The Camera Lies

It's a cliche and it is true. But tell me who gets it exactly right? Above is a picture of the scenic overlook that I've been painting lately. Because my tiny digital camera has only so many capabilities (as does its owner), the foreground green dominates. The world of complexity in the mountain layers is flat, distant, lost.

You can't see this week's painting directly but the photo of the painting is pretty good. The camera warps the perspective a bit and messes with the color register. I am fully willing to share the responsibility for this inability to capture what I see with my camera.


You'll note the lack of civilization in my picture. Well, civilization requires skill sets that I don't possess. You know what I mean: painting-wise!

A friend with little (no?) painting experience painted right along with me. I enjoyed having her there trying to catalog the thousand bugs that dropped on us under the rhododendron. It was similar to the giant bug scene in Kong. If I keel over dead tomorrow, I can assure you that it was one of the spiders.

She did a lovely version of the outlook which I hope pleased her. She's got a great eye for composition so I figured that she'd probably surprise herself. After all, it's just throwing paint onto paper. It can take us back to the times of working the crayons without lines or we can sweat some silly expectation about Art. Guess which side I'm on here.