Hey folks,

Hope everyone's going ok in the inevitable end-of-semester madness.

I sat down tonight to write a brief blog post and ended up with a 1.5 page essay - yep, can ramble... :) With the recent unveiling of a 'realist' painted portrait of the Queen by an artist called Ralph Heimans, I got to thinking about the fascination we have with paintings that seem life-like. We've all heard some one say "Oh it looks so real!" when referring to this kind of artwork. Perhaps you have said it yourself.

Since the camera has the ability to capture the 'real', why do we so enjoy paintings that enter this territory? What, if anything, does it say about our reverence for the painted work over the photographed work? And is there more weight in a photograph, given that the subject was actually there, if you get my drift? In a photo we are actually looking at a person, not a painted version of them.

In this blog post, I show the painting that I refer to above, a detail of it and two of Annie Leibovitz's images of the Queen from 2007, by way of comparison. Would be interested in hearing some thoughts on this.

http://artistsandcannibals.com/post/32935297009/musings-i-often-wonder-why-we-are-drawn-to

- Emma