Think big.

This is the advice every self-help guru doles out like crackerjack prizes, but is it right?

That is a very good question and it leads to another, is there a RIGHT in art? No, the artist is the last word on right and that right may change from work to work. So now that we know there is no RIGHT what about big?

There is something majestic about big works. True, most patrons don’t have enough house for a gallery-sized painting, but should an artist limit their work to what will fit in the average-sized house?

No, no and hell no, big works. Jackson Pollack worked on room-sized sheets spread on the floor. Lautrec painted posters. Would the Moulin Rouge have paid for an eight and a half by eleven inkjet print? No, they wanted advertising posters to slap on the walls of buildings. Give me land, lots of land, lots of copy, fill the sky. Or words to that effect

Big works when you are trying to reach the public. Let’s take a look at one of the great public works projects of the renaissance, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It is huge. No delicate, little miniature here, no God reaches across the heavens to pass the divine spark to man and he does it super size. See, it’s on a ceiling and if it weren’t you couldn’t see it.

Leonardo did the big and the small of it, the Last Supper is the MacDonald’s version of renaissance art while the Mona Lisa is shocking to the modern viewer because it is intimate, delicate, and strangely evocative. And neither work would do the job if the size had been changed.

So work big.

Yeah, how do you do that? Good question and easy if you happen to be a painter working in landscapes. Fortunately Nature works on a grand scale. It provides a canvas as wide as the horizon. All the artist has to do to achieve size is to faithfully copy Nature. Okay, you can make it a little smaller; most galleries can’t hang a sixteen mile by twenty miles canvas.

And yes, sculptors, I am talking to you too. Unfortunately very few of us live in Florence or Ravenna so the majestic commissions of the Medici years are long gone, but the principles remain true, work big. Think Henry Moore.

And yes, (Take the kiddies from the room, I’m gonna talk to those people), you photographers too, work big. Now I know it’s harder and more expensive for a photographer to work on a gallery-sized print, but you got to do it. Try hanging an 8 x 10 glossy next to a seventy-two by forty-eight canvas and see which one catches the eye.

Big needs big subjects, if you don’t do landscapes think about what would work for a wall-sized image? Whales, ships, airplanes, buildings, bridges and even, gasp, people, you just have to select the right subject.

Now scoot, get back into your studio and clean out a spot to rest that super-sized canvas. No, the easel won’t hold it, think forklift.