I would like to address the prevailing show me don’t tell me wisdom with a particular whim and whimsey I am feeling today. As you may have already discerned or may soon discern, we lose track of conventions at UCP/RAR. We like to claim this to be a matter of principles (or willful lack thereof), but it is probably just the wind. We don’t like dogma whenever it blows in. Today, the weather is full of show-me-don’t-tell me bluster.
Today, (perhaps just-today, perhaps not), it seems to me show me don’t tell me is an argument, sometimes invert and backhanded, for photo-realism. It demands an ultimate approximation of what you see (from the prison of your own skull) in a manner that is as close to what is actually there (whatever that means) as you can make it. Assuming the variance of your arbitrary filter and the relative scope of your powers of discernment, there must still be something consistent from all pens and minds – a final standard of sameness to strive for that some will reach and some will not.
So anyway, feel free to tell us – tell away. If you want to lay in a line of abstract impulse, that is presumably yours and only yours, that’s fine – preferably something over the top – rich and purply please. We desire your effusive, hopeless, emotional, personal expression to be be liberated. We want what issues forth from your bewildered and deranged cognition. Please please please have at it without stricture. It’s fine to get the morphology geeks foaming and fulminating. That, in itself, is a precise and perfect morpheme. Oh wait should I compose a picture? Nevermind, of course you can compose your own.
As always, I do not apologize for any dazzling typos – Henry.
UNCOLLECTED PRESS: The Raw Art Review 