Top ten conceptual art ideas.

Every fine artist has an inner voice. Some speak in landscapes, others tell their story through portraits and others may use abstract shapes to convey their ideas.

For some time now I ‘ve been wrestling with ideas that make me want to actually create art. Usually, I think about different series to create about famous people or places but none to date have stirred me into action.

There are many “top ten” concepts that come to mind; the top ten events of teh twentieth century; top ten events of our era; top ten things to say visually about our monetary system; top ten events of the middle class in America; top ten best places to visit. This list can go on and on and on.

What’s a top ten for you as a fine art series.

For me, it has to say something about life as we live it now in our time. A series that a generation can look at and understand what life was all about during our time period.

The great recession of 2009? Portrait of Bernard Maydoff made out of burn bills or perhaps a split face of him with the word THIEF over it. How about a dollar bill with wings seemingly flying away from a held up hand. A portrait of Benjamin Franklin with graffiti all over it.  Two giant airplane wings standing upright where the twin towers were in the New York skyline.

I’m looking for ideas worth creating that make a statement. I welcome your input. After all, it should be something that rings true to you the visitor of the art and says, “it happened”.

As I was writing this post a friend of mine emailed me an interesting piece about art in the rice paddies of Japan. This is an idea;

The email explains; Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan. But this is no alien creation – the designs have been cleverly planted. Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye. Instead, different colours of rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields. As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge.

A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants, the colours created by using different varieties, in Inakadate in Japan The largest and finest work is grown in the Aomori village of Inakadate, 600 miles north of Toyko, where the tradition began in 1993. The village has now earned a reputation for its agricultural artistry and this year the enormous pictures of Napoleon and a Sengoku-period warrior, both on horseback, are visible in a pair of fields adjacent to the town hall.

More than 150,000 vistors come to Inakadate, where just 8,700 people live, every summer to see the extraordinary murals. Each year hundreds of volunteers and villagers plant four different varieties of rice in late May across huge swathes of paddy fields.

What can I say, concepts communicate ideas when they’re done like this in a big way.

I can’t wait to see the other nine ideas.