Big Self-Portrait

Another year of old hard dying habits is about to pass, we rip off the last sheet of the calendar and face it - it has arrived: the resolution! And ever anticipated example of “same thing, but different”, probably the most naive goal of the year, but still a plan never the less. For the next year I’ve decided to stay realistic, really realistic, “starting this year I have until 2018 to stop smoking” kind of realistic… Is it too much realistic? Chuck Close is one of the Photorealists who is helping my argument. Evolving from pop-art, that also made a great use out of photography , photorealism embraces the raw capture of a photo, and expresses it as realistically as possible in painting. Photography and painting might seam like two antagonistic entities, but since the very invention of the first it has influenced the way artists worked and faced their canvas. Some argue that it was photography that freed the Impressionists from the strict boundaries of representation to paint the colours and forms we came to love. So does that mean that if I’m too realistic with my resolutions, I will not be as inventive as the impressionists were, and might end up my next year in a less colourful way; or should I be seeing thing in the way they truly are, real? You tell me, if you were to have you portrait painted next year, would you like it to be hyperrealistic, or to express invented features? Artur Deus Dionisio wishes you a great New Year - and the rest of DailyArt team too, but wait for our official wishes until tomorrow :]