2002


2006

I have decided to make frames for all my new work. For a bit I was waffling as to whether I should or should not frame my work. Frames on contemporary paintings these days seem to be out of fashion. I think we painters have decided that our paintings are objects, as much as a sculpture is an object (thank you Frank Stella). I can see the argument; I make my stretchers solid blocks that hang on the wall, and I work the surface as much as any metalsmith would. When I frame the work, it can be like framing a sculpture. It loses some of its "objectness". I have gone back and forth with the issue, but in the end they just look so nice with a frame. Plus, I get to be a woodworker.

What is my problem? Help, I am moving faster than I can build a market for my work. All the color has been drained out of my palette and drawing has become the most important element. I am going to temper my thrust, but the writing is on the wall. Soon my all important grid, which I have spent the last three years developing is going to be yesterdays news. Does anyone else out there feel like their work is moving faster than they can maintain?

Shannon is starting a book club this week, which means I have been banished from the house. I dont mind so much because I have plenty to do in the studio. I need to make at least two more frames before my meeting with the gallery. I am working up three paintings and I'm going to start another one on Monday. I finally got motivated to start the large five footer. Right after I stretched the thing all I wanted to paint were small intimate paintings of bottles. I think the large piece is going to be monochromatic, blue with small bottles in a grid.

Shannon and I went to our first rock show together friday night. We saw the Brunettes down town with some friends. I used to go to a lot of shows back when I had the stamina to stay out late. Now I would rather be in bed than standing for hours in a loud, smokey club. I've never been heavily into music but I am picky about what I like. Shannon likes a lot of music that is just unexceptable to me so we have a don't ask don't tell policy enacted and I can go on pretending that all is well.

I am posting this little robot for illustration friday.

I finally finished the frame on Flying Buttresses.

and put the finishing touches on this painting of bottles.

I love the bottle below and am already working on a smaller piece based on it.

Soon I am meeting with a gallery to see if they want to represent my work. I also have a local museum show to enter. A gallery in Charlotte is working on selling a large piece. I will use the money to print a new portfolio, which I will use to solicit some new representation in larger cities. Its a plan.

I am totally excited about the work of Penelope, her art is so great that it is affecting the work I am doing, and how I see my own paintings progress. I recognize some of the illustrative aspects of my own work and am enhancing that quality. I am looking at a lot of illustrative work because illustrators seem to be computer savvy. They have cool websites. My paintings have gone white and drawing is becoming more important. I finished a painting that is mostly white and cream and has bottles drawn all over it. Where is my color going?

On another note: Shannon was verbally accosted in the park by a bum in a ball cap. She was jogging in the park to blow off steam from a day's work, when a man in a blue suit edged a little too close for comfort, asking for directions to the local watering hole. She told him she didn't know, brushing the lad off, when from his mouth came the most vulgar trail of pornographic utterance that has ever spewed from the mouth of any poor perverted juvenile. I might add here that months earlier, I told Shannon she shouldn't walk that area for fear of just such a pervert (just saying). I don't know what the guy said, and I don't want to know. Let me tell you that it warranted a call to the police (no help).

As I passed the park on the way to my studio today, I looked for a shifty-eyed, loose-lipped bum in a ball cap so that I could punch him in the gut but there were none to be found.

I am posting this picture of a couple of paintings I did a few years back. I think I know what I was getting at and why it wasn't working and why everyone always loves the stuff you were making a few years back. I am being so inspired by the work of all the illustrators I am seeing around the ole Flickr town hall. I love children's book illustrations and beautiful clumbsy children's drawings. Back when I painted these I didn't know what I was interested in except nature and joy and foxes. Foxes were free and I saw one running across a field on my way to work, I began a series of fox paintings on top of abstract work I was into at the time. Joy, was what I was after as well as just some sanity and regularity. Anyway, I think I was doing work that was interesting, but I needed order. I didn't want to break the grid. With these new bottles (scroll down) I think I have found my order, now I need illustration. I am ready to begin some paintings that are illustrative and orderly, wait and see I think you will love them.

Here are the pants. Shannon says they look like Huckleberry Finn pants. They were a lot of fun to make, until I reached the point where I realized that they were ugly. The only thing left to do is to make the front pockets and test them out at the local discothecque. I don't see them getting a lot of wear. Maybe I can call them conceptual art and hang them on the wall.

So here are the bottles I promised everyone. I painted this one between putting in a new floor for my parents and sewing a pair of pants for myself. No joke, I made pants. The bottle painting turned out much better than the pants fit. I think I am going to give up my tailor job to become a painter.

Look at the chaos I call a studio.I am right at the point in my current painting where I start to wonder what the hell I am doing. I dont know if this happens to all of you, but midway through nearly every painting I make I start think that the whole thing has gone wildly wrong.

At the begining of a painting, there is not enough happening for any doubt to arise. It is only in the middle stages, when you have some real development, and that development has apparently gone completely wrong, because the piece your looking at bares no comparison what-so-ever to the one you saw in your head. Luckily I have enough years under my belt to realize that in the end the painting will pull its frying pan out of the fire, or whatever.

OK. let's talk a little bit about art. I've been thinking about art making and art selling and where the two meet. I think that if I were to make the work I really wanted to, without thinking in terms of marketability, I wouldn't necessarily be making "different" work but I would be experimenting more. As it is, I have a full time job which pays the bills, and every night I go to my studio and paint. I would love to be able to go to my studio all day, but so far that is not in the cards. I have to work eight hours a day so that I can paint for three. I don't have the guts to suffer as Van Gough did, begging my brother for bread. When I have ideas about making something that is WAY off the path from where my "career" is going, I admit I kind of nudge them aside. The market is a factor in the work I choose to make, but it is a compromise. I am not out painting crying puppies or anything; I have tried to strike some sort of middle ground. I won't bounce around as much if you start showing my work. Its one thing to be making art up in our ivory tower. It is quite another to cast our pearls to the wolves.

LOOK WHAT I FOUND TODAY!! No more hand stitching red change bags. It took me about three hours to figure out how to make the thing work. I think I am going to make a bag...a red bag.
I couldnt believe my luck in finding a website (sewusa.com) they had this things instruction manual online and I was able to figure out how to thread the dang thing. I cant wait to really get in there and make something cool. Dont think I am about to retitle this blog to studio pen and sewing, this is just to bide my time while paint dries.

I am seeing a connection between my latest painting and last years hobby; bug collecting.

I've been really inspired lately, looking around on Flickr at all these great mothers who make artsy plush dolls. I was so moved by one piece that I couldn't help but try my hand. Imitation being the sincerest form and all. I scrounged around the house for some fabric and ended up with a red shirt, remnant of a job Shannon had at State Farm. Thread? Only about a thimble full. We don't do much sewing. It was enough to keep me busy. I envisioned a beautiful little cute doll, maybe an octopus or monster. I cut the fabic and began to sew. One hour and three band-aids later, I have a pathetic red bag, just large enough to put in a quarter or two. Thank God for paint.

I am feeling a bit Dubuffett lately. Shannon and I went to the Hirshhorn in D.C. a few months ago on a trip back from a show in Baltimore where I was showing a painting entitled "Bad Hats". There were a lot of truly great works: a Lewitt, a Guston, even a few De koonings, but the work that really got under my skin was Dubuffett. I am experimenting with some blobual head forms and we will see where they go.

There is a great divide beginning; I can feel it coming. The divide is between my collage work and the paintings which I am deep into currently. The collage work is gone, out of site, at a show in St Louis. I made another collage this weekend and it turned out as nice as the rest, but the paintings I am deep into are speaking volumes. These two mediums sprung from the same source but are leading in two vastly different directions.

I am usually working in two directions. The tension increases as one side becomes resolved and pulls me off balance. I normally have an area I am exploring, pushing, experimenting in, and another area that is more resolved. My collage work is resolved, and the oil paintings are piquing my interest. This way of working can present a problem when approaching a gallery, because I have been known to show the work I am interested in rather than what I know is solid.

Today at work I happened upon this website: www.lorijoysmith.com/studio/blog.asp. I just love it. Her work is so pleasant and fun that it makes me want to become an illustrator. I found her on the "most recent uploaded images page" on Flickr. I followed the trail to her site.

Making a low cost art product has been an area I have been thinking about exploring. I really like making boxes. I have been making boxes off and on for about three years, but never seriously. I like to paint stripes on them and have seriously considered making it into a business, but really don't have time to work a full-time job, paint, sell paintings, beat the dog, do the dishes, blog, and make a box business. It was a nice thought though.

I wrote a blog that was all "issues based" about an ArtNews article involving painters' use of technology to make their work. I deleted it because I don't care to talk about issues. I don't really care about how other artists make their work. I only care about how I make my own work. It's all about me.

Shannon and I have thought a lot about moving to a larger city. Perhaps I could sell more work, get more connections. I love the city, but it would be very hard to move away from this beauty of a tree. This thing is literally ten feet from our front porch. I will suffer for my art, if I can do it in the mountains.

I am close to finishing this painting. It's far different from the dogs playing poker piece that I had imagined. I have been stuck on these bunny ears lately. In the next piece they are going to become bottles or maybe oil cans. I found this new heavy duty canvas at Lowes which is very inexpensive. It is really just a drop clothe but has only one seam down the middle. I get large sections to work with. I am so excited about this stuff that I am not going to paint the sides black like I normally do. I will leave it raw.