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.

Look A Little Closer

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?

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.