One through twelve……..or is it fearless???
One through twelve………..or Fearless!
Well, this post could be called fearless…..I’m fearless when it comes to prepping my canvases or getting out the paint to lay out on the palette. Scared ^$#L(ESS when it comes to really doing much, although I’m good at faking it.
This one could be called both…………I’ve been mulling over in my mind for some time some work I might start when I have uninterrupted time. (Is there such a thing?). It’s really unusual to have a “plan” per se for me. And I have to say that the plan is still open to changes as always, in my mind.
I just went into the studio to prep the panels I ordered some time ago from Jerry’s/Ampersand.
They look wonderful…..just beautiful. Now to make something to complement the wonderful surface. My plan is not complete, but it is a negative/positive thought. So when I went to Miami…………guess what I saw there??? Negative/Positive. Now I know you don’t know what I’m talking about but in my mind I DO. That is the most important thing……..I KNOW. Now to DO IT.
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Just can’t do it
Just can’t do it. I left the bait to stay tuned in the last post and now I have no time to think straight and I can’t separate all that I saw and did at Art Basel-Miami Beach. Many others who really did know what they were doing and where they were going said it better than I could have anyway.
Matthew Langley and Edward Winkleman are two who have blogs to read about what they saw there. These people also are in the “network” and know the art crowd. I’m just a painter going around with my jaw dropped looking. Of all the shows, I think I really enjoyed Flow and Bridge (located next to each other in the Catalina Hotel) the most………but what the heck, they were the main shows I saw where the galleries were a bit more approachable. The guys at the ABMB were so far in the stratosphere above me for me to feel like I was in a museum with a cattle car feel. I spent the WHOLE first day there. ( they need to open earlier than noon….I can’t stay up all night).
With so much going (holiday time you know) on since I returned, I’m officially abandoning the idea of making any contribution to the gazillion other blogs on Miami. I know something will seep out sometime down the line but it will be old news by then.
I’m just hoping the old news influence will in some way affect how I feel about my career as an artist……..not by emulating some of hype but just by having experienced it.(I don’t think this might make any sense)………oh well, how many artists make sense to anyone else but themselves???
Good thing our group had a place out in East Little Havana to go to get away from some of it in the late evening.
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Frozen Brain, art overload
Frozen brain………..
That’s what I have after coming home from Art Basel-Miami. No way around it, my brain is NOT working. I saw so much and yet I didn’t see a fraction of what was there to see. AND, I’m only talking about art here…..not all the partying and networking that was going on all over the place.
And I’d never been to Miami, or even Florida, so it was all foreign to me. I’d heard Miami was dirty and they didn’t speak English there ( I won’t divulge where I got that info). I must say right out that I loved it……and what I saw was great. They may not have all spoken English (some areas more than others, maybe) but I felt like I was in another country in the area where I stayed in East Little Havana……….and they had a fantastic place there at the B & B …Miami River Inn …with 4-5 bungalows………near our home away from home, I felt like I might be in the REAL Miami. I even found some really cool but comfy little thong sandals really cheap on 7th or 8th Street or Avenue (can’t get those straight).They name some streets and some avenues with the same name ….and Cuban food the first night at a strangely named restaurant named Versailles Restaurant..located on SW 8th Street.
First of all, next time I go to something like this I will NOT buy my tickets to get in the event ahead of time like I did this time………….I wasted money as I couldn’t go the second day to the main event or I wouldn’t have been able to see a few of the other shows there. I’ll just stand in line to get my ticket day by day or take my chances and get there early and pray. As it was, I still didn’t see a fraction of what was there to see. I suppose I should have noted what I wanted to see exactly but over time I’ve found that only makes me anxious when I can’t get over to see what I had planned. This time I was going with the flow so to speak. Just go where everyone else wanted to go, and in the time allotted. Oh yeah………that was another thing……nothing opened until noon, so how did you expect to get around to seeing much in the time frame. I’d not really taken note of that. Good things and bad……….at least you didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to get to something but my old internal alarm went off and I got up and was ready to go by at least 9 am, coffee and the breakfast goodies put out by Carlos at the Miami River Inn. The evenings were full of walking/strolling around just gawking at things like the Delano Miami scene and all the people………too bad I’m not a people painter!
continued………. ah ha….gotcha, huh!
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Yikes…..Art Basel-Miami Beach
YIKES………Art Basel-Miami Beach is almost upon me. I leave for Dallas day after tomorrow early as I have things to do there before flying out on Thursday.
BUT, first I need to figure out what I’m taking with me to a place that has a forecast of rain every day and upper 70’s for temps….when it is upper 20’s right now here at home with highs in the 50’s……..Even more important is the same old thing that happens every time I’m going anywhere for any time spent walking around……SHOES, what shoes??? I know, I know, comfy shoes, and then you have to think of the weather again and shoes that are warm or cool. So off to the department store again just to look to make sure I haven’t overlooked something I need when I don’t even know what that is.
I might also need a couple of bright colored tops that aren’t too hot….and everything seems to be totally neutral in the closet as I looked at it this morning and I need jeans that are actually long enough………….
Back from the mall…. and so much for that idea. They didn’t have my size to try on of the shoes I wanted to try…..some comfort ballet style flats. Will try again in Dallas Wednesday if I have time, but will just have to take what I have in case that doesn’t work out either.
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Calling it finished
I’ve been working on this painting again reported on in the last blog entry. Then I had to sleep on it for two days. This morning was THE day, I’m painting over the top….just has to be, for good or ill.
Some people might like the first rendition, but this is finished……..if I decide later it isn’t, I’ll just throw it away as I think this thing has about a ton of paint on it and it’s not the heavy duty gallery wrap stretcher so it just can’t take any more weight…….and it will have to be framed. This just reminded me why I don’t like painting on the standard stretchers any longer.
This is the first of the final rendition…it just had to have more unity ….so, red won out…give me more red for the final painting……..
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Nine Lives
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Four down and one to go
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Still working on the small pieces….
I’m back to working on the pieces I had going a week or two ago. I just painted over one of them and now it’s in it’s third incarnation. I’ve painted over and then sanded and glazed with gloss medium and painted over again.
Who knows if it’s finished for sure..but it might be.
I’ve been so used to working on larger pieces that I lose touch at times with when to stop on smaller ones. I’m more inclined to fiddle around with these smaller pieces that I’m up close to and get down from the wall and place on the painting table. The color is pretty intense.
The other one I’ve been working with is the other red one on the wall easel at the same time. It’s beginning to look like Christmas already :>) with all the red and green in the studio. This one didn’t need much else done to it except a little glazing after I let it just hang around for a time. I, also, think I’ll let the other red one that looked like it had a tornado in it alone as well.
Both of these are 16 x 16’s acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas. I’ll be off to Dallas tomorrow unless something happens………..back in a few days.
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Continuing saga
So much for the “getting into the studio” yesterday afternoon. You know how it goes, clean things up, put up shipping stuff……. and then it’s time to suddenly ship something out. At least that box was on the very top of the pile in the closet. So I spent time packing up work and taking it to FedEx for shipment that afternoon. Once I get out of the house, my time suddenly is just gone.
The company that does my reproduction giclees, American Artist Series, wanted some more work so I packed up a couple of collages (the ones from the last post) and three more of the Brown/Black series for him.
Nita Leland’s demo for SWS will be next Wednesday at 7pm. It will be nice to see her again while she is in Dallas for a workshop.
I, also, upgraded to the new blogger beta……..hope this one works better for images. Heck…I was going to test it out but have already cleared those problem images off my desktop and have no time to go looking for them in the trash bin.
I just now noticed that part of this blog got left off from loading yesterday….weird. So I went back to try to change it. I’ll see what happens…so much for the updated Blogger so far.
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Crossing off the list
Crossing off the list…….
Got all six pieces with strap hangers and wire finished up last night ……AND all ready for the varnishing this morning. Now all the work is varnished and waiting for it to level out on the surface before they can be put up to cure another day.
Then I can get back to the serious fun stuff………..those four paintings in process………Oh,and one other I came across while moving stuff around. One of those that just never passed muster although I did make slides one day. It’s history now as I just brushed on some cobalt blue and it will now be ready with the other four for magic to happen. SO, bring on the magic. Maybe I should call it “thinking or not thinking” according to the twice weekly letter from Robert Genn this morning. Or right vs. left brain thinking. Sometimes you need some of this mundane studio work to just relax the brain and have it “ready” for the magic of right brained thinking to come. While I’m doing things like this or mixing up a whole new palette of paints……..or even cleaning up, heaven forbid, my brain rests and mulls over the things I’ve tried to make it “think” about and consider for the next work. Kinda like dreaming while awake.
Since I don’t have another painting to put up right now……..here’s another of the collages I did in France in April. Blogger wants to turn it around as well but that will just have to be as I can’t figure out why it does this to some images. So just pretend the taupe colored band is in the top. Analyzing this later, I figured those drips look a lot like the spacing of all the plane trees we saw up and down every road in the area.
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First things, first…….or finishing up what you’ve started!
Woo-woo……….got a dozen new 12 x 12″ Ampersand panels from Jerry’s yesterday. Asleep last night…. all night, I had ideas spinning around in my head about what to do with them. I know nothing is NEW in the world of art but I plan to put these panels together as a group of four and just have an inkling about how I want to do it. Maybe it will be a little different than the way others have presented theirs.
So I say,…… “hold on there, first things first“………….gotta get the other pieces I’m working on finished before I get to work on something new. I can’t have another half finished piece staring at me from the floors, walls, easel or shelf. I do like to work on several at a time but this has just gone too far.
My helper around here did assist in breaking down a lot of shipping boxes I had in the closet causing me no end of problems trying to find stuff when I went in to look for something…….and helped with putting them WAAAY up on the top deep shelving, too. I need a certain amount of space to feel like I’m not totally closed in when I’m working and I hope this does it. You can’t work without supplies and you can’t work when too many pile up around you……….so what’s a person to do? Get a larger studio. I have an idea that however much room you have, sooner or later an artist will fill it up and be back at the same place all over again in a short time frame.
While cleaning up stuff in shelves and looking to see what frames I had available, I found these two collage pieces again ………I made them in France and found that lucky me, I have two square maple frames that will work for them……….but I have to have get around to looking for the Plexiglas first. Cat’Art 13 became the title to this one …I’d also forgotten that I tried to load a couple of these in France and Blogger turns them around and I can’t figure out how to get them turned right. It doesn’t make any sense at all that the program would rotate an image around like this…….oh well….the bottom is showing on the right side in this view, so crook your head toward your left shoulder.
Hum, “what to do, what to do??” varnish work and put on hangers, frame and mat work, work on unfinished stuff, start playing with new supplies……decisions, decisions. Also, considering….does this collage need a little more surface quality???………NO NO NO…I can’t add another thing to my “to do” list today.
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Where is that woo-woo feeling?
Well………..one of them is still red anyway….although it reminds me a of tornado on red ground. One is untouched, still with the first coat of red………. and one is no where near red. I’ll take a picture so I can “get away” from them and see what I think. These babies may end up with several layers.
The red doesn’t have much value change….way too much like the same ole, same ole for the other one.
I’m feeling a deep dissatisfaction with a lot of my work lately…………why is that? Does it mean growth? Well, if it does, then I’m ready to get past the growth cycle for a change and fall in love with something I’m doing. I want to feel the “woo-woo…..that is right on, way to go” feeling.
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