Stephanie Levendoski: Fine Art and Opinion

Pure Inspiration

2011-10-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

I get lost on the internet frequently. I start out looking for something in particular and before I know it, I've gone off on some tangent. I love doing that. I've found so many wonderful things that truly inspire me and make me glad I'm an artist. Here's something I found recently. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

October

2011-10-02T20:57:00.000-07:00

Since I removed the causes of my anxiety and stress and have been enjoying a month of peace and happiness, my creativity has been surfacing and rejuvenating. I posted a new painting on FB the other day and have come across some really beautiful artwork that inspires me. Take a look at Daniel Egneus. He's an illustrator.

danielegneus.com

Dear Blog...

2011-09-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

I am sorry I have been so neglectful. I am adding some graphic design work since I haven't been doing much painting lately. I do miss painting. I'm following some great plein air painter's blogs and they are very enticing and inspiring. Oh art, how I love thee!

I love gadgets...

2011-08-06T19:54:00.000-07:00

Yes, I love gadgets. I don't know how people find such interesting things to put on their websites, but I love 'em. I found the two most recent ones while researching Ansel Adams. I'm getting ready to create a poster for a photography contest. The contest is fictional. I'm creating this for a final assignment in a graphic design course. The concept is Yosemite offering photographers to bid for a spot on a photography expedition into the restricted areas of the park. These are places no one gets to go very often for the purpose of photographing some of the most beautiful acreage on Earth. Then the participants will get their photos published in a book that will be created after the exhibition. The whole idea came from listening to my son-in-law talk about how he was taking some photos while at Yellowstone one day and noticed a small group of men in an SUV going though a gate into a restricted area. He asked what was going on and who the men where and found that they were photographers who were being allowed to enter and photograph this area. He wanted to join them or find out how he could go on his own expedition but was told that would be impossible. He complains often about the restricted areas in our national parks that we are not allowed to ever enter. If you have any comments or concerns one way or another about this, I'd love to hear about it.

Thinking about the new year...

2010-12-30T06:14:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-27T17:38:00.001-08:00

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...

2010-07-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-10T10:45:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-03-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

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

2010-02-25T19:22:00.000-08:00

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

Moonlight

2010-02-17T19:41:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-05T21:10:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-02-01T15:46:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-01-11T09:46:00.000-08:00

....and then go to ArtFortune.com

You Know What They Say About Assumptions

2010-01-06T11:19:00.000-08:00

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.

Look A Little Closer

2009-12-23T09:54:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time when I was in fifth grade, we had a contest. We had to look at a painting by a famous artist who was not named and guess the title. I was looking at Picasso's "Old Guitar Player". I guessed the title correctly. I think it was fitting that I guessed right since it was a well known fact among my fellow classmates that I was an artist and in a completely different universe from every other human being.
As I grew up, I got the impression that Picasso was a jerk. He seemed to me to be a woman-hater. I chalked him up as just another typical man. I never cared for his work much but when I was taking one of my first art classes I learned that the reason why his cubist work looked weird was because he was trying to show all aspects of an object simultaniously. He was expressing the fact that even though you may not see the back of a chair it still exists. Interesting idea to have and want to express considering the attitudes about creating art at the time. Interesting anyway. That insight would have been nice a million years ago when I first started studying art. (So I wonder??? Why arent' these things taught? Who's in charge?)
So a few years ago I heard of an exhibit at a local university that I was interested in seeing. The collection of masterworks from Monet to Picasso was lectured on by the lending Cleveland Museum of Modern Art. This is how I learned that Picasso had a friend as a young man who was a fellow artist and was in love with a woman of ill repute. The friend's name was Carlos Casagenas. When Casagenas learned that he had been rejected, he held a dinner party that included the woman, Picasso and other friends. Casagenas stood to give a toast and then shot himself in front of everyone.
The impact this had on Picasso must have been enormous. He was a young man away from home for the first time and living an impoverished lifestyle. I'm sure he was strong enough to endure life's hardships but what a traumatic event!
So to make a long story short...I can see why he might have had a negative opinion of women.
The point of this story is that there's more than meets the eye when it comes to art and artists. Knowing these details about Picasso makes me want to look at his work again and look into his work. I still don't like his work but I appreciate it. I'm curious about it and I want to know more about it and the man behind it. Would it be wonderful if other people did too? Let's get off this starvation diet of looking at and appreciating art.

Who Am I? Where Did I Come From? Where Am I Going?

2009-12-10T02:39:00.000-08:00

I started drawing when I was about 2 in response to the harsh realities of the real world. Creating little worlds to escape to as a child was a consuming pasttime. I worked in 3D at our home on Farley Drive. It had a milk box in the wall in the back of the house. You know, a milk box, a place for the milkman who came by at 3 am to leave your daily order of milk. It was about a foot square and I would cut out cardboard to make chairs and a couch. A washcloth made a convenient carpet. Yes...imagination run amuck. Drawing was an instant and magical tool for social acceptance in grade school too. Without it I would have vaporized into obscurity, just one of the masses who didn't have the right clothes and connections.
I had great teachers in high school who sent me to the "great art school downtown" my senior year. My work was picked to be displayed in the halls alongside the college kid's work. Even today I marvel at that. It was a great accomplishment. But it just flows out of me. It shocks me sometimes that I can do what I do. Like it didn't really come from me. Sometimes I wonder if it does!?
Anyway, I did get to go on to college. I had lots of milestones there, too. The dean of Arts and Humanities bought one of my paintings for $550. I quickly bought a digital camera.
These days I've taken on Goliath. Yes, I'm working to live by my art alone. I'm pushing back at life. I'm done with "real jobs". Sometimes I can't sleep at night because I'm so excited about what I'm working on, or what I want to say to the world. This is the way life should be. Hopefully, I can bring some insight into the artworld through my own experience. Break down some misconceptions. Make art accessible. Dive in with me.

....and then

2009-11-09T13:53:00.000-08:00

I hope I'm true to the vision in my mind. That's the essence of a true artist, isn't it? We have a vision and hope to communicate that to the outside world. I don't look at other artists for inspiration. My inspiration comes from within. That said, I do work based on photographs of the local landscape. I want viewers to have the same experience I have in viewing such magnificent places. Nature is really astounding. But this other side of me is third order. Yeah, I love nature but there's a more abstract side to me that needs expression. My thinking plus the world around me equals....(fill in the blank).

Here's a good place to start...

2009-11-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

Over the years I have taken many life drawing classes. I asked a professor once why we study the figure in the 21st century. He couldn't answer. The stock answer is..."if you can draw the figure, you can draw anything" Hogwash. I do appreciate all the training. I think it has lead me to search for a reason for the figure in today's art. That work is forthcoming. As a very young child I created a world in which I could be safe and free. My internal self became very well developed and I found it second nature to express the reality within myself. Consequently the attention I received because of my talent was appreciated. Unfortunately, as a result of many years of poverty and trying to provide for my family I was kept from growing as a professional. Moving forward now I am excited to bring to reality the many things that have been perculating in my head and heart. I used to hate anything abstract until I visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I saw many things there that I had only seen pictures of from my art history books. It was such an amazing experience and changed me forever. I realized that many times an artist truely tries to create something new like musicians who make jazz try to create new music. Unfortunately an unsophisticated audience might now be able to tell the difference between crap and what's good. I want to create something new and good.