Amen, Zhann. And to your comments about critiquing someone's work, I'll like to add one more that I shared with vjerana by email. That is -- it is very (very) hard to make a fair critique of artwork that you don't understand or that is not to your taste. Most of what is in her gallery is very highly colored and extremely surreal. There are some of us in the world (and I'm one of them) who thinks that people who only do surreal pieces may be limited by a lack of ability -- if they call it "surreal" then they don't have to worry about perspective, texture, lighting or much of anything else. Of course, I could be wrong (and often am). But, the point is, I never comment on surreal (or very abstract) works unless they have a lot of technical expertise apparent, simply because whether or not I "like" something isn't worth a pin as artistic commentary. I went to a real live modern art gallery some time back, and this guy was showing his artwork which consisted largely of blank canvases. Yup ... plain old blank canvases. The installation was some sort of statement, and I certainly didn't get it, and I probably even called it crap. So what?? Some other person probably paid a couple of thousand dollars for one of those blank canvases. I doubt the artist would have given a fig if I had made my opinions evident ... because I'm nobody in the art world anyway. Now that I've looked at vjerana's gallery and some others, I think I see a big part of the complaint. Now, watch me express this poorly .... I think there are essentially three types of galleries. 1. The ones that are full of efforts by promising beginners -- and these generate a LOT of views and commentary because their friends want to provide both encouragement and suggestions. 2. Then there are those who are technically proficient enough that we don't get a lot of people teling us how to improve our work, and we haven't been around long enough to make friends who make a point of looking to see what we've posted (or we're jerks who have been around for long enough but still haven't made friend one) but also our artwork is not so jawdroppingly good as to make people stop dead in their tracks when one of our thumbnails pops up. I fall into that category, and we don't get so many comments or viewings. Hey, them's the breaks. 3. Last, there are the people who can make any program they use do flips, roll over and play dead. They also get a lot of viewings, maybe less commentary because there are only so many ways you can say "Oh my GOD!!" and no one but no one is ever going to make a comment on those suggesting an improvement. So, I think what chaps Sylvie's hide is that she's in category 2 with the bulk of us and thinks that the category 3 people should be the ones with all the viewing and commentary. And, it apparently bothers her no end that this is not the way the world necessarily works. But really, Hot20 or no Hot20, gallery comments or no gallery comments, we really know deep down inside who the Bryce "gods" (those category 3 folks) are around here.

Could be worse, could be raining.