Who is my favorite artist and why?
I would have to say that probably one of my all time favorite artists is Kandinsky. Why? I discovered him when I was in high school and it was as if an entire world opened up within me. I felt as if I understood something about his internal landscape and the way the shapes related to one another on the canvas made sense to me. For some reason the fact that the shapes were largely abstract and not entirely recognizable made sense to me. The reason why I first picked up a paintbrush was as a way to communicate to him. I wanted to try and express what I felt about his paintings and the only way that seemed to make sense was to paint it.
Really, many of my early paintings were a conversation with Kandinsky, trying to express my gratitude for his works and how they affected me. In my teenage years having found his paintings meant that there was someone else who created a world not entirely made of picture perfect representations, but rather as more expressionistic.
I have since grown to have a respect and appreciation for all types of art, but I will probably always have a fond spot for Kandinsky’s work and how it began to open up that internal creative space within me. I feel in many ways my creative life has been largely informed and built upon his works.
Around the late 80's a friend of mine was working on his masters degree in Music, and had to write a paper of Kandinsky and Schoenberg; he didn't want to write it, so I wrote it for him. I've done many papers, both graduate level and undergrad level, on various topics for students over the years (sounds unethical, sure, but the statute of limitations has passed :) ), especially abstruse ones. But I learned a lot from writing that paper on Kandinsky and Schoenberg, and got to really appreciate the consonance of visual and musical Expressionism. It's cool that you like Kandinsky; Schoenberg is the 20th-century-musical soundtrack :)
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