We’re always in search for the best looking “thing” whenever we shop for majority of the things in our life. When we go out to buy clothes, we look for things that appears nice and will match different kinds and colors of shoes. When we shop for a car, we always look for a car that’s good in a number of ways; a car should better fuel consumption, better handling on the road, and also, a better look than your current car or something you’ve seen. Even online we’re always in search of better looking layouts and themes for web sites and web pages, along with better content.

I came across the concept of rock painting of today a while back, and it was interesting to see how it is viewed and treated.

Rock painting is supposedly and somehow the same concept that people used to paint in the caves thousands of years ago. One of the forms used today is painting directly on the rocks, making the rock the canvas. This way, you use the same traditional space used by people in previous civilizations to paint something. Another form of rock painting is the Painted Rocks, in which the artist takes a rock and turns the actual rock into a visually identifiable [and small symbol] of an actual “thing.” This is really interesting to me, as the transformation is made possible not through cutting the stone as in the case of sculptures, but through painting on the rock itself. For example, the sneaker image in this paragraph is an actual rock which has only been painted upon. I find such art really beautiful, as it requires a lot of thinking when taking a shape that is already there, and turning it through painting colors into an object of a similar shape.

While materialistic things get newer and different faces everyday, art itself has gotten less attention from many people as time has passed. I find myself in many situations where I appreciate art based on who the artist is, or what a small placard says right next to a sculpture, until I realize what I’m doing. Art of today has somehow moved a little bit back into the stage that was the norm a couple of centuries ago, when art could only be “appreciated” and bought by the elite. While people do invest a lot of time in unique kinds of art these days to make art that is personal and affordable [either for purchase or to simply appreciate], most of the time these go unnoticed and unappreciated compared to the attention art from the previous centuries receives today. I think that these small forms of art, even though they may look too basic or “strange” compared to the works of some famous painters, should be promoted more, no matter how small or different such art might be compared to the mainstream art that is appreciated today [which consists mostly of art from the previous centuries]. We can thus appreciate art and keep coming up with ways which promote the concept of art itself, and not the concept of commercialization of art in which the form of art is based upon who purchases it.