[Carl Toboika]

Marketing groups usually want the artist/designer to produce more of what has been selling or something similar to the competition's latest hit.

In my opinion you are ignoring certain past market forces, trying to oversimplify them into the word "salesman" (among other things, including the job of critic, to explain in intellectual language, the obscure and so, esoteric) so I agree to disagree on this one.

Any hope that the school of painting that most of us practice will "mature", in my opinion, will depend on those painters who allow the input and influence of all that preceded them and find inspiration and enthusiasm for their own distinct style. To censor or invalidate efforts we do not agree with puts the student at a disadvantage.

and I sure enough agree to agree on this one whole heartedly.

It can be maddening to know that a blob of paint can evoke aesthetic/emotional response from a viewer but to resent or deny it serves no constructive purpose.

Hardly maddening or even irritating. Any realist that doesn't understand the workings of blobs can't put together an effective mood and composition. It's basic.

However there is also no real need to stop at the well placed, sized, shaped, valued, intensitied, modulated blob either. The blob can certainly work well as part of a representational element still carrying its emotional content if used correctly. Blobs etc. are building blocks.

Of course there is no need to go further than just a blob either, especially when it requires more work, skill, time, learning, practice, and effort to go further. Perhaps we should all stop banging our head against the ceiling in an effort to raise it and just paint emotional little blobs laughing all the way to the bank? Perhaps not, but there was a time when many felt pressure to do so (for whatever reasons). They may have been serious about their work and their exploration, but the pressure on them still existed in areas of the Art world and Artist's training.

Regardless of which came first, the chicken or the egg, there was too wide a swing of non-inclusiveness that happened not all that many decades ago. Instead of the twin track of realism and abstraction etc. there existed a certain mindset/prejudice that sought to close out realistic works to a degree that went too far ("oh THAT! THAT is JUST illustration").

That particular mind-set turned out, I think, to be destructive to a certain body of knowledge, in certain halls of learning,. It did sway some minds, which is neither here nor there, but it also left many short on skills and knowledge they wanted at the outset. That