A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. From pictures on the walls of caves twenty thousand years ago, to computer generated images of today, humankind has had a love affair with images. If you like them I hope you will enjoy this site

The image on this page was created using software tools - no pencil, no paper, no scanning. But the computer acted only as a combination of paintbrush and canvas. Can a computer go further than that? I am fascinated by this question, and will discuss it elsewhere on this site.

Painting today seems to have evolved in two ways. There is the elite thrust of the galleries, art-historians and college trained artists, producing work which is often unintelligible to normal people. On the other hand are thousands of painters, amateur and professional who go on doing landscapes, flowers, figures, and generally carrying on a tradition that seems to have been around a very long time - since people painted mammoths and bison in caves, in fact. I think the gulf in a between is a bad thing, and that the time has come to reunite these sects. I think ordinary people's approach to the established art of today should start from their gut reaction, without the slightest feeling that his or her judgment is of any less value than anyone else's. I think one should apply to ones taste the Shakespearean adage "'tis a poor thing, but 'tis mine own" If one feels that a painting seems to be what one would expect from a chimpanzee, then one should say it, and be straightforward it. But one should not fall in love with one's opinion - one should analyze it, see if it can be justified. One should get used to using ones own criteria, though, and one should know what they are. I have found that starting from these seemingly philistine opinions, I have discovered pleasure in some of the very works I formerly found most contemptible. Of others though, I still retain my earliest opinion. One should read as little as possible which offers support to the artistic credibility of apparently meaningless works, but give the artist an honest chance to make his point via his painting. See if one's belittling comparisons with animals or children really stand up to analysis. I have done this, and my thoughts can be found elsewhere on this site. They are my thoughts, and I don't offer them as templates, but as stimulation to thought and criticism.

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