This gallery maintains a belief that absolutely everyone can make a piece of art.
Everyone can.
Not everyone wants to.
Some people live to do it, and some people earn a living from doing so.
Art galleries in the main collect and/or exhibit art done by those who live to do art and those who earn their living from it. There are few avenues in which to celebrate the work of the occasional artist, the artist who paints, draws, sculpts, carves for the sheer pleasure of doing it, for the desire to to so. One could argue that the reward for these people is the pleasure of making the art - that nothing more is needed. But I think such art has a human face, a human value and can give pleasure to and move a viewer too. Which rewards both artist and the viewer still more.
I do not know exactly how one chooses a good or fine artist from the rest. When it come to the point I'm not too sure how to choose one wine over the others, or how to justify paying a small fortune for a stud ram, or buying a superlatively expensive car. It comes down to either personal taste or a ":taught" taste, where criteria are defined. The car community , wine community, farming community develop criteria for judging each commodity into poor, good, better, best, superlative categories.
And in a commercial world that matters.
But the arts need not be in the commercial world. Art is in the world where people meet people. Or of ceremony and ritual. It deals in the pleasure of a meeting.
22 artists have contributed to this current exhibition. Every single one of them has touched me. What more is needed for a great exhibition?!
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