Authenticity - what's it all about?
Jun 26, 2019
I have a print website, www.davidbealeartist.com, where a purchaser can choose from ten different media and a dozen or so sizes, some quite a bit larger than the original. I have periodically pondered what this selection and altering means for a work of art. Somewhere along the way, after looking at the large variety of images of almost any famous painting that can be found through a simple google search, I had one of those epiphanies. I do believe that viewing and purchasing art should involve an interactive process with the image. If a prospective buyer wants to purchase a metallic image 3 ft by 4 ft made from a digital image in specific lighting in my shop of on of my small works, why not? It is not simply a larger version on a different medium, but is created from a digital image I took and color "corrected" using my unique monitor and with specific lighting in my shop. I then sent the image electronically to my print company in Austin, Texas, who used another monitor and printing equipment to reproduce the image from a series of pixels on a different medium. And, to carry the process one step further, why shouldn't it have as much validity as the original? The creative process can just goes on and on through countless iterations....