The return of figurative painting.

Short soundbite regarding the eventual [next 10-15 years] return to classical painting aesthetics.

While paroozing Chelsea galleries, it would not be strange for me to tell you I've seen an abundance of conceptual artwork which, by association, often lacks the "artists hand" and much of a sense of craftsmanship. Artists who's work is concerned with the figure, with rendering in acrylic and oil, and allowing the stroke to tell the story, have never been more profoundly overlooked as they are now.

With the advent of Adobe Illustrator as well as various other digital rendering technologies, the "art consumer" wants little to do with the figurative painter. In fact, if they are concerned with paint at all, they are buying up abstract works or heavily illustrative, workshopped paintings by people who are selling a schtick.

Though this is the direction of the world at large, without a doubt. Moving away from tactile aesthetics and toward the digital-cerebral is the trend of our age. Negative or not, it is the trajectory. Though in my opinion, just as the pendulum swings one way, it will also swing back the other.

The generation that is growing up now, never having not known touch screens, etc, will seek something foreign when the time comes for them to purchase artworks. And that foreign entity will (in my opinion) be the tactile and emotional response from the painters hand.