How Artistic Movements influence my own personal art.

I would classify expressionism as being one of my favourite artistic movements. No other group of artists has so deeply influenced my art. Not only have I been able to take on board the techniques used by both expressionist artists and Irish artists, but I have also realised that the way in which a theme is trying to be illustrated on a canvas is equally important to what is actually presented on the canvas. 

I can perceive expressionism as a spiritual movement more than an art movement. Unlike modern movements such as impressionism, post-impressionism and fauvism, Expressionism was never seen as a unified group. If anything, I could describe it to be a dispersed group of loners, living in isolation on the edge of society. 

Within expressionist art, I can appreciate a depth of feeling, which I find to be lacking in modern art. The depth of feeling was shown through their emotions. They distorted reality in order to express their feelings for the world. This process can be looked upon as attention seeking behaviour. I feel that it is important to understand that the expressionists went against the flow. They were constantly in opposition to normality. While modern painting was realistic, expressionist painting used violent, garish, jarring colours, often taken straight from the tube so that the paint could be piled on excessively. They also used sharp contrasts of light and shade and contrasting colours. Expressionist art can be looked upon as pessimistic, particularly when compared to paintings within the impressionist movement.

Expressionists were seen to be making their painting dramatic and animated. They achieved this by creating paintings including street scenes, aggressive self-portraits, nudes and an overall infatuation with nature.

Most of the power that their work was driven by was often emotions of fear, panic, despair and sexual shame. I think they were tragically misunderstood for decades, if not completely. The public viewed expressionist art as being typically egotistical and emotionally unstable. 

The interesting concept that should be examined is that expressionist art was mainly based on honesty. This shines brightly in a world of what can be seen as ‘fake, polite’ paintings for ‘fake polite’ people. This is why I feel that expressionist art is art with a purpose. What is important to realise within art, is that there is a logical message to why it looks they way it does. The art they produce is what they want humanity to hear.