The pursuit of perfection

See the Assimilated Negro's blog on this, then comment if you will.

Art

I've not been painting recently. I have a RSI. My wrist and hand aches. I'm resting it. It's given me time to think about art. I do what I have termed Compart. This is painting using the computer and the Painter program.
When I tell people the picture has been painted on a computer, their admiring smiling face suddenly changes with a jaw drop and eyes glazing and a sudden loss of interest. I try to rekindle the interest by explaining and some of it comes back, but usually with less interest.
Why is this I ask myself?
It is of course because they don't consider art by computer real art, nor photographs for that matter.
Real art is considered by many people to involve some hand craft, some skill, which computer art they think (in ignorance), doesn't have.
Computer art has as much skill as painting in oils, though some of the skills are different, but the main debate is really: does art need to have been made with craft skill in order to be art?
My argument is no, it doesn't.
What makes a picture art is two main things
1. The choice of subject. The choice is the result of the 'seeing eye'
Claude Monet:
"It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly."
Pablo Picasso:
"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary."
"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else."
"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun."
2. The way we compose the chosen subject on our 'canvas', and how we have changed it in the process.

The way it's going to be?

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Feeling better now

Today I took the dogs to my other favourite walk, driving through narrow lanes. Going round a bend I met a rabbit running up the road towards me. It suddenly realised I was the bigger, and turned and ran. Round another bend a Kite was taking off with some object in its claws, probably already killed. The weight made takeoff ponderous and it just missed my windscreen. Further along a grey squirrel scampered along the road.
I enjoyed the eventual walk much better than yesterdays. (See Old age 2)

World War II

World War two in a chat room? How it might have been

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Old age 2

Whenever I take the dogs a walk to Loynton Moss, I have to drive along about a half mile of A road. This is the meeting point of so many differences in our society. No matter how I try to speed up my little Yaris to a reasonable speed (and attempt to get off the road before being a nuisance), I invariably end up with someone (is it always a BMW?) right on my tail. This part of the road involves a series of S bends, and double lines down the middle, so why they want to rub my bottom with their noses I don't quite understand.

Now is this BMW meeting Yaris?
Old man meeting young?
Country versus town?
Dogs versus iPods?

Are they irritated all day like me over this trivial meeting? Or is it forgotten in the next hold up just round the corner?
The answer of course is simple.
I could stick to my country lanes and walk somewhere else.
They could get up a bit earlier and then drive with more consideration
I suspect the real solution is far more complex.
And a lot of it has to do with how we view cars and car users.