Wine Painting - Painting WITH Wine or Paintings OF Wine?

Hunt for "wine painting" on the internet, and the email address details are largely paintings of wine, bottles, or vineyards. Many reflect the style of paintings that hang in wine cellars or around the walls of the Olive Garden. Hardly any are actually paintings made out of wine. Not only are not enough people exploring this art but those who are seem hardly in a position to distinguish the theme from your subject matter. In short, it's apparently hard to describe the semantics of painting WITH wine versus paintings OF wine. This improves the obvious question: Is there a difference between the two styles, and it is that difference even worth exploring?

Sip and paint

The fast answer is, Yes. There's absolutely a benefit to doing any type of art that forces visitors to climb out of the cave and understand that they were just looking on the shadows. To further this out-of-the-box mentality, art students tend to be challenged to make a "painting" without using any traditional media. It's surprising what can be done with mud, lipstick, and then any number of drinks.

However, wine, as an artistic medium, has a few limitations. Like every other monochromatic pigment, there are just so many layers that can be built up and so many values which can be manipulated. Also, because the medium is hardly thicker than water, tight detail can be tricky... to say the least.

Painting classes

About the more optimistic side, the advantages of this style greatly outweigh the hindrances. As an example, by painting with wine, the artist can depict a vineyard while using grapes that originated in that exact location. It's not necessarily original, but it is a fun thought.

Wine makers often reference terroir (from the word terre, meaning land) as a defining element that makes their wine distinct and special. It is the soil, the climate, the vines' natural surroundings which can be incorporated into the wine's qualities. This could make the difference between a $10,000 bottle of Romanee-Conti plus a $10 California pinot. However, for the good terroir does, this is a one-way relationship from soil to bottle. Wineries, vineyards, and tasting rooms in many cases are hungry for a procedure that goes the other direction. Using the specific wine produced from that location and painting the environment completes the cycle, bringing the vineyard to itself.

While there are many painters out there who depict still lifes of bottles, or burgandy or merlot wine sloshing into glasses, there are not many taking the road less traveled and, as everyone knows, that makes all the difference.