My friends and clients are always shocked when I suddenly present (in front of them) a ‘painting from life’ – just because I appear to produce slap-dash imagery as my main artistic process and thrust doesn’t mean I haven’t mastered the basic fundamental  skills of ‘traditional’ painting and drawing.

Artists and teachers have argued for years that to fully understand the processes required in creating non-representational art, a knowledge of basic representational tricks is vital – to be able to imitate the real world is useful when trying to turn your back on it.

Peter Bright (aka This Window)

One of my still life paintings hanging on a wall in Worcestershire.

Oil paint on paper – 20″ x 16″

Representation is the use of signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation that people organize the world and reality through the act of naming its elements. Signs are arranged in order to form semantic constructions and express relations.

For many philosophers, both ancient and modern, man is regarded as the “representational animal” or homo symbolicum, the creature whose distinct character is the creation and the manipulation of signs – things that “stand for” or “take the place of” something else.

Representation (arts). (2012, February 7). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 07:45, March 7, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Representation_(arts)&oldid=475632185

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