# How do you translate your favorite paintings



## RedBlaur (Apr 3, 2020)

Never mind what the original artist meant, but how does a painting that captivated you translate itself to you in a way you feel related to and bonded 

With your own subjective opinion that expresses who you are, what do you see in some of your favorite paintings


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## WickerDeer (Aug 1, 2012)

I don't know about my favorite paintings.

This morning I was looking up paintings and came to this gallery about California painters. Scrolling down, I saw a lot of beautiful paintings, but the one that struck me the most was near the bottom.



Art Collection



I'm not sure why--I think it is the colors. The relationships between the yellows, oranges, blues, and even the purples--the greens as well. It's all very beautiful. 

For myself, I guess scrolling through the more dark black and brown and muted colors, this one just really seemed to speak to me. I am not sure to talk about my own subjective bond to it or whatever.

I suppose I also follow the line work--I like the contrasts. 

When I look at this artists other paintings (he's not very well known or popular so I could only find a few more and the ones that stuck out to me are his paintings of clowns, which are interesting in contrast with this one because while this is full of bright and saturated colors, the clown painting is very dark and red and black (though you would imagine a clown to be a more uplifting idea, typically). So I guess perhaps the only other thing that stuck out to me is just wondering about this man's life--wondering what drove him to paint dark clown portraits--whether he felt like a clown. I suppose in that way I sort of "bond" or connect with a painting by also wondering about the person who created it--what the brushstrokes and the lines say about them. It's sort of like looking at the world through another person's eyes and emotions, even though it doesn't work exactly like that.










But this is just a random painting that I saw this morning--it's not my favorite, but after scrolling through dozens it still jumped out to me and has remained in my thoughts this morning.

Here's the dark clown painting (not my favorite--but I can still see the attraction with the line work and the content--it's another painting I would look several times at if I were to see it hanging somewhere or in a pile of old thrift store prints). 

Like this is a freaking creepy clown. 










This clown's even scarier. 










The clown portraits only make me more interested in the artist and how he viewed the world though and what they were going through at these different times in their life. These don't have the bright colors, but they still have a lot of contrast.


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## RedBlaur (Apr 3, 2020)

WickerDeer said:


> I don't know about my favorite paintings.
> 
> This morning I was looking up paintings and came to this gallery about California painters. Scrolling down, I saw a lot of beautiful paintings, but the one that struck me the most was near the bottom.
> 
> ...



You reminded me of a personal painting I relate to, “alone” by Sean landers 











The state of helplessness can be faced by anyone but the fact the character facing it in this painting is a clown I’ve interpreted the mentality set here to be a sudden realization of how funny a messed up situation might be, the shock feels funny as if it’s a bad joke that you finally understood when it was too late, the joke being not the situation itself but also you who got it late 

It could be deluding yourself that you’re in control then waking up to the sudden realization that you’re not at all and you laugh at yourself as if you’re a bad joke that everyone got but you 

I don’t really think about the artist, I think about the clown as if he was a real person and the way he’s depicted in the painting is what he feels like so I try to empathize by putting my self in his shoes to see what could possibly make me feel the way this pointing looks, and I realized that every set back or disaster in my life even when people laughed at me, this painting could have been an accurate expression of what I felt at the time


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## WickerDeer (Aug 1, 2012)

For some reason clown imagery mostly reminds me of this homeshake song and the feeling of being made a fool of or making a fool of one's self.

I guess just having your emotions not taken seriously by someone you trust or a sense of betrayal. I think of clowns as being sort of put there to make people laugh, but they are performers--we don't really care that much about them as people under their makeup (I'm sure professional clowns think of it differently, but that's how I tend to think of it). 

It reminds me of times when I've been vulnerable and been hurt by it--the video. But the video has it's own narrative. It was still impacting and relatable enough that now I relate clown imagery back to how I feel about the video (being betrayed--being made a fool of by someone I trusted, looking like a fool to others for following my heart and being blinded by love/trust etc.)






I guess I would wonder things about the first painting, the one of the building--like the trees look dead and perhaps a little menacing. It's winter. The building looks big and almost imposing. This giant wall. But still, even so it is beautiful because the colors and natural light play with each other--it reminds me of how things are usually beautiful in some light.


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## dulcinea (Aug 22, 2011)

I love Gauguin's vivid use of contrasting colors. It makes me feel a way I can't describe in words. 
The title "where do we come from where are we going," tells me that he was likely having an existential crisis when painting this, and the religious symbolism seems to show that he was seeking answers through spirituality.


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## dulcinea (Aug 22, 2011)

I think everything George Seuraut painted, basically means: "Everything looks better when you make it all composed of dots, and I have lots of patience"


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## Merry_Sweet94 (Jun 2, 2020)

I always like to interpret paintings in my own way. For example, I always find deep meanings in Picasso’s paintings. I think the style of his works can be interpreted in multiple ways very easily. He often uses these abstract shapes that for someone can mean a thing, and another person can think of something totally different. Anyways, I’m currently trying to collect more art. I just think it’s a hobby that deserves to invest in. Beauty for the eye will always boost your mood. I recently bought another new canvas print from Canvas prints | Your photos on canvas. I chose a static nature painting, with pretty pastel colours. Very nice work!


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## mia-me (Feb 5, 2021)

IMO, one of my fave artists, Françoise Nielly, paints human energy from the inside out by substituting a striking color palette for the standard light and shadows. Stunning acrylic knifework.


















Françoise NIELLY - Biography and available artworks | Galeries Bartoux


Françoise Nielly who was born in Marseille, studied in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. She has her own way to redo the human faces in each of its paintings, sometimes by currying knife, scarring them. The authentic flashes of life which arise from her paintings are created by hand to hand with the canvas.




www.galeries-bartoux.com


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## Sambolet (12 mo ago)

That's the point. Artists always reserve the right to determine the meaning of the picture. In the artist's paintings, each of us sees what is inside him, which is a projection of our soul. This is very important to understand.
I believe that really talented artists count on this. They don't impose their opinion on us.
I really like painting. I love talented artists and buy their paintings. However, I was unlucky, I don't have such a talent, and I had to paint pictures by numbers, which I learned on https://paintingbynumbersshop.com/. This is the only way to feel a little closer to art.


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