This past month a few of us were able to attend the excellent exhibit at Oglethorpe University Museum, “Slow Painting, A Deliberate Renaissance”.  The artwork was amazing and we had a chance to speak to the museum curator Lloyd Nick.  He spoke with us about the group of artists who have dedicated themselves to the renaissance of beauty and realism in art.  They came up with a manifesto in 2005 that is exhibiting along with the art in the museum.  I thought you would enjoy a few of the ideas:

• We laud the beauty of skills slowly acquired and the deliberate art that reflects such skills.
• We believe that the art of the future will be as powerful, relevant, imaginative and as skillfully made as any art of the past.  We reject the notion that art peaked forever in 1500 with the Renaissance, in 1650 with the Baroque or in 1950 with the Abstract Expressionists.
• We value artistic dexterity like that demonstrated by the greatest artists of the past.  We believe that the mastery of such skills liberates the artist.
• Like watch g a ballet consummately performed of hearing an aria masterfully sung, we deeply appreciate the visual pleasure of seeing a beautiful work of art that is not found, but slowly and carefully crafted by an artist.
• Slow art does not mean the lack of spontaneity or free brushwork.  We not only value a delicately painted surface when it is skillfully done as in a I grease or a Raphael, but we laud the skilled bravura as in a Velazquez or a Turner.
• While we admire and learn from the great art of the past, our face is to the future.  Our aim is not to duplicate the art of the past, nor to denigrate other forms of artistic expression, but to create new artistic standards hitherto unimagined.

Signed:

Graydon Parrish, Jimmy Sanders, Christopher  Publiese, William Kennon, Christiana Inmann, Mikel Glass, Morley Safer, James Safer, Paul Brown, Brian Le Boeuf, Patricia Watwood, Gregory Hedberg, Laura Grenning, Jacob Collins, Richard Piloco, John Morra, Christopher Forbes, Paul Sullivan, Melinda Sullivan