If art could not arouse some human response such as disgust, joy or wonder than "it is merely a craft." Freda Majzlin explained, "Art is actually a visual expression by someone of an experience, or a point of view, or a dream, or a feeling. It needs to personally arouse the viewer. Art is the idiom through which you transmit an emotion. Art is a reflection of life and not an intellectual exercise." Back in April 1981, Freda held a 6-week course, 'The Language of Art' at Florida Atlantic University "to give people a fundamental understanding of the ways in which an artist communicates because it is difficult to recognize what an artist is trying to convey unless one knows the language of art."
In April and May 1988, Gary Bukovnik showed his watercolors at Concept Art Gallery in Pittsburg. He told the Post-Gazette, "When I paint I love to play music. Haydn and Strauss – both so emotional, romantic – a lot like me. I want to show controlled freedom in my work. I hope that idea occurs to people. That's how the work is supposed to look. The closeup is an altered perception. It's the artist's way of guiding the viewer in a very particular way that is unique to the creator, my emotional power put into the work.
"I don't like to paint from photographs because I like to draw 3 sides of a subject. A photograph only shows one side. With watercolors, I place blank sheets of paper on the wall. I see the subject and picture it in my mind. There is no intermediate step. I outline the subject carefully with a light line, using a mechanical lead pencil, which keeps down smudges. Then begin putting in all the details, linking up the lines as I go along, regardless of what the subject is – leaves, petals, stems or buds. I think it's important to keep an open mind about everything. There are so many walls in the world (that) a person can work all his life and they won't be filled."
Freda made the point, "As we grow older there is a tendency to stop growing and exploring. Discovery is the joy of youth...Students learn to look at paintings the way they listen to music. The eye records the image, and then the emotions respond."
David Jon Foster told News-Sentinel in 2007, "I don’t paint things that are already here on this planet, such as a bird or flower or a person. I create this new beautiful image from my mind. It has never been seen before. I've already seen waterfalls and beautiful mountains. I've already seen what God created and I can't really improve on that. So I kind of create my own flower from scratch, so to speak. I try to express emotions and feelings that I have inside of me. I'm trying to tell a story with my colors in my painting. And it's hard because a lot of people don't understand. It's almost like I'm speaking a foreign language. Some people do and it's almost like we connect."
David also said, "I don't really go out in front of a mountain and paint the mountain. It's like a song. I mean, do you see a song laying on the road or in the trees? No, a musician creates that song in his head, in poetry also. Painting should not be like a photograph. Anybody could take a photograph and, well, there you go. Like Einstein said, imagination is more important than intelligence or knowledge, or something like that. I want to see what's inside someone's head – something new and refreshing, something I've never seen before."
Believing "photography has own values", the Utah Deseret News wrote in 1948, "Photography in our time is accepted as the great medium of representation. Art becomes a means of recreating what the artist sees in terms of what he thinks and feels. The development of the camera has given us new concepts of movement and we live in an age of speed. Consequently the artist who has always been intrigued with the idea of expressing movement in painting and sculpture, finds new ways of bringing to the beholder of his works more intense sensations of being carried into and through his design.
"Another aspect of science, that of psychology and psychiatry, the sciences of the mind and the emotion, has had a marked influence on modern art, much of which reaches the observer through a direct appeal to the senses with an attendant emotional and intellectual appeal. Such art is like music which is first of all sounds. But these sounds may produce various emotional responses or moods in the listener which in turn lead to philosophy and even to action and a change in behavior.
"Sensory appeal has been used by artists of all times usually in association with a story or a visual form. The modern artist omits the story and distorts or loses the visual qualities of the subject to express the same theme greatly intensified. Intuitively sensitive to color contrasts and harmonies, to balance, rhythmic lines, to dominance and emphasis and to all the other qualities of design, and without an apparent effort, they produce abstractions that express dramatically moods, emotions and even ideas. So natural is such art that their teachers wonder of taste for the photograph is not the acquired thing and begin to believe that this sensitivity to the aesthetic is man's natural inborn response to what is seen crowded out by an association with the photographic and visually imitative."
In an interview in 1982, Leonard Nimoy shared, "What attracts me to photography is that I can maintain a direct contact with the product from beginning to end using equipment and chemistry properly to get the statement made. I approach it in the same way a painter would approach his work except that I'm using a different medium. Instead of canvas and brushes, I use film.
"The kinds of things that I'm looking for are not wildlife nature as such, but the effect of light and shadow on something of character. An old building, a chair or a piece of furniture. There is some kind of emotional atmosphere taking place, creating a mood, and if I can capture it, I've got myself a picture. I tend to be attracted to things that have developed through age – people, buildings. old fences, doors."
"Another aspect of science, that of psychology and psychiatry, the sciences of the mind and the emotion, has had a marked influence on modern art, much of which reaches the observer through a direct appeal to the senses with an attendant emotional and intellectual appeal. Such art is like music which is first of all sounds. But these sounds may produce various emotional responses or moods in the listener which in turn lead to philosophy and even to action and a change in behavior.
"Sensory appeal has been used by artists of all times usually in association with a story or a visual form. The modern artist omits the story and distorts or loses the visual qualities of the subject to express the same theme greatly intensified. Intuitively sensitive to color contrasts and harmonies, to balance, rhythmic lines, to dominance and emphasis and to all the other qualities of design, and without an apparent effort, they produce abstractions that express dramatically moods, emotions and even ideas. So natural is such art that their teachers wonder of taste for the photograph is not the acquired thing and begin to believe that this sensitivity to the aesthetic is man's natural inborn response to what is seen crowded out by an association with the photographic and visually imitative."
In an interview in 1982, Leonard Nimoy shared, "What attracts me to photography is that I can maintain a direct contact with the product from beginning to end using equipment and chemistry properly to get the statement made. I approach it in the same way a painter would approach his work except that I'm using a different medium. Instead of canvas and brushes, I use film.
"The kinds of things that I'm looking for are not wildlife nature as such, but the effect of light and shadow on something of character. An old building, a chair or a piece of furniture. There is some kind of emotional atmosphere taking place, creating a mood, and if I can capture it, I've got myself a picture. I tend to be attracted to things that have developed through age – people, buildings. old fences, doors."
