Sunday, March 08, 2009

Peter Westerman art (updated)

What do you think, is this really amazing or really cheesy?

... Update: personally I've often had a problem with art which had several strong colors in one picture. Many people love that, of course.
Looking at Peter's art page, though, he also has some work which I think is really good, like this one.


And he does combine photos and digital art very well. One of the things I dreamed about before I got a computer was doing just that. In the imagination it seems very easy, but in practice it is just absurdly difficult, because the two things just don't want to integrate.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find it imaginative, but incongruent and not the least bit aesthetically pleasing. Color me unimpressed.

Anonymous said...

I have friends who would put this kind of art on their wall but it's not my style. I don't know if I'd go as far as "cheese".

Ray said...

"Farmer John meets Star Trek"....
and the winner is....undecided!

Anonymous said...

Massively pretentious is how I'd describe it. I see no real meaning here, and the technique is not impressive. This is cheese, but not even your top quality farm fresh cheese. This is like your lowest grade spray cheese.

Anonymous said...

Admittedly its not my best or favorite work, and people seem to either strongly like or dislike it. I think its better understood when you frame it relative to the rest of my work.

either way, its always nice to run into some honest and amusing opinions, so thanks all for that :D

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Good of you to visit, Peter. Glad you didn't get angry :-)

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the update and taking the time to see the rest of my work. I'll be back later to read more of your blog!

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

"Cheese"? S'il vous plaƮt, messieurs, je vous demande pardon! The term means "poor, doesn't try, bad taste, cheap". And in fact, I find it demeaning to the creativity of France's specialty as well.
Ironically, I'm not much of a cheese person. But I don't mistake my own tastes with what's good and a worthy effort. I'm not much into wine either, but "that's just me". Fine wine will still be fine if I'm nof fond of the beverage myself.

This doesn't deeply "speak" to me personally, it doesn't have the rare emotional resonance that would make *me* want to put it on my wall and see it every day, but that's all the negative comments I'll say about it.

Remember what gastronomy critic Anton Ego said in Ratatouille, best summed up by the French proverb: "Criticism is easy, art is difficult."

I've already spoken elsewhere about what I don't deem as art because "it doesn't even try".
Well, this here, I fell, DOES try, and in fact manages quite well I feel.
Really. I think it IS good. Imaginative, interesting, and with work put into it. Meriting. Rather nice looking, too. Definitely above the average, which means it's better than half there is to see. It's quite rare that an image makes me "fall in love" with it, it's a very personal thing. But it doen't have to. That's the essence of art.

Then again, given the original post's question, I guess it's one of those things which "you either love it or hate it".
If it leaves nobody indifferent, it's got to have something special to it. :-)

Just my two grains of pepper into the commenting recipe.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Just reading the article from another post, and it got me all philosophic:

Making art and displaying it for the whole world to see and assess, is not unlike stripping naked in front of total strangers. Philosophically, I'm perfectly okay with nudity. But practically, in daily life, I'm rather the shy person. Being working my whole life at "dropping the chip".

So, when an artist who's honestly tried shows you something, remember: you're not the one baring something intimate about yourself, so do be fair. Some words can hurt like crossing a thorn bush in this state of nakedness.

I wonder how much the awareness of our absence of fur, of our more vulnerable nudity as humans, might have influenced the tendancy of our species to wear clothing.
But this is another topic.

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