Art has influence!

From the cave paintings of Lescaux France… to the Sidewalks of New York today, artists have expressed their humanity, their culture. Artistic character, fear and passions can all be illustrated in mediums. From the graphic of a line drawing to the color and texture of a wall- size mural. Visual art can influence as well as decorate our environment and color and design can crystallize our emotions!

Artistic license has no boundaries other than those society sets for it, or imposes, given how threatened it feels.

Like the performances of the Shakespearean era they commented politically on local characters and policies thru relationships of the characters. Artists of today also explore the arena of visual commentary.

Political cartoons dramatize and magnify our biases and issues in caricature. The “funnies” in the Sunday paper have long illustrated various aspects of daily and social life to help us laugh at ourselves.

In this digital age the manipulation of images is influencing our perception of truth: perhaps out of context, perhaps altered, never the less capturing reality.

Throughout the ages, artists have literally risked capturing the issues and threats of their era, and even sacrificed because of their images. Goya’s intaglio prints illustrated the pain and torture of the Napoleonic Wars.

Iconographers sought to preserve the eyewitness reality of God on earth and were destroyed along with their work during several periods through out Christian history, and yet the subjects of the anonymous works continue to be venerated.

Working on one public mural, Jose Orozco found himself pelted with rotten vegetables, beaten and his work defaced. This artist’s fiery man and works enflamed Mexico’s nationalism with power and hope!

Relief works on Longview’s own Post Office memorialize the founding of this city, our connection with Nature, the coming of machines to the wilderness, our dependence on the river for transportation, and commerce, and energy!

Artistic license can utilize the reality of an image, and infuse it with emotion, juxtapose it with action and detail in a composition that can reate an impact beyond that of a great photo! In your summer travels, remember to search out the art of an area for the passion and details of the local history that go beyond the historic facts.

It might just “influence” you!