Guest Critic Review

My review today was good but strange.  She listened to the piece while looking at the painting. At one point she sat down on the floor.  She loved the music, she said it was very beautiful.  The first thing that struck her was how balanced the visual aspect was with the audio aspect.  Then she describe her overall experience and what she got out of it.  This part was interesting to me because she understood the concept of my project very well and it seemed that her experience was exactly what I hoped for. We talked mostly ablout the performance aspect. She didn't really seem too enthused about the painting.  She didn't think that it really need to be that large and I tried to explain the connection to the "Last Judgement".  Also she was reluctant to really talk about it at all.  She made a comment along the lines of "we might as well talk about it because you worked so hard on it."  That was weird...  We sat on the floor and she gave me her basic read of the image and what she thought about it.  That was all good stuff.  Again, she really did get everything out of it that I hoped she would.  But then it got wierd- she said that I was cleary very serious about the music and the performance and that it seemed like I was also passionate about painting but she didn't want to be the person to tell me to quit painting and get into video.  I must have looked at her like she had ten heads.  I did not know what to do with that, so I just accepted it and we moved on in our conversation.  I never would have axpected anyone to tell me to quit painting.  That makes no sense to me.  All in all, she thought the project was quite epic and powerful.  She said she wished that it had its own private space so that the viewer could have a more private and spiritual experience.  She said that there was so much potential there for the project, but what held it back from its full effect was its setting, which I could not do anything about.  It was useful to hear an outsiders view of the project.  I definitely do not agree that I should quit painting for any reason, and I am having trouble keeping myself from feeling offended. I do not like to take things personally and I don't believe critiques should ever be taken personally.  I was just very suprised.