They All Came
On Monday I received a wonderful, unsolicited comment / compliment from a fellow artist, about this work, when I left it at Northwind Arts Center for juror review:
“that is a very powerful piece”
I couldn’t ask for a better compliment: so sincere, and so satisfying! I am happy!
I certainly hope the juror agrees! If so, this will be on exhibit in March in the show “Earth Matters”.
I start with drawing, and line, and shading.
I love color: delicate, subtle, deep, vivid, intense, seductive colors!
But using color effectively in my art does not come naturally or easily for me. I have to enforce great restraint, or I will run amok with color, and lose all sense of the whole work.
I have never really practised or trained using a limited color palette, or had any patience what so ever with color theory. As with all work, I play and experiment, and use whatever is to hand and feels right. Of course this does not always have a satisfactory result!
However working by the rules, while impressive and effective, is often dull, even stultifying. Why create art without pleasure?
And all my mistakes will, I hope, inform my next work without constraining me in a tedious way.
Alternate version of Bones Laid Out, with watercolor, digital extended
I like to think that, anyway!
While considering entering a new juried show, I reviewed paintings by the show juror, Michael Paul Miller. His oil paintings are stunning: his subjects are attention getting and his technique is exquisite. All his work shown at Saatchi online is gorgeous & very impressive. The work is described as post-modern realism, dark and often depicting an environmental apocalypse.
I was much intimidated! But I sent the link to a friend, along with the show statement and 3 works I am considering submitting (advice solicited re: frames). This was her response:
The juror’s work does not intrigue me at all. It is so obviously and literally and constantly dark. But I think he would learn from your work. Your work is not propaganda from either the light or the dark side.
Wow, what a compliment! My work does not have the meticulous technique (and never will). But perhaps I don’t need to be intimidated by that fact. Although I am guessing that Miller’s gorgeous paint work, with a clear and assertive message & subject matterwork, will always appeal to more people than my ambiguous messages, my work does allows the viewer room to create an individual interpretation and response.
It is so not easy! I certainly prefer to think that my doubts, agonizing, reworks and difficulties make my art better. And that the end result is worth something to others, not just to me. Self-doubt hovers in the wings every step of the way, and I waver between triumphant satisfaction and complete confusion: do I “waste” my time? Well, no I do please myself, but I want a bit more than that! Click on the image to view all three possible entries for this next juried show.
I wonder how many artists in the local area who have submitted artwork rejected by the juror for Collective Visions Gallery’s 2014 annual show? Since many works get rejected, and most artists submit several works, there must be a good many rejected artworks in the neighborhood.
Enough for a Salon des Refuses? Certainly! And if there are too many, we would give priority to works by artists with all entries refused 🙂
But how to reach the artists? Advertise?
Where can we hold the show? Port Townsend or Bremerton? Hmmm, that is easy if I am to organize it: Port Townsend of course!
Let’s be thinking about this!
See these and more in this series on Facebook.
Having used some intersesting “found” paper for a print collage which turned out to be something I really like, I started worrying about the quality of these large sheets of colored paper. After a little Internet research, I bought a Lineco Ph testing pen, and tests on scrap seem to indicate the paper is acidic.
Mind you, all these ph test pens get some rather mixed reviews, and test reports recommend that you test the pen first yourself, and develop your own color scale since manufacturers information is not reliable! Still a few tests on paper advertised as acid-free produced a light lavender consistent with the pen instructions, while tests on tissue paper and newsprint were clear, indicating high acid content.
A small piece of the Walking Bones collage
So then what to do with my acidic artwork? I settled for buying a can of Krylon “Make It Acid-Free!”. A couple of test sprays did not alter the paper color or the ink colors. And my Lineco pen seemed to indicate lowered acidity, so I sprayed the work. Then I was in for a day of panic: several pinky brown patches, some quite large, scarred my work! Horror, and I gave it up as ruined when they remained after a few hours of drying time. Probably the spray was reacting to previously invisible oils, glues, or other material.
Next morning, surprise! The splotches had faded completely. The piece looks as before.
However on further testing of scraps, reapplication of spray, etc. I doubt the value of the spray. The purple writing of the test pen on the sprayed paper fades to almost clear very quickly (a few minutes), and a clear result indicates high acidity. The spray is probably a very thin porous coating of low acid material that does not really penetrate the paper. After three light coats of spray a whitish coat is starting to show on my colored paper.
So hard to know if I am wasting my time (and money). I would love this artwork to be a little longer lived & light resilient, but what to think? What to do!!??
In San Miguel Allende, Mexico in 2005
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http://www.saatchionline.com/profile/92565
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Yesterday and today I am regretful, wishing that I had signed up for a Seattle TK “30 Day Art Challenge. For this challenge the artist enrolls, pays, and receives 30 8″x10” canvas boards which must be completed & returned in 30 days to be exhibited at December ArtWalk.
I decided not to enter this challenge due to my current stress level, and current commitments to family and friends. But on another level, I feel so ready for this challenge. I could do it! And it would be fun, exciting, etc.
Realistically meeting this challenge would require a time commitment that I do not want to make just now. I am too enmeshed in other things, some (but not all) of my own choosing, of course. Unfortunately some of these things are painful, and it is difficult not to be resentful.
I don’t need more stress in my life at the moment, and I fear that my other commitments would turn a fun challenge into painful stress! Perhaps next year I will be able to take the plunge with fewer conflicts, but of course the fear is that there will always be other commitments and time conflicts!
I signed up to do a solo exhibit at my favorite local coffee shop, needing to challenge myself. I have not entered recent juried shows, after a rejection or two. I have had some enthusiastic feedback from accepted work in the past, but I have never sold anything exhibed in a juried show: I have only sold a few pieces from a previous solo show, and to friends who see my work at home.
Preparing for and hanging a show, even a small one, is a lot of work. And hosting and catering an artist’s reception is work too, so I started to wonder why I had signed up… so imagine my surprise now: I have sold four pieces in this show! So nice!
And after the show, one more! So very gratifying!
I am a slow learner about people, and about myself. So I have only just realized some aspects of my art that can frustrate me: my art is very varied, and unlike that of many artists, it may not be easily recognizable (as mine).
There are several contributing factors (one being that I work in a variety of different media!), but a key factor is surely that my art is so internal, and so personal.
My artwork is improvisational. I rarely plan, and may work without an object or scene in mind. When I do start with, or incorporate drawings of external objects, these things generally morph into something very different and become part of a separate, internal, reality that I try to show you.
My work reflects my psyche as much as it does the outside world. My art integrates me with my surroundings and with the news of the world.
It reflects all the aspects of my personality and also influenced by my current mood when I work.
So it is perhaps hardly surprising that my work has both a light side and a dark side, and also places in between! The tone of my work will vary dramatically based on what is uppermost in my mind as I start a new piece. And it may change along the way…
Sometimes I am lost in the patterns and beauties of the natural world, the joy of chocolate, or the delight of a sunny walk on the beach. At this point work my may have a bright, clear, cheerful tone. At other times, I am under the influence of darker spells; fear of death and the impact of “Nature, red in tooth and claw” may dominate my work. At such times, the subject matter, colors and tone will certainly be heavier, darker, and altogether different!
