Excerpt One, God's Brush Vol.1

So much did I come to love cinematography as an art form that it sometimes frustrated me that I remained a painter instead of becoming involved in this perhaps even greater art. My main deciding factor in this was the belief that in films there seemed already to be so many geniuses - writers, musicians, actors and directors - while in painting I found nothing to love or even to admire that was being created in the present, just a barren wasteland where nothing was real or, even worse, nothing was beautiful and quality was simply a forgotten factor altogether. All around me I saw things being perpetrated in the name of creativity and art that I felt were nothing more than illusions, like card tricks. The so-called world of art appeared to me like a house of cards built by Jokers that consisted mainly of Kings and Queens, who were the financial backers of the whole scheme. Absolutely anyone could call themselves an artist, even though hardly any of them produced anything I thought should even be called Art. They just became the clowns while the dealers were the ringmasters who controlled the whole circus, and somehow managed to manipulate public opinion and taste. The dealers were the Jacks and all they had to do was convince the King and Queen that this "artist" or that one held the Ace; and once Royalty was convinced and paid the fee, the public simply followed suit. Jack got richer and the artist-clowns laughed all the way to the bank. And the worst thing for me was that they all did it pretending to believe that it was all a natural part of evolution. The more I became immersed in the world of Art as an artist the more I studied its history, until I became as much historian as artist. To do so actually took many years, but to study the past seemed to be the only way I could find the key to understanding the present. By the time I held that key I also held the belief that in the end it was I who held the Ace, as I was the only one I could find who believed that an artist should be true to his Art and its God, not dedicated to crass commercialism. I simply had no idea how long it would be before I was allowed to play my Ace.

Anthony Christian

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