Time and place are obvious triggers to both memory and experience – rendering light though colour at a specific moment in time to capture a moment of beauty is not a new idea but such moments are rapidly superseded. Such is the nature of light.
Few artists have mentioned city green spaces in their work other than as romanticised places from whence they came, such as a remote rural village in an area of Russia that no longer existed in the case of Chagall
When I see the work of someone like a Phyllida Barlow with an installation endlessly taking over a gallery space there is a distinct feeling of amazement because what has characterised my art from the outset has been the self-enclosed limiting factor of the edge of a canvas or sculpture with a definitive outline.
I think it comes down to the society we have created where the expectation of something for nothing pervades every aspect of the retail market
This all begs the question though of the value of drawing in this day and age. When McLuhan wrote that the medium was the message back in the 60s he also noted that we were still using the ideas of the mechanical age to evaluate the present. Linear perspective obviously falls into that category as does tonal rendering in a throwback to the Renaissance. Given how many artists and the general public still use these measures to evaluate the worth of art you have to wonder if anything has changed in the half century since McLuhan. Is drawing as a concept a universal norm, a learned technique or something else?
Any and every artist is in the end self-taught and open-ended learning is a cornerstone of creativity.