this is art

I'm sitting on a park bench, staring at the scene before me. Pencil poised in my head, the blank piece of paper beckons, dares me to mark it. I can imagine it in my mind, it's changing thought to reality that worries me. I close my eyes, and open them to find the scene before me hasn't stirred. The playground is as empty and still as before. The quiet rustling of the trees offer encouragement. I could sit here forever, just watching the shadows lengthen and breathing, drinking it all in. There's a kind of peace in this solitude, and also an infinite sadness as there is no one around to enjoy it with me.

Slowly, I draw the first line. The outline of the playground starts to take shape. I constantly look up and check the proportions, trying to capture every detail. There! the foreground is done. I'm delighted, no, surprised at my own work...but it's not finished yet. Quickly sketching the background, it's pleasing to note my trees don't look like distorted lollipops anymore. The final touch: a park bench where none really exists, opposite where I am sitting...

I sit back and look at my piece... what shall I call it? There's a sense in which the park is lonely, all by itself, with no children running around and playing on the slide. All the children are gone...they've grown up, and turned into teenagers with angst and pimples. Those teenagers are too cool to play at the park anymore. The teenagers turn into young adults, who are much too busy and never have spare afternoons. They're either at uni, studying, or at work, or on a date with their gf/bf. And all too soon, they get married and have their own kids. But these kids spend all their time indoors, on the computer or playing the latest xbox or playstation games. And so the park waits...one could argue that the park waits in vain, for the innocence of childhood has been lost; that remembering back to one's childhood where everything was so simple and the only worries one had was when it was your go to play on the swings, that these memories will remain with our generation...

this is art: it should make one feel something, it is meant to play with our emotions, or invoke memories long dormant, it should make us smile or cry, or both at the same time. postmodernistic art is not art. who feels anything when they look at a black square on a white canvas? i don't call myself an artist (anyone who knows me has heard me say that i can't draw to save my life) but this piece...it just flowed out of what i was feeling at the time... unlike the following:



if u haven't worked it out: it's the golden calf, and he's Aaron