Bigger Not Necessarily Better

After reading this morning's Toronto Star and thinking about the Census results, one asks the question is bigger necessarily better both in life and in art? One one hand, for example, the City of Milton has grown so much since the last Census that long-time residents hardly recognize it. The simple convenience of grocery shopping has become a once a week journey on a bus to the "outskirts" instead of the leisurly walk to the one-time downtown grocery store. Some may call this progress, I'm not sure that progress is a good thing in this case. It is happening to small towns all over Canada - for better or for worse.

Such too is the case with much of the new art being produced. As an artist, do we produce a piece large enough to cover the walls in a monster-sized home or Condo, or do we produce art for art's sake and paint what we paint best? Much of the new art today is painted for the marketplace - by necessity in many cases. If you want to take that shuttle for groceries, you have to sell your art. Pictured here is the smallest of my pieces to date. I have a canvas 60 x 60 staring at me, beckoning me to deal with it's vast whiteness. I may just paint on it for the sheer joy of painting - if it sells, that's a bonus.