Thinking about the new year...

Thinking over the year that has past I see that there are many things I would have liked to have done but didn't get around to doing. I sort of feel like I'm in the middle of a river, out of control, being shuffled along. This would be a great accomplishment...to get a handle on doing what I really want to do instead of being pushed and pulled along by so many seemingly insignificant whims. I think "paint, draw, read and write" should be my new mantra.

Three Pears

I think it's always a good idea to keep life as simple as possible. I tend not to live life in the simple lane. It's a challenge. In painting, this is good advice. Again, I tend not to follow the simple path. I get myself into a corner almost every time. The mermaid paintings that I started this past July are a good example. I have these six paintings that are poster size. They all have excellent starts to about being half-way done. Then I had a melt down. I stopped painting. I've since learned that resistance is my enemy. I read a little about that from Steven Pressfield's book "The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Creative Battles." He names the enemy. Resistance is my enemy in practically every area of my life! So I posted a few reminders around and fight this battle every day now. Resistance to doing what I love, what I should, what's good for me, etc., etc. It's progressively changing me. Why do I do anything other than paint, read, write, listen to great music, think and maybe get out and take some pictures once in a while and think some more. How many times have I opted to do the dishes instead! The enemy has a name. Now to fight...and hopefully win.

Cutting my way through...

One of the best things I've ever done to improve as an artist lately is to put down my brushes. I'm thinking maybe I might not ever pick them up again. I'm a child of the baby-boomer, Bob Ross style of painting, heavy on the technique and light on content. I've spent the better part of my adult life trying to "improve" my technique carefully trying to maintain a balance between visually correct and photorealistic. I wouldn't like to think of any of my work as so dead as to be considered "realistic" but there it is. I want to break away from that so I've taken my brushes away from myself. I have to say so far I really love the way palette knives force me away from busy detail. I want to take that alot farther and I'm sure it will evolve to the point that my work takes on a nice comfortable abstraction. I don't want to work my paintings to death! A palette knife will help me do that. Here's my first attempt. I used a yellow underpainting because of all the blues and greens. I worked fairly small...9" by 12". I would like to work larger but this was sufficient for the amount of time I had before the sun went down. So now....the mermaids are coming. More on that soon.

Hello Again

Yes...its been a long time. I suffered a melt-down. I put a huge effort into self promotion and sales. I drowned in an ocean of others trying to do the same thing. It was so defeating. I felt so naive. But you have to start somewhere don't you? I have recovered. I realized I needed a new game plan. I'm taking from my recent experiences and moving forward with a video blog and podcast. I have a grand new IDEA for my work. I want to walk off the edge of the realism cliff. I want to get more at the heart of why I paint, see and paint some more. Do you know what I mean? I don't want to obey the rules. I want to create something more organic than what I see. I want to create something from what I feel. I'm not entirely casting aside tricks and techniques. I'll use them to accomplish my purposes. I'm taking the training wheels off. I think its a good idea for me to take all the years of figure drawing classes, art history classes, painting from photos I've taken and walk into uncharted territory. I love the impression of three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional surface. Can I create it without representing objects and places? If I can, will it be something of value to the viewer? It would be valuable to me because its part of my evolution as an artist. Is it O.K. for me to make art for the pure love of it? Yes! I give myself permission.

My easel scares me...

So when I undertook to work on ten paintings simultaneously I didn't realize I would be multiplying the fear factor by as much. Its like writer's block. Everything was going great and I was about done with all of them. Its a funny thing when something's about to be finished....I think that it could all go wrong and mess it up completely. All that work and material wasted. But that's never, ever happened in my entire experience. So....................here's one.

The New Me

just messing around with my picture...inspired by my friend Terry

Moonlight

This is my first attempt at a night painting. I have seen the most amazing, beautiful sights late at night here in the mountains. The moon comes up over the mountains. It's cold and windy that high up. The wind blows the snow straight up into the sky and the light of the moon shines right through it. Just to see the way the moonlight reflects off the snow on the mountains at night is shear poetry. Or when there's no moon, the snow almost glows. The soul comprehends, sky and mountains, the immensity and its own minuscule self.

Stephanie Syndrome

The art of missing out on life because you're watching LAW & ORDER: SVU, sucking the cheese from Combo's and discarding the pretzel part on the floor...."Where's Dan? Oh, he's come down with a bad case of Stephanie Syndrome."

Where am I?

I'm working on 10 new paintings. They're of places that I've wanted to paint for a long time. My studio is crowded and a mess but it feels kinda nice to have all this going. But I think for my next body of work I'm going to jump off the representational subject matter bridge. Hmmm.

Check this out...

....and then go to ArtFortune.com

You Know What They Say About Assumptions

Back when I first started art school, I decided that I would only make work of a particular style because that’s what I felt passionate about. I was very critical of art styles that I didn’t prefer. I would say that I had an almost aggressive attitude about its right to exist. I think this originated in my belief that if art wasn’t made out of conscious thinking it was of little value. In other words, I would start with an idea or something beautiful and would create work inspired by the idea or beauty. It had to have some logical A to B line of thinking one could trace from its beginnings. It didn’t have to be representational necessarily but it would come from representational because that’s were we all live, right?
Then I went for a drive with my uncle up the California coast from Malibu to San Francisco. I would like to talk about the amazing experience that was for me in some other blog. So when we got to San Francisco we got a map of the city and he asked me where I would like to go first. I wanted to say to the hat shops that I’d seen in magazines but I knew we weren’t there for that. I wasn’t sure where to start so we wandered around the harbors looking at the boats and food stalls. We got some shrimp cocktail and it was fun. I saw on the map the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and screamed that’s where I wanted to go next.
We hopped a trolley up to the museum. I was starting to get that out-of-body feeling when my world gets too amazing for me to comprehend. We walked up the wide wooden steps entering the galleries. We looked at a lot of crazy stuff the height of which was an exhibit of two tall, narrow walls and a small square floor that had a large stack of colored light bulbs that reached almost to the top of the walls. Try to picture that. My uncle didn’t say a word but I was all over the place with opinion in the negative. It made me think of Joseph Buoys and his chair with a stack of animal fat. “Why is this called high art?” my mind screamed.
Then the last thing we saw was a large room-sized exhibit. It was four walls, a ceiling and a floor constructed of wood about the size of most people’s living rooms. There was only one tiny window about eye level and a small step where one could stand to peep into the window. The outside was painted in black shapes with a yellow background and the inside was painted with yellow shapes on a black background. Or maybe that was vice versa. Anyway, inside there was a mirror directly across from the window so that as you viewed the interior you could see yourself….yourself as part of the whole piece. Wow!
It took a few days and maybe a few months in the long run or maybe it hasn’t ever really stopped, but I was changed. I was greatly affected by what I saw there. I may not have liked some of it; the experience raised me to a new understanding. I was excited. Not only could I relate to other art styles but I could appreciate them for what they were trying to accomplish. What a great experience for me. Do other people have that experience? My education has failed me miserably.