Recovering from Bad Taste

[Kimberly Dow]

I wanted to write a bit about something I am just noticing.

Since getting online last spring, then later joining this forum there has been a basic shift in what I want to paint. My tastes have changed completely. I had painted for years all alone with no sense of history or exposure to others work. I went to college for art, but my three semesters of art history left me remembering Picasso, but I did not even know who JSS was.

I had been slowly improving over the years by reading a few books and one video. I did not even know the work of the artist who made the video, but it was affordable so I bought it. It made a huge difference in my painting. It was

[Michele Rushworth]

What a great post! I never thought one could learn "taste" from the Internet, but there you go.

[Cynthia Daniel]

This is great Kim. The first belly laugh I've had in a long time - not at you, but at your humor and unabashed honesty and bravery!

[Chris Saper]

Dear Kim,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Your post was very uplifting in nature, and I wonder whether you might have alternatively titled it, "moving to my own taste", or some such thing,

I have found just the same thing happening to me, and in the same 12 month span. Although I have been painting portraits professionally for 13 years, I really think I only started ( STARTED!) to paint kind of well about a year ago. I am moving to my own raised bar, and even though I hear "Gee, I liked your old stuff better" the fact of the matter is I didn't like my old stuff better.

Even in the short time you have been sharing your paintings here, I just love seeing your forward motion.

[Kimberly Dow]

Thank you ladies. I have to admit I hovered over the submit button for a minute. If I had clients that logged on I would be horrified, but I don't. It's just the truth anyway, anyone who saw my earlier work would say so. Perhaps we could start a 12-step program.

Chris, you are a classy chic. I say that because I admire how you can turn even the most unflattering thing into something softer and more refined. From 'bad taste' to 'moving to my own taste.'

[Mary Sparrow]

Kim,
Thanks for that post, I have had almost the exact same thoughts swirling around in my head for some time now.

Cheers.

[Karin Wells]

I doubt that any of us were born with "good taste." Fortunately, however, taste can be taught. Great museums are the best classrooms and the old master paintings have always been the greatest teachers. I try to spend as much time as I can at the MFA in Boston.

Good for you. Thank heavens my tastes are still changing too. (The hand symbolizes my applause).

[Steven Sweeney]

This comes at an uncomfortable time, as I hit the half-century mark and use it for few better purposes than wondering what I did with those first fifty years, and most of that time has been spent being clueless, silly, uninformed, clumsy, socially inept, terribly afraid, tentative, impudently brash, abrasive (not always unintentionally -- sometimes ya just gotta do it), rude, crude, and ignorant though generally well-intentioned but terrified

[Kimberly Dow]

[QUOTE=Steven Sweeney]

Kim, I