My influences on Pinterest
I love going to art galleries and having a look at the paintings up close. But I don’t think paintings are best absorbed hanging in a gallery. They aren’t meant to be looked at just once, for a few minutes. The problem with an art gallery is that you have to walk away from them sooner or later. No matter how hard you try you can’t absorb every last detail in painting in the few minutes you have standing in front of it.
The best way to hang paintings is to have them on your wall at home, so you can look at them for one minute every day. That way you get to know them better. I once went to the house of a friend who had covered every inch of wall in framed paintings. In every alcove and all the way up the stairs there were paintings of all sizes, I thought it was wonderful. A lot of them weren’t to my taste, but I still spent a long time walking round gawping at the pictures. She must have got to know all of those paintings very well since she looked at them for a few moments every day.
For those who don’t live next door to a gallery or can’t afford to buy all the art you really love, Pinterest is a great way to create your own wall of art and what’s more, unlike a gallery you only pin the paintings you are interested in. You are the curator of your dream art museum. You can pin all your favourites pictures together and go back to look at them whenever you like. It’s not quite the same as having the originals on your living room wall of course, but it’s still pretty fab.
To pick paintings for your Pinterest board you can upload them from your computer or just pin images you find on the internet. You can also re-pin images on someone else’s board to your own.
Apart from being a place to collect all your favourite drawings and paintings, it’s also a great place to discover artists you’ve never heard of before. That’s because Pinterest analyses your “pins” and then suggests other stuff you might like. You can also browse the boards of people who’ve pinned the same stuff as you and discover new art that way.
If you are into other crafty creative stuff or even organising a wedding or a party, Pinterest is also great for keeping a pinboard of any visual references you want to remember.
The only annoyance with Pinterest is that if you are not already a member, you have to sign up in order to see pretty much anything. You can’t just browse around and have a go look, almost immediately you get a pop-up asking you to register. But it’s free, and signing up only takes a moment and if you are like me you’ll find it was worth it.
Anyway here is the unorganised, uncategorised jumble of pins of paintings that I love. Looking at this board is pretty much like looking inside my brain.
I think I started on Pinterest pinning paintings by Carol Marine. This has led me into a grotto of artistic delights and has led me to discover wonderful artists including Markus Haub, Colley Whisson, Dmitri Danish, Tibor Nagy, Richard Schmid, Corneliu Dragan-Targoviste, Sean Cheetham, Mark Tennant, Malcolm Liepke, Kim English, David Shevlino, Costa Dvorezky and Mark Boedges to name just a few. This has really enriched my painting vocabulary and inspires me every day to keep practising and learning new things.
Wouldn’t it be great though if your local art gallery put on an exhibition of all the originals from your Pinterest board?
