I have no shortage of creative ideas…just a serious lack of the “right” kind of time…it is kind of like when, a number of years ago, I wouldn’t allow myself to paint for over a year because we had to get our taxes done…the taxes never got done and I got progressively more grumpy because I wasn’t painting! Now our taxes are done…finally…we put 3 years worth into the system about 3 weeks ago…and we are caught up for the first time in about 5 years…I should be celebrating and painting my head off…so what is holding me up now?
It could be because I now feel that I should be doing all of the de-cluttering that needs to be done before LT will come to paint the house so we can put it on the market…but, like the taxes, neither the de-cluttering nor any painting is getting done!
You would think that I would have figured out by now (actually, I think I have figured it out…I just don’t act on it)…that I need to strike some kind of balance between doing what has to get done (in this case de-cluttering and packing) and what needs to get done (some serious creative play so I can function)…but balancing, scheduling and all of those basic organizational things have never been my strong suit…I seem to bounce from an excess of one thing to an excess of another…so that when there are things that really have to get done, like taxes and de-cluttering, I end up avoiding everything and doing nothing…except my mind never stops racing between thinking up creative ideas for paintings and berating myself for not getting the “have to get done” things done…I am my own worst enemy!
Yesterday, in my avoidance of all things, I wandered off down this trail…it all started with a newsletter from Photojojo…it was called “Unchartered Photography: 7 AM Portraits”…a fun “Sleep/Wake” project idea that Meredith Andrews came up with…this led me off in 2 directions…one was to look at Meredith Andrew’s website…I love her “Works in Progress”…I have a thing about repetition and collections of things that are all the same but different…the other was another link from the Photojojo newsletter that led to an article in the New Yorker about a series of photographs that Michael Putnam did back in the 60’s and 70’s about sleeping in public…they are wonderful…the book – called “Sleep” has been reprinted…I would love to get a copy…
It was an enjoyable couple of hours…and not wasted time either...I justify it by telling myself that it is all a part of the “filling of the well”…now if I could only get myself to pack for a couple of hours, paint for a couple of hours and blog wander, visit a gallery or go on a photography excursion to fill the creative for a couple of hours daily...well…then I might find some balance…but, wait…how do I fit working into that?
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
I Have a New Toy…!
I can’t remember, exactly, when my elder daughter and I took a weekend workshop at the Ottawa School of Art…it was a few years ago now…but I do remember the content of the 2-day workshop! It was my first introduction to encaustic painting…and I loved it…
For one reason or another, and likely because of a great many reasons and life ‘stuff’, I haven’t been up to paint in my studio since the last mad flurry before my show back in March! I have been photographing and I suppose that this has kept me stimulated enough creatively so that I haven’t felt an overwhelming need to be painting…but I do miss it…
I love oil paints for their richness and the way they blend…but with the way that I paint…using tons of paint and slathering it on thick, with lots of texture…it takes years for my oil paintings to fully cure…that was why I switched to using acrylics…and I love the different acrylic mediums and the ease of clean-up and all…but they aren’t oils…they just don’t have the same luminosity and richness…encaustic painting combines oil pigments with molten beeswax…the depth and sheen of this amalgamation is simply amazing…plus this medium has endless possibilities…you can build it up with many layers, carve into it to reveal the layers below, add elements to it creating a collage, create a layered mass of it and then carve away at parts of that…artist Laura Moriarty does some pretty wild things with encaustics…this video shows her working on one of her sculptural paintings…
Another encaustic artist that I like is Susan Wallis…
Ever since that encaustic workshop, I have wanted to explore this medium further…and our visit to Su Sheedy’s studio in Kingston back in April woke that urge up again…
While at Su’s studio, she showed me her tools and materials…one main tool was a blow torch…with a self-igniting switch…how cool is that?...
It has already been 2 months since we visited Su’s studio…but the idea of doing some encaustics hasn’t been far from my thoughts…and a couple of days ago, I finally used up some of my Canadian Tire funny money and bought myself this…
For one reason or another, and likely because of a great many reasons and life ‘stuff’, I haven’t been up to paint in my studio since the last mad flurry before my show back in March! I have been photographing and I suppose that this has kept me stimulated enough creatively so that I haven’t felt an overwhelming need to be painting…but I do miss it…
I love oil paints for their richness and the way they blend…but with the way that I paint…using tons of paint and slathering it on thick, with lots of texture…it takes years for my oil paintings to fully cure…that was why I switched to using acrylics…and I love the different acrylic mediums and the ease of clean-up and all…but they aren’t oils…they just don’t have the same luminosity and richness…encaustic painting combines oil pigments with molten beeswax…the depth and sheen of this amalgamation is simply amazing…plus this medium has endless possibilities…you can build it up with many layers, carve into it to reveal the layers below, add elements to it creating a collage, create a layered mass of it and then carve away at parts of that…artist Laura Moriarty does some pretty wild things with encaustics…this video shows her working on one of her sculptural paintings…
Another encaustic artist that I like is Susan Wallis…
Ever since that encaustic workshop, I have wanted to explore this medium further…and our visit to Su Sheedy’s studio in Kingston back in April woke that urge up again…
While at Su’s studio, she showed me her tools and materials…one main tool was a blow torch…with a self-igniting switch…how cool is that?...
It has already been 2 months since we visited Su’s studio…but the idea of doing some encaustics hasn’t been far from my thoughts…and a couple of days ago, I finally used up some of my Canadian Tire funny money and bought myself this…
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tulips and More Tulips…
I seem to be on a photographing flowers kick lately…this spring seems to be more visual for me…maybe that is because I have been doing the Project 365...maybe it is because the weather seems to be perfect for the spring flowers…I have been photographing way more…loving my new camera…
So here are a bunch more tulip pictures from the other day…I'm hoping to be able to get out to photograph some of the artists that come out to paint the tulips plein air...I also have some daffodil ones from a week or so ago…those will be next…
I’m afraid that with this weather we’ve been having, the tulips will all be finished before the May 7th beginning of the Tulip Festival in Ottawa…
So here are a bunch more tulip pictures from the other day…I'm hoping to be able to get out to photograph some of the artists that come out to paint the tulips plein air...I also have some daffodil ones from a week or so ago…those will be next…
I’m afraid that with this weather we’ve been having, the tulips will all be finished before the May 7th beginning of the Tulip Festival in Ottawa…
Monday, April 26, 2010
Sometimes things just all fit together and a wonderful time is had……
Cariño and I just had a very nice weekend…filled with the best of things – family visits, nice weather, good food, wine…and a healthy dose of eye candy and inspirational art talk!
As is often the case, what started as a small overnight away, turned into a multiple visit weekend mini-holiday…I didn’t do any of the driving, so it was all much easier on me!
Through an act of kind generosity, my sister-in-law-to-be decided to give Cariño and me her car…this couldn’t have come at a better time…our van, which we had hoped would make it through to the end of Cariño’s university degree was fast failing and the prospect of having to buy another vehicle at this time was daunting, to say the least!
It’s funny how a few seemingly unrelated things can come together and form into an elaborate, but do-able event…
It just so happened that my art show at the Stepping Stones Gallery ended last week (Cariño, my younger daughter and I had taken it down on the Wednesday afternoon) and I needed to deliver the painting that my Mom had bought...she lives in Mount Hope…it also just so happens that my brother’s fiancé lives in Ancaster...very close to my Mom…it further just so happened that my brother was going down this weekend to a pre-wedding party at his fiancé’s parents…add to this the fact that Cariño and I had already planned to go to Napanee to visit my Dad and his cariño…
So all of these various things kind of melded together into a master plan…Oma said she would watch the dogs for us…so Cariño and I drove them out to the Oma’s Happy Hermitage on Thursday afternoon…we stopped on the way home so I could take some shots of this beautiful little creek that winds its way through the woods…
Early Friday morning found my brother, Cariño and I heading out of Ottawa in my brother’s truck…we made it (a 6 hour drive) to the garage in Mount Hope, where the car had been taken for its safety and emissions tests, in time to pick up that paperwork, go to the licensing office and do that paperwork, then back to the garage, slap on the plates, fly by the wine store, and be sitting at my Mom and her cariño’s place for a glass of wine by about 5pm!
This is the painting that Mom bought at my show opening…it is the latest in my Flow series…
Mom and her cariño took us for a delicious dinner at a little place called Lemon Grass Restaurant…then a good sleep, leisurely morning, nice visit and we headed off on the next part of the trip…
Just before Dad’s there is an old abandoned barn…it makes me sad to see these beautiful old wooden farm buildings being left to fall to pieces…they are so magnificent…but they also take a lot of maintenance…we had one of these wood barns on the farm that I grew up on…Dad tells me that it was endless upkeep…that he could go out at night and hear pieces of the barn falling off…still…it seems such a shame that so many of these old beauties are being left to fall to the ground to be swallowed up by the brambles…
I have tried a few times to photograph this particular group of farm buildings…I’m not sure if it is lighting, or the fact that I am a bit hesitant to go wandering in and around them too much…I have never seen anyone that I could ask permission from…the old farmhouse is abandoned too…but I have yet to get a picture that I really love of this place…here are my efforts from this past Saturday…
We got to Napanee in perfect time, once again, for pre-dinner drinks…yummy dinner and then later we watched the movie “Hachiko: A Dog’s Story”...it was very touching and had me crying…it was based on the story of a dog in Japan – Hachikō – who waited for nine years for his master (who had died while at work) to return to the train station where the dog had met him after work each day…of course I am a sucker for a good animal yarn…plus the facial expressions of an Akita are amazing…
After brunch Cariño and I began the trip home…on the way, we stopped in to visit one of my Dad’s cariño’s daughters (my step-sister) in Kingston…Su Sheedy is an encaustics artist…my elder daughter and I took a weekend encaustics workshop a few years ago…it was so much fun…so for a while now, I had been wanting to get together with Su to talk art with her and to see her studio…it was a wonderfully inspiring visit…
Here are some shots from around her studio…what a fun place...full of neat things...
After picking up the dogs from Oma’s outside of Wakefield, it was late by the time we got home…I woke this morning to the welcome feelings of happiness and being inspired…it was a very nice weekend and I want to get back to painting!
Out running around today it seems that Ottawa is starting to burst into colour with blooming tulips…they have started to open over the weekend…masses of vibrant colours…I think they will be in their full glory before the beginning of the Tulip Festival…I’m going to have to spend some time this week out photographing them…this is what I got on the way home from errands today…
As is often the case, what started as a small overnight away, turned into a multiple visit weekend mini-holiday…I didn’t do any of the driving, so it was all much easier on me!
Through an act of kind generosity, my sister-in-law-to-be decided to give Cariño and me her car…this couldn’t have come at a better time…our van, which we had hoped would make it through to the end of Cariño’s university degree was fast failing and the prospect of having to buy another vehicle at this time was daunting, to say the least!
It’s funny how a few seemingly unrelated things can come together and form into an elaborate, but do-able event…
It just so happened that my art show at the Stepping Stones Gallery ended last week (Cariño, my younger daughter and I had taken it down on the Wednesday afternoon) and I needed to deliver the painting that my Mom had bought...she lives in Mount Hope…it also just so happens that my brother’s fiancé lives in Ancaster...very close to my Mom…it further just so happened that my brother was going down this weekend to a pre-wedding party at his fiancé’s parents…add to this the fact that Cariño and I had already planned to go to Napanee to visit my Dad and his cariño…
So all of these various things kind of melded together into a master plan…Oma said she would watch the dogs for us…so Cariño and I drove them out to the Oma’s Happy Hermitage on Thursday afternoon…we stopped on the way home so I could take some shots of this beautiful little creek that winds its way through the woods…
Early Friday morning found my brother, Cariño and I heading out of Ottawa in my brother’s truck…we made it (a 6 hour drive) to the garage in Mount Hope, where the car had been taken for its safety and emissions tests, in time to pick up that paperwork, go to the licensing office and do that paperwork, then back to the garage, slap on the plates, fly by the wine store, and be sitting at my Mom and her cariño’s place for a glass of wine by about 5pm!
This is the painting that Mom bought at my show opening…it is the latest in my Flow series…
Mom and her cariño took us for a delicious dinner at a little place called Lemon Grass Restaurant…then a good sleep, leisurely morning, nice visit and we headed off on the next part of the trip…
Just before Dad’s there is an old abandoned barn…it makes me sad to see these beautiful old wooden farm buildings being left to fall to pieces…they are so magnificent…but they also take a lot of maintenance…we had one of these wood barns on the farm that I grew up on…Dad tells me that it was endless upkeep…that he could go out at night and hear pieces of the barn falling off…still…it seems such a shame that so many of these old beauties are being left to fall to the ground to be swallowed up by the brambles…
I have tried a few times to photograph this particular group of farm buildings…I’m not sure if it is lighting, or the fact that I am a bit hesitant to go wandering in and around them too much…I have never seen anyone that I could ask permission from…the old farmhouse is abandoned too…but I have yet to get a picture that I really love of this place…here are my efforts from this past Saturday…
We got to Napanee in perfect time, once again, for pre-dinner drinks…yummy dinner and then later we watched the movie “Hachiko: A Dog’s Story”...it was very touching and had me crying…it was based on the story of a dog in Japan – Hachikō – who waited for nine years for his master (who had died while at work) to return to the train station where the dog had met him after work each day…of course I am a sucker for a good animal yarn…plus the facial expressions of an Akita are amazing…
After brunch Cariño and I began the trip home…on the way, we stopped in to visit one of my Dad’s cariño’s daughters (my step-sister) in Kingston…Su Sheedy is an encaustics artist…my elder daughter and I took a weekend encaustics workshop a few years ago…it was so much fun…so for a while now, I had been wanting to get together with Su to talk art with her and to see her studio…it was a wonderfully inspiring visit…
Here are some shots from around her studio…what a fun place...full of neat things...
After picking up the dogs from Oma’s outside of Wakefield, it was late by the time we got home…I woke this morning to the welcome feelings of happiness and being inspired…it was a very nice weekend and I want to get back to painting!
Out running around today it seems that Ottawa is starting to burst into colour with blooming tulips…they have started to open over the weekend…masses of vibrant colours…I think they will be in their full glory before the beginning of the Tulip Festival…I’m going to have to spend some time this week out photographing them…this is what I got on the way home from errands today…
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Post Show…Depression…?...
Well…it has almost been a month, now, since the show opened…I have long since caught up on my sleep and have been back working - although this year is getting off to a really slow start - but I haven’t been back to painting at all yet…
Now, there may be a number of reasons for this…we have moved my brother in for the duration to do whatever renovations need doing to spruce the house up so that we can put it up for sale…(I really need to move back to Ontario)…this means that the house is in even more of a state of upheaval than it usually is…I have started ‘de-cluttering’ - packing the stuff that I can live without for the next while so the house won’t look like an overstuffed storage closet (the house we moved from when we moved into here was much bigger and had a wonderful, dry basement for storage – I won’t set foot in the basement here!)…there is the usual family chaos…which, in my family, might be considered to be fairly extreme…but mostly I just feel like a deflated balloon…
I have been doing my 365 Project…and that brings some thoughts of creativity into my daily life…but I haven’t painted since that last flurry before this last show…my next show isn’t until October…but, really that isn’t that far off…but I do tend to wait for the looming deadline…but that isn’t it…I love to be painting…it makes me feel good…I have lots of ideas…some series I want to work further on…as well as a few paintings in progress that I am happy about…so why am I not painting?...and it isn’t because I can’t work in chaos…I live in chaos!
The opening went really well…at first I was nervous, but I did calm down so I actually enjoyed myself…and I sold 6 paintings! But I still seem to feel a sense of guilt for enjoying myself at something like this…for enjoying promoting myself…I wrote about this before…my feelings are the same…but I did do better this time…
I’m sure that the feelings to get myself up to my studio to paint again will return…but for now I will coast along…photographing - with my absolutely fantastic new camera that my younger daughter orchestrated getting me for my birthday in February…I am thrilled with it…what a difference this better quality of camera makes!
To catch up a bit…here are my February and March Project 365 mosaics…
Up to the end of March, I have taken 1,464 photos…I seem to be consistently averaging just under 500 a month…it will be interesting to see if this goes up…seeing as February is a short month and I still took just under 500 photos, it seems that I was increasing as the months past…but for about a week in March I had a hard time getting myself to go photographing…was feeling down and uninspired…I think that I am through that now…let’s see what April brings…hopefully, along with the daffodils and tulips, inspired picture taking and painting!
Now, there may be a number of reasons for this…we have moved my brother in for the duration to do whatever renovations need doing to spruce the house up so that we can put it up for sale…(I really need to move back to Ontario)…this means that the house is in even more of a state of upheaval than it usually is…I have started ‘de-cluttering’ - packing the stuff that I can live without for the next while so the house won’t look like an overstuffed storage closet (the house we moved from when we moved into here was much bigger and had a wonderful, dry basement for storage – I won’t set foot in the basement here!)…there is the usual family chaos…which, in my family, might be considered to be fairly extreme…but mostly I just feel like a deflated balloon…
I have been doing my 365 Project…and that brings some thoughts of creativity into my daily life…but I haven’t painted since that last flurry before this last show…my next show isn’t until October…but, really that isn’t that far off…but I do tend to wait for the looming deadline…but that isn’t it…I love to be painting…it makes me feel good…I have lots of ideas…some series I want to work further on…as well as a few paintings in progress that I am happy about…so why am I not painting?...and it isn’t because I can’t work in chaos…I live in chaos!
The opening went really well…at first I was nervous, but I did calm down so I actually enjoyed myself…and I sold 6 paintings! But I still seem to feel a sense of guilt for enjoying myself at something like this…for enjoying promoting myself…I wrote about this before…my feelings are the same…but I did do better this time…
I’m sure that the feelings to get myself up to my studio to paint again will return…but for now I will coast along…photographing - with my absolutely fantastic new camera that my younger daughter orchestrated getting me for my birthday in February…I am thrilled with it…what a difference this better quality of camera makes!
To catch up a bit…here are my February and March Project 365 mosaics…
Up to the end of March, I have taken 1,464 photos…I seem to be consistently averaging just under 500 a month…it will be interesting to see if this goes up…seeing as February is a short month and I still took just under 500 photos, it seems that I was increasing as the months past…but for about a week in March I had a hard time getting myself to go photographing…was feeling down and uninspired…I think that I am through that now…let’s see what April brings…hopefully, along with the daffodils and tulips, inspired picture taking and painting!
Friday, February 26, 2010
Pre-Show Jitters…
It feels strange to me…I paint happily, quietly all by myself up in my studio…getting completely lost in thought…or, at times, the act of painting brings me a blessed release from too much thinking…I get lost in the colours and the textures of the paint…fat, colourful globs, swirls, peaks…I love the zen of putting the paint on…slathering it on…moving it around on the canvas…taking delight not only in the mixing of the colours, but also simply in the texture created by the brush, palette knife or whatever it is that I am using to apply the paint…it is a very private thing…
It may be because I am still new to this…I hope that is the main cause for it…but I suspect that I will always feel these pre-show jitters to a certain degree…and probably a bit of healthy fear is a good thing…it is a big step to move from the private into the public...
Initially…when I am working on setting up a show…I don’t feel these jitters…but as the deadline looms, they set in…usually a couple of weeks before the show date…that is when my negative inner voice starts to speak up…telling me that I am not worthy…asking me who I am trying to kid…suggesting that I don’t have enough pieces for the space…
I try to quell this negative voice…tell myself that it is just that…my over-active inner critic…I go to a fair number of art shows…I am constantly looking at art of all sorts…I am by no means much more than a beginner at this…but I think that I can hold my own in the emerging artist’s ring…sure there are many, many who are far better than I will ever be…sometimes that is because we are creating different types of art…also, I am not, I don’t think, at the bottom of the pile…it is a dangerous thing, this comparing yourself…it can lead to a bruising of the self esteem…or, worse, an inflated ego!
So here I am…a few days before the opening of my next show…a solo one…this is my 9th show…my 5th solo one…and I have just come through the pre-show jitters…my elder daughter joined me yesterday evening and, with the owner of the gallery, we got it hung…mostly I was worried that I didn’t have enough pieces…this is my first themed show…so it is all pieces from my Flow series…a few weeks ago I went into overdrive and finished up a few pieces, as well as started and finished, 8 new pieces…it was a lot of fun…and, as usually is the case with me, the more I paint, the more the ideas start to fly…it just takes the looming deadline to make me rearrange my life so that I make painting a priority...I ended up with 21 pieces, 2 of which are triptychs and 1 diptych - so 26 canvases in total...
Now the next thing that I get worried about is the ‘vernissage’…the actual opening event…where I have to be present, with my art…the pieces that I have created in private, which are now hung in a public space with people there to view them…I suppose that this gets easier with experience as well…but this is only my 2nd vernissage!
Rebecca – the owner of the Stepping Stones Art Gallery is a wonderful person…not only does she operate this art gallery, but she also runs Camellia Teas of Ottawa, which not only hosts traditional Japanese tea ceremonies, but so much more…demonstration and instruction is a variety of world tea ceremonies, Kimono, Ikebana and painting…entering into Stepping Stones Art Gallery and the home that houses it is like stepping into another world…a wonderful world of all kinds of aesthetics…
With respect to the art gallery, one of the things that Rebecca likes to facilitate is a bridge between artist and viewer…she creates a safe, encouraging atmosphere in which communication between the 2 can be carried out without fear of judgment or ridicule…so I that think this will be a very good experience for me…talking about my art is something that I have had to learn how to do…it doesn’t just come flowing out naturally…but it is important, I think, for my growth…
It may be because I am still new to this…I hope that is the main cause for it…but I suspect that I will always feel these pre-show jitters to a certain degree…and probably a bit of healthy fear is a good thing…it is a big step to move from the private into the public...
Initially…when I am working on setting up a show…I don’t feel these jitters…but as the deadline looms, they set in…usually a couple of weeks before the show date…that is when my negative inner voice starts to speak up…telling me that I am not worthy…asking me who I am trying to kid…suggesting that I don’t have enough pieces for the space…
I try to quell this negative voice…tell myself that it is just that…my over-active inner critic…I go to a fair number of art shows…I am constantly looking at art of all sorts…I am by no means much more than a beginner at this…but I think that I can hold my own in the emerging artist’s ring…sure there are many, many who are far better than I will ever be…sometimes that is because we are creating different types of art…also, I am not, I don’t think, at the bottom of the pile…it is a dangerous thing, this comparing yourself…it can lead to a bruising of the self esteem…or, worse, an inflated ego!
So here I am…a few days before the opening of my next show…a solo one…this is my 9th show…my 5th solo one…and I have just come through the pre-show jitters…my elder daughter joined me yesterday evening and, with the owner of the gallery, we got it hung…mostly I was worried that I didn’t have enough pieces…this is my first themed show…so it is all pieces from my Flow series…a few weeks ago I went into overdrive and finished up a few pieces, as well as started and finished, 8 new pieces…it was a lot of fun…and, as usually is the case with me, the more I paint, the more the ideas start to fly…it just takes the looming deadline to make me rearrange my life so that I make painting a priority...I ended up with 21 pieces, 2 of which are triptychs and 1 diptych - so 26 canvases in total...
Now the next thing that I get worried about is the ‘vernissage’…the actual opening event…where I have to be present, with my art…the pieces that I have created in private, which are now hung in a public space with people there to view them…I suppose that this gets easier with experience as well…but this is only my 2nd vernissage!
Rebecca – the owner of the Stepping Stones Art Gallery is a wonderful person…not only does she operate this art gallery, but she also runs Camellia Teas of Ottawa, which not only hosts traditional Japanese tea ceremonies, but so much more…demonstration and instruction is a variety of world tea ceremonies, Kimono, Ikebana and painting…entering into Stepping Stones Art Gallery and the home that houses it is like stepping into another world…a wonderful world of all kinds of aesthetics…
With respect to the art gallery, one of the things that Rebecca likes to facilitate is a bridge between artist and viewer…she creates a safe, encouraging atmosphere in which communication between the 2 can be carried out without fear of judgment or ridicule…so I that think this will be a very good experience for me…talking about my art is something that I have had to learn how to do…it doesn’t just come flowing out naturally…but it is important, I think, for my growth…
Monday, February 15, 2010
Creative Growth…
We grow in our creativity – at least I do – in fits and spurts…there are times of rapid growth and times of slow or non-existent growth…it is in the times of rapid growth that I have ideas coming at me faster than I can do anything with them and I need to write them down or risk loosing them…then in the times of slow or no growth, I can go back and explore these ideas that I wasn’t able to look at before (that is, if they still make sense!)…
There are also time when I seem to get sidetracked altogether…like I seem to have been lately…spending more time doing photography…but it all goes towards feeding the creative spirit…I did make it up to the studio yesterday though…I have a few painting ideas that have been percolating and germinating in my head for a while now and I need to get them out now…and it is a good time to get them out and onto canvas, because I can use these ideas (which will hopefully be actual, physical paintings soon) for my next show that is coming up fast! I think I will have enough for the show with these few more…this is something I am still figuring out how to figure out – how many paintings are needed to nicely occupy a specific space…I guess that comes with experience…
I’m not sure what, if any specific thing or combination of things, triggers periods of rapid growth…was it something inspirational that I saw? – I’m sure that has an effect sometimes, but it doesn’t always seem to…is it just some natural ebb and flow of my being?...to be honest, I haven’t ever really tried to track the reasons…while I am lucky in that I almost always have more ideas than time to explore them, I am not so self-assured that I want to look too closely at that creative vapour thread for fear of scaring it away…and I think, by its very nature, it is an ethereal thing, not something that you can produce on demand by means of some creative recipe…
I do know that I am always looking at art…of all kinds…all over the place…in real life and on the Internet…blog wandering is great for this…I can get lost for hours wandering from link to link…eye candy to eye candy…inspiration to inspiration…researching various artists…I also going to galleries, read books and magazines…this renewed interest in photography has me becoming more observant and that helps not only with my photography but also with creative ideas for painting…I think this constant immersion keeps me inspired…
This week I will be bringing in 3 paintings to the Ottawa School of Art Boutique to hopefully have them hung for sale in there…I am still deciding which ones to take in…
This one...
And maybe this one...this is a detail...
My studio is in its usual state of chaos...I am going now to spend some time painting...sorting...and deciding which paintings to submit...
There are also time when I seem to get sidetracked altogether…like I seem to have been lately…spending more time doing photography…but it all goes towards feeding the creative spirit…I did make it up to the studio yesterday though…I have a few painting ideas that have been percolating and germinating in my head for a while now and I need to get them out now…and it is a good time to get them out and onto canvas, because I can use these ideas (which will hopefully be actual, physical paintings soon) for my next show that is coming up fast! I think I will have enough for the show with these few more…this is something I am still figuring out how to figure out – how many paintings are needed to nicely occupy a specific space…I guess that comes with experience…
I’m not sure what, if any specific thing or combination of things, triggers periods of rapid growth…was it something inspirational that I saw? – I’m sure that has an effect sometimes, but it doesn’t always seem to…is it just some natural ebb and flow of my being?...to be honest, I haven’t ever really tried to track the reasons…while I am lucky in that I almost always have more ideas than time to explore them, I am not so self-assured that I want to look too closely at that creative vapour thread for fear of scaring it away…and I think, by its very nature, it is an ethereal thing, not something that you can produce on demand by means of some creative recipe…
I do know that I am always looking at art…of all kinds…all over the place…in real life and on the Internet…blog wandering is great for this…I can get lost for hours wandering from link to link…eye candy to eye candy…inspiration to inspiration…researching various artists…I also going to galleries, read books and magazines…this renewed interest in photography has me becoming more observant and that helps not only with my photography but also with creative ideas for painting…I think this constant immersion keeps me inspired…
This week I will be bringing in 3 paintings to the Ottawa School of Art Boutique to hopefully have them hung for sale in there…I am still deciding which ones to take in…
This one...
And maybe this one...this is a detail...
My studio is in its usual state of chaos...I am going now to spend some time painting...sorting...and deciding which paintings to submit...
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Month End…Month Beginning…
Yesterday was so busy…I didn't get home from it all until almost 10pm...in between 3 various appointments I managed to get my photography show hung at the ArtSpace at the Unitarian…I am still working on the photo transfer piece that I had wanted to have done for it…but it didn’t happen…I can go in and hang it later in the month…or save it for another show…or see about getting it accepted into the Ottawa School of Art Boutique which is taking in submissions on February 17th and 18th…
I finished my first month of Project 365 and made the mosaic for the month…
I have also gone through all the shots I took in January – 527 of them and picked out some of the ones that I didn’t choose for the project but that I still like for one reason or another…
In no particular order here they are…
Another thing that I tried to do was to pick a favorite photo from the 31 photos that I did choose for the project…and that was hard…first I narrowed it down to these 5…and then I got stuck…
I finished my first month of Project 365 and made the mosaic for the month…
I have also gone through all the shots I took in January – 527 of them and picked out some of the ones that I didn’t choose for the project but that I still like for one reason or another…
In no particular order here they are…
Another thing that I tried to do was to pick a favorite photo from the 31 photos that I did choose for the project…and that was hard…first I narrowed it down to these 5…and then I got stuck…
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