty sure that in the end I went round everyone but equally I know I dismissed quite a lot of the work without due attention, and looking through the catalogue makes me wonder just how many other prints, if I saw them again, would wow me.  However, I think the point is that it almost certainly needs to be a second visit, not just a better first visit, and that was never going to happen for the printfest.  But I'll bear all of this in mind next year.
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    Hi there

    I make prints and book arts, though nowhere near as often as I'd like - no good reason, just an inability to get on with things.  I occasionally go on about landscape (with which I am mildly obsessed) and various of its elements, and I like to pass comment on exhibitions I visit.

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