the problem is

I've never met a painting that wasn't good. All the ones I've ever seen just seem to hang around doing nothing, not even sneezing. Oh, I take that back. I can't stand those that hang crooked, but then I've never had one fight back when I straightened it out. Although I've known some that simply refused to keep a straight edge - required constant re-adjusment. But for the most part, I find most of them behave rather well.

there may be a few who believe that concept of the artist as a cancerous apotheosis of the ego, but in reality being an artist takes more balls than most people have because the failure rate is so high. Most people opt for dulling jobs in banks and insurance companies that assure them an income. Being an artist means possibly failing. After a person is mature enough they will realize, if they have not been lucky enough to have someone tell them, that art requires much work and study. Even after skills such as drawing or color theory have been learned, just doing a single image means hours and hours or days or weeks of work.

You can substitute for 'art' in your text any creative labor people decide to do, for example cooking. Being a chef takes more balls than most people have, because the failure rate is very high. Successful cooking requires much work and practice, knowledge of raw ingredients and food chemistry, specialized equipment, and not a little magic too. But I repeat myself.

Unqualified use of the symbol 'artist' is liable to spurious identification with individuals who are merely 'successful' (however you happen to measure success) because it obscures 'making art' behind 'successful art objects', equivocating 'art' and practice with success.

Art is a prosaic activity everyone practices merely by behaving human. Successful art objects, on the other hand, are decreed by cultural convention. It may be possible to form objective esthetic standards, but no one has seen it done in all the history of man. But I repeat myself.

Be that as it were, identifying 'art' in the gazillion art objects in

If you are trying to say the vast majority of 'jobs' are not boring, I can point to studies that find that at least 80 percent of a workforce at any given time do not like their jobs.

Being an artist is not really a job because success is so risky. I do not think you can elevate convention to this level because convention is convention precisely because it is safe. It requires conformism, suppression of individuality, and obedience.

If you are objecting to the term, art, because of some of the fakery that goes on in the art world, then you can do this with any occupation, the police for example, although the examples here are so dreary and ugly, most people prefer not to. So, it's a bit idle simply to pick the field of art and the label artist.

The word artist has come about because people need shorthand ways to describe activities and professions. Of course cooking is a an art, and a great and difficult one, and so is good detective work. In addition, there are many true arts, like poetry, dance, and music, that are are not called art by current convention. To say artist means a worker in the plastic arts: painting, scupture, printmaking, etc. That's all really.

This is what your reply looks like:

If you are trying to say the vast majority of 'jobs' are not boring, I can point to studies that find that at least 80 percent of a workforce at any given time do not like their jobs.

Being an artist is not really a job because success is so risky. I do not think you can elevate convention to this level because convention is convention precisely because it is safe. It requires conformism, suppression of individuality, and obedience.

If you are objecting to the term, art, because of some of the fakery that goes on in the art world, then you can do this with any occupation, the police for example, although the examples here are so dreary and ugly, most people prefer not to. So, it's a bit idle simply to pick the field of art and the label artist.

The word artist has come about because people need shorthand ways to describe activities and professions. Of course cooking is a an art, and a great and difficult one, and so is good detective work. In addition, there are many true arts, like poetry, dance, and music, that are are not called art by current convention. To say artist means a worker in the plastic arts: painting, scupture, printmaking, etc. That's all really.

Dilettante

First, Leo Papandreou did not write any of that. Not in a million years. Please mind the way you attribute text and configure your newsreader to quote properly and preserve context in your replies.

Well no, I wasn't trying to say the vast majority of jobs are not boring. That's why I didn't say that. Besides which, 'boring' and 'exciting' are not job properties; they describe a mental state. If I painted Harlequin Romance covers for a living, that would be boring, meaning my mind would grow numb with art. What does 'my mind' have to do with tinkers, tailors, lawyers, accountants, and meretricious pictures of doe-eyed swooning females?

If you want to draw like Mani says you ought to (for example), you attend a trade school and study a 'convention'

No text was attributed or quoted at all, nor was any context preserved. I simply responded to what I believe was stated or implied. A distinction between art and other jobs was implied in your last paragraph.

But I was, and they are.

They are mental states experienced while working on jobs. We are not descending down the bottomless whirlpool of definitions, are we?

Art can be approached like a job by some and practiced uncreatively. This is true.

Rembrandt painted after

Well yes it does stray outside because he was able to represent those facts and values so well, which is a rare thing. These facts and values were the same for him as for us, human values he managed to express in art.

He didn't

He did absolutely.

Yes, it is safe emotionally, and that is exactly why it is convention.

So, you admit to your Photoshop fakery over at Cennini. Tyler and Levitin WERE correct that you were posting digital photographs doctored in Photoshop and calling them your 'paintings'. How convenient that you 'lost' all the originals so you can't post high resolution images to show the brushwork and prove they are paintings. What an incredible blowhard you are.

p.s. Leo Papandreou is really Roberts Howard, the moderator of the Studio Products website.

P.P.S. Leo Papandreou is really Leo Papandreou. He has never visited Cennini, does not own or use Photoshop, and has never seen this Roberts Howard guy or read one word he's written. Please visit www.timecube.com for further details.

Nice try to run a red herring through the thread. But you mentioned Fred Ross out-of-the blue in two threads on Goodart two months ago. It's just not possible to even know about Fred Ross and not have read a single word of Rob Howard. It does not matter what you morph your name into. You will always be found. That painting of Barry White you are doing after the original was 'lost' will prove beyond any doubt that the first one you put up is a photograph. Got to be pretty dumb to let your enormous ego create your own evidence against yourself.

Your a looney.

You just mentioned 'Fred Ross.' Therefore you are 'Rob Howard.' I am Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson. I was buying art and exploring the southern coast of Papua New Guinea in a boat, where I disappeared without a trace 150 clicks southeast of Timika.

If I tell a human that his 4-corner head (nose, 2 ears and back corner) has only a 1-corner face, the dumb-ass will say to me