Esemplastic thermoplastic

Painting is one of the two oldest forms of art, together with music, it goes far into prehistory, with the oldest known paintings about 32 thousand years old. Painting is what the very words “art” and “artist” are associated with. It has evolved and changed into many different forms, covering subjects from mythology and royalty to landscapes and still life, to abstract lines and colors.
Personally, I had always been a fan of realistic art, european academic art in particular, with its extreme levels of skill and amounts of work involved. My favorite artist from that period is Bouguereau, who I feature elsewhere, but the painting I post on this page is one by Dali. Dali had learned realism (ever seen his basket of bread?) but took it into the world of fantasy and dream, drawing what is sometimes called hyperreality – the world where imagination and reality are indistinguishable. This is something I expect of painting. Not being bound by the reality, as photography is, painting can venture into the imagination, as it had for centuries, be it Greek, Christian, or Indian mythology, yet the models were mostly humans and the settings were ones that could be imagined in nature. The surrealists go beyond nature, and that’s what I like about them.