I would be honored to send Mr. Hockney scans of my paintings, all done from observation of actual subjects, without using any external assistance or photographic images. Mr. Hockney would be welcome to watch me work from life, if he does not accept my word. Photography has generated a craft of trying to reproduce photographs in paint. By my standards, this has nothing to do with art. Art is produced from the reactions of the artist to his experience of life. Yes, photos are part of experience, but I can see no valid reason to reproduce images on a piece of paper. Our experience of visual reality is a living process. It is arguably flashes in our consciousness, and influenced by temporal and emotional factors in the viewer's psyche.
I think the use of photography in painting has caused a serious degeneration of the optical tradition. Although cyber images are very different from paintings (as seen objects are from photographs) I invite Mr. Hockney, and anyone else that may be interested, to visit a site showing thirty of my paintings.
www.bwwsociety.org/gallery/tedsethjacobs.htm They were all done from life. I would welcome any comments.
Thank you for the opportunity to express my thoughts.
