Charlie revealed!

I finished this little painting of Chihuahua, Charlie, a few weeks ago but have been keeping it secret until it was given as a Christmas gift by the lovely woman who commissioned it.  8" x 10" on archival panel

I apologize for my lack of posting lately!  I moved to my new pad in Point Richmond in November, so am just getting organized to make art again - and blog about it. 

Sketchbook 2011

Click on image above to see other recent sketchbook pages.  Got very inspired by "Drawn In."

Jones here

"Hello. Jones here, nice to meet you. Now that my shotputting days are over, I intend to bulk up my left arm a bit more."

rainy day in Emeryville

How to remain an artist

Pay good attention, should you like to paint beautifully and truly be in the moment with your art, to your 4-year-old niece.  (If you are lucky enough to have one - if not, steal one?)  Give her crayons and her own sketchbook and stand back!

After enjoying Elsa's art making today, I got inspired to play with my current painting (first layer snapped in previous post) while she watched some (odious) Care Bears.  Much to my initial chagrin, I couldn't find the photo I was using as reference among the bazillion photos on my laptop.  But I had the paints out and was in the mood.

In addition to being witness to Elsa enjoying the scooby-doos out of color, I'd just finished reading Creative Illustration Workshop by Katherine Dunn.  Her work is not slavish to capturing the exact images, but leans much more to expressing "what is the essence" of this thing.  She also loves to think about the story of an illustration.  All of this is very appealing to me - and I am just as happy to be illustrating as painting, for those who think there is some big distinction.


So I decided to mess around with this canvas and subject in that mode, knowing that if I want to do another layer later and head back toward the photo reference, I could always do that.


It was quite fun.  I think I'm going to let it rest and percolate in my head and heart and then paint again in a day or two.  Here's where it is now. 


"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
Pablo Picasso 

Daily painting? Food for thought!

‎"What the Good Fight Means to Me: wash your own brain (before it's washed for you), think for yourself and whenever possible: produce more media than you are consuming. banish or destroy all ideas confusing money with value. those with time, talent, and commitment to spare, marshall your resources towards creating Art as a vehicle for the insurrection of Imagination - the chief inlet for Soul in the digital era." —Antero Alli, Bay Area filmmaker

I spotted this quote on a little Facebook group I follow called "San Francisco Art Monks".   I can't profess to actually understand what an art monk is exactly, but luckily there was no quiz required to join.


But anyway!  The quote so resonated with me and made me want to re-write my artist statement immediately.  But the reason I haven't been able to forget this quote over the past few days is that part about aiming to "produce more media than you are consuming."


That felt like a shake-up and challenge and an inspiration.  


Yesterday I completed a painting all in one day, in a very "in the flow" wonderful way.  This encouraged me to take that challenge a little more seriously and I'm thinking about what kind of goal to set for myself.  Maybe I should go for "paint every day" if not "complete a painting every day"?  It would be so great to be in that MOMENTUM place again.


I wish I could share the image of the painting but it was a commissioned surprise gift type deal, so I can't.  :(  Yet another reason to paint something today, just for that immediate gratification of sharing it with y'all!


Update: I decided I do want to paint every day, even just for a 1/2 hour or so if time is tight.   So grabbed a 20" x 24" canvas and made a start, very rough, just blocking in masses and figuring out composition.  Not much to look at yet, but here she is:

Scene on the Strait - and a side trip to Crockett

My dear long-time buddy Laura joined me to check out artists at "Scene on the Strait" in Martinez.  It was gorgeous weather and fun to see Timothy Horn there.  I heard so many good things about Crockett that we made a little side trip on the way home, since neither Laura nor I had ever been.  And it is wicked cute!  Must go paint there, if not live there someday!

Click on the image below to see all the photos from today.  Lots of great landscape painters!

2011-08-13

visual inspiration even on a little walk round the block

Four Winds

This is what I'm calling a little "sketch painting" of my sister and Elsa, Skyler and Jack on a recent trip to break in their new "Four Winds" RV.  It was a gift to my new sister-in-law-to-be Kris.  I'm digging this and feeling like trying more figures.  I feel like the practice of simplifying shapes during plein air landscape workshops and outings has shown up in this one, which surprised and pleased me!

"Four Winds" - 8" x 10" oil on gatorboard

I think these four winds must be : Shark Wind, Sugar Wind, Mama Wind and Pink Wind?

Ace

I was painting (after a long non-painting spell) again and finished up one piece but still had paint out and was still in the mood to keep going.

12" x 12" oil on canvas

I'll be able to give this to my awesome cuz soon, since she's right near by in Napa.

So I grabbed a photo I'd seen that morning on my cousin Shelley's Facebook page remembering her beautiful dog Ace and the high-contrast nature of it plus the sweetness of the occasion and the dog himself drew me right there.  Here's the result.  It was fun!

Sketchbook project - "Heroes and Villains"

I just received my sketchbook from ArtHouse Co-op for creating my entry to the 2012 tour. (See more here: http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject).

When you sign up for this, you select a theme. There are about 40 very clever and intriguing themes to pick from and the ArtHouse folks emphasize that the theme should be a jumping-off place and not feel like a limitation. I'm so happy to have a longer time period to do my sketchbook this time, since deadline is not until January 2012. But I had no idea what I'd like to do as a theme really. So, sort of randomly, I picked "Heroes and Villains", thinking it could lend itself to quite a few possibilities.

Now, here's the magic of picking a theme for one's art - it gets those creative gears turning, even when you're not conscious of them doing so.

For example, I was recently obsessed with and engrossed in watching operas on the new Metropolitan Opera's "player", which lets you stream all kinds of amazing performances from recent and long-ago seasons to your laptop.

Talk about great heroes and villains, those opera characters.  (On the right is an image of the gorgeous John Relyea playing Mephistofeles.)

I started thinking of fun ways to incorporate that idea into the sketchbook.

Then, my attention was drawn to "Forks Over Knives", a compelling documentary about how we can truly use food as medicine to avoid expensive and painful (and unnecessary) operations like heart surgery.   At one point, I realized that certain chemical reactions of some foods could look like villains or heroes in the body.

Not sure how I'd portray that, but I want to!

Ultimately, if I can find a way to COMBINE these two ideas, that will make me the happiest.

Just thought I'd give a little insight into the creative process.  It fascinates me how our minds and hearts work and this has been an interesting example!

Dog update and slight rant / inquiry

Hey there,
If you've landed here to see some of my art, try clicking around on the links to the left, since this post is going to be about my dog and thoughts about education (and about arts education.)  Topics aren't really related but oh well!

I know some people have a "just art" blog or site, but I do best when I don't silo things off.

So, Topic 1 = dog!  Grayson, who had a catastrophic accident and subsequent emergency back surgery just two weeks ago, is actually starting to walk on his own now.  He's got that "drunken sailor" thing going on, but the relief that he will not be an 80-pound paralyzed and incontinent dog is just HUGE for me.  Selfishly, I just can't take that much lifting and cleaning up.  Plus, it's such a joy to see his joy at moving around and sniffing the outside air again.

I have some fundraising on my etsy site to help with the $8,000 surgery bill.  (Check here if you want to help out:   http://www.etsy.com/shop/alluvia)  Basically, any art you buy from me goes directly to cover that vet bill.  Thanks in advance!

Topic 2 = education and art.   My friend Alora posted something on Facebook the other day about how schools are basically prisons, so no wonder kids didn't want to be there.  And that got me looking up similar articles and wondering what the alternatives would be to "standard" school, wondering what kind of research or thinking there had been about this.

One school of thought described how people how had been institutionalized in someplace like a mental hospital or jail needed "de-institutionalizing" to get them thinking independently again and extrapolated that we need to do the same for our school's children.

This introduced me to a new term (to me) - "Deschooling".
Much more on that here: http://democracyandeducation.wetpaint.com/page/The+Deschooling+Movement and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deschooling and here: http://www.sandradodd.com/deschooling

It makes complete and utter sense to me and pushes some of my buttons in that I just ache for the child I was, in the institutions I was, and imagining how wonderful an education borne of following my own natural interests and curiosities would have been.   I longingly browsed web sites of schools where, essentially, they let the kids decide when and what to pursue - and saw how creative and intelligently engaged the kids were in their pursuits.

If someone had "let me loose" at age 15, what would I have done?  It was fun to scratch around in the memory vault. The things I wanted to spend more time on back then (but couldn't due to all the other things I was asked to sit through all day) included:

- what makes for a good poem?
- what happens if I try writing many, many poems and share them with other poets?
- how do I make that lighting board (in a theater) work?
- why do some people identify with certain bands or types of music?
- how can I bring a theatrical role to life on stage?
- how much discarded stuff can I find that looks cool to me and what can I do with it?
- how can I make my painting look more like the thing I'm looking at?
- what makes for an interesting painting?
- why do some people think of a dandelion as a weed? what defines "a weed"?
- what would it be like if I went blind and needed to learn to use a Guide Dog?

And the list goes on and on.  Since we can't go back in time, I asked myself what about this emotional reaction and trip down memory lane could be something to learn from today?

I'm still mulling that one over, but it seems an interesting thing to bring to considerations of art education.  I see brochures for MFA programs and feel wistful.   I read about people who spend all day on their art and feel a bit green with envy.

But is an art school just an institution I'd be better off avoiding?  What would I be trying to make happen by getting an MFA?  I think it boils down to - I'd like to have more time for making stuff and get some kind of "official validation" of my art.   I understand why I want the former, but I don't really get why I want the latter. What's with the need for recognition?  Is this just a midlife crisis?  Who knows?

However, no matter what art education I pursue (or don't), I love the idea of asking myself how I'd design my own learning based on my own interests - and giving that greater credence / validity thanks to the experience I see others learners have had when trusting themselves in this way.  (I hope that makes sense.)

At one point last night when I was thinking about this, I felt angry about how much money the art schools all require and thought I should just create my own individual fake school with an MFA, where the "MFA" stood for "My F***ng Art".   Excuse my French, but it cracked me up.   I might just do that because, heck, I haven't heard of anyone else doing that and I can't afford tuition and it would be amusing and perhaps help me  motivate and organize and create.  And maybe it would also spur someone else to feel empowered to just get on with artmaking too.

OK, that's the end of the rant / inspiration.  You pick which!