Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Painting Day 2
Day 2 - sorry about the weird lighting vertical striping effect
...it sure looks a lot different than yesterday!
I'm including Day 1
just so you don't have to scroll down :)
There is still a lot to do with this one but it's feeling pretty good so far. I won't get back to it tomorrow as there is family in town for the holiday weekend. But I will be back with the next segment of it on Monday, so stay tuned.
Got to go today...time to feed the cows and collect eggs. Hope you had a wonderful day and I love feedback...just saying...
'Till tomorrow!
~Alex
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Painting Outside
I know. It doesn't look like much right now - and the subject of the painting, the foals, are not yet painted in, but this is how a painting sometimes starts, with an underpainting "sketch" of values and shapes in colors often the opposite of the final colors they will be at the end.
First Layer - Dry Creek Quartet Painting
You will notice that the blob on the left is green and is a tree sure enough. That is a Russian Olive tree and has many bright silvery leaves so the dark is just the base for the shadow areas.
I am painting this picture to donate to The Cloud Foundation of the rescued foals from a BLM roundup last March. Once they have the painting, it is up to them what they will do with it - maybe they will auction it off at one of their events.
A very wonderful veterinarian with a huge heart for all animals, especially horses, has been caring for these precocious youngsters for many months now. Lisa Jacobson Dvm had a lot to worry about where these little ones were concerned in the beginning - but took on the challenge with her typical good natured self.
At first she had to give them milk replacer and pro-biotics and tons of other things to carefully care for them in their early days - since they were orphaned before they were old enough to be weaned. Their moms and the rest of their family were rounded up by the BLM and then shipped off to a company in Canada to be slaughtered.
Despite their difficult start in life they are strong and healthy and well adjusted thanks to all the people who intervened on their behalf. They have Lisa to thank for that most of all, I think.
The Dry Creek Quartet in May
Lisa is caring for several wonderful horses. If you are looking for a horse for yourself or someone else - contact Lisa. The horses in her care are all healthy and happy. You can contact Lisa on her Facebook page. You can see all the antics of the Dry Creek Quartet, the subject of my latest painting, on her Facebook page too!
Hope everyone had a art filled Tuesday.
I'll be back tomorrow!
~Alex
Monday, June 30, 2014
Stubborness
More than once.
Not that I care.
I think I am persistent.
A much nicer word I think.
But if I wasn't stubborn I might not be persistent either.
I see myself as a successful artist. Persistent vision and working in the direction of the vision (persistently) I have of myself is so important. You too! You go where you look!
an O'Keeffe painting she did in college
a Pollock - a foreshadowing of his drip style
I love being a sculptor and am committed to creating the very highest quality work I possibly can. I know that over time my work will get even better but I don't believe that today I will create the very best work I will create tomorrow.
I don't even begin to know everything there is to know. But - I am persistent and I keep working.
The fact that I have begun my journey into the world of Professional Artist in a very good way and already have so many collectors of my work is something I am endlessly grateful for. But it didn't happen by magic.
Rothko Untitled from 1940
an early Van Gogh - Potato Eaters
I don't know about all professional artists. Do we all work hard and pretty much all the time? I don't know. I just know that I don't just sit around and sculpt all day.
I talk to suppliers and research and answer the phone and correspond and network and now I blog. I learn new skills all the time.
Sure I'm doing all this from a home studio. Does that mean luxury?
an early Kandinsky-Odessa.Port
Hell no. And you know why? Because I am an entrepreneur. I get to create art and that is my business.
I won't be successful if I don't work hard. I figure it will take years and years of hard work to be at the level of success I envision.
But, if I'm meant to be here for years and years anyway, why not spend it working for the vision I have for myself using the gifts I've been given if I can figure out how?
Lichtenstein-Ten Dollar Bill 1956
My spouse is supportive and that is huge! Not every artist has someone in their life who has their back. But if I don't do my part, his support will just be an indulgence.
How many (successful) entrepreneurs ignore their investors? That we are married does not make what he is doing less than that. He believes in me and genuinely wants me to be this...sacrifices more than money for me to be this.
Thanks for reading.
I could go on but you no doubt have as many balls in the air as I do.
'Till tomorrow!
~Alex
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Artist Inspiration Sunday
Bernie Fuchs - fabulous light in his paintings!
Hello. Happy Sunday!
To help you get started every week! Some inspiration to get you going creating right away on Monday. I need it and SO DO YOU! (Well, maybe)
Every Sunday I will be sharing a page from a little book I have called Artist to Artist Inspiration and Advice from Artists Past and Present compiled by Clint Brown.
Quotes on Being an Artist
To be an artist is to believe in life.
-Henry Moore
The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of boing; a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence.
-Robert Henri
If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle.
-Albrecht Durer
It's a quality of the young to simplify matters. Later a sense of nuance becomes increasingly exaggerated. As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their won work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion.
-Jasper Johns
The artists is the man who makes life more interesting or beautiful, more understandable or mysterious, or probably, in the best sense, more wonderful. His trade is to deal with illimitable experience. It is therefore only of importance for the artist to discover whether he be an artists, and it is for society to discover what return it can make of its artist.
-George Bellows
An odd contradiction, if the layman were correct in his unconscious assumption that the artist begins with reality and ends with art: the converse is true- to the degree that this dichotomy has any truth - the artist begins with art and through it arrives at reality.
-Robert Motherwell
Every good artist paints what he is.
-Jackson Pollock
I don't demand that all work be a masterpiece. I think what I am doing is the right thing for me - that is what I am and this is living. It reflects me and I reflect it.
-Louise Nevelson
"I started working in oils because I was inspired by the rich glow of sunlight passing through an amber mug of ale in London. I wanted to be able to capture that feeling in a painting..."
-Bernie Fuchs (quoted in the catalogue of his recent 50 year retrospective at the Telluride Gallery)
I'm off to continue do my best to create a beautiful day.
...and I hope you create - in your own beautiful way -
your own beautiful day. :)
~Alex
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Our different approaches to Art and Art Making
"Child with Orange", oil on canvas, 51.0 x 50.0 cm, June, 1890.
Private collection (before March 2008 in the collection of L. Jäggli-Hahnloser, Switzerland). March 2008 offered for 20 million Euro at the Tefaf in Maastricht
Private collection (before March 2008 in the collection of L. Jäggli-Hahnloser, Switzerland). March 2008 offered for 20 million Euro at the Tefaf in Maastricht
This child is Raoul, the son of his neighbour in Auvers, carpenter Vincent Lever
If an artist has a "job" to do, a purpose in the world, what would it be? One thing I believe it is, and this is only one thing of course, is to give us a way of seeing deeper or more profoundly at what is around us. When a painting is painted or a sculpture created or music composed magic is added to the sounds and sights of the everyday world; color and vibrancy or darkness and tragedy is brought to what we see; a singular moment in time is frozen in an artwork that has some certain quality about it enhanced.
Max J. Friedlander, wrote in his book "On Art and Connoisseurship" that (and I am borrowing this paraphrasing of Friedlander's book from Dr. Jose Rodiero's webpage)
The distinction between an artist that has “grit,” “shit,” or ugliness and one that has mere “beauty” is similar to the artistic differentiation between what constitutes an artist of genius and what constitutes an artist of talent; an aesthetic duality first argued and developed by German art historian Max J. Friedländer in the 1930s, through which he explicitly identified certain artists as “fighters” while others he deemed “victors,” regarding their disparate approach to art and art-making. For Friedlander, “fighters” are artist with overwhelming genius but little talent (i.e., Bosch, El Greco, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Goya, Van Gogh, Bocklin or Ryder), while “victors” have much more talent than genius (i.e., Memling, Carracci, Reni, Mengs, Bouguereau, Gérôme, Wyeth or Norman Rockwell). Everything in art comes easily to the “victors,” while “fighters” fight to create, struggling with everything and everyone, including themselves, existence, nature, the universe or the duende. Occasionally, a few great artists have equal portions of genius and talent, such as Michelangelo or Raphael. Yet, even among those two giants; it is clear that the Florentine is the fighter, while the Umbrian is the victor.
-Dr. J. Rodiero
Interesting things to think over about the art we create, isn't it?
Hope you are having an enjoyable Saturday.
Talk with you tomorrow :)
~Alex
His First Scouting Calendar 1925
Friday, June 27, 2014
Design a great Weekend!
Design: to prepare the preliminary step or the plans for - the form and structure of - to plan and fashion artistically or skillfully for a definite purpose - the organization or structure of an object or a work of art - a combination of details - a reasoned purpose - an intent - deliberate intention.
I think that may be from Wikipedia.
The point is. Deliberate intention choice and selection exist in design...deliberate thought and human interaction.
Great art is not accidental. Neither is a great weekend :)
Maybe this weekend you will search for some great art. Go to a show, to a museum.
I would love to hear what was the most amazing work you saw.
Check out this guide to the world's best museums and have some fun!
'til tomorrow!
~Alex
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Just so you all know. I am gearing up a campaign for getting comments on my blog and will be sending out a newsletter to everyone on my mailing list to comment on my blog entries so far and send out word about this blog to everyone they know.
I hope all my friends on facebook will do this too (hint-hint).
Whoever comments the most in the next 3 months will receive an original oil painting - painted in my own unique style...that I would even have a painting style at this point is questionable...but I digress.
Of all the paintings I paint in the next 3 months (and my goal is to paint one a week) who ever has made the most comments on my blog during this period of time will get to choose one of those paintings.
Here's an example. I painted it today. It is of a few of our chickens, Sally, Matilda, and Mickie. The chickens stand on our back porch several times a day and petition for bread. I convinced them to put down their little "Give Us Bread NOW" signs so I could photograph them and bribed them with bread to pose off and on during the day.
These paintings won't be masterpieces since, hey - I'm a professional sculptor...and I paint for fun. And these won't be large (no bigger than an ipad) but they will be original and you, most frequent blog commenter, will get to choose! How fun is that?
I will post photos of what I paint as I go forward with future posts.
And, yes, whatever you pick will be framed.
I am doing this to thank whoever comments the most often because comments are so important to the successful readership of a blog.
This also keeps my sculpting brain working well...cause, you see. When painting I am taking the 3d world (aided with photos sometimes) and recreating it in 2d (a creation that hopefully looks 3d in 2d) and when I sculpt, I sculpt primarily from photos...which is the reverse - so I take a 2d representation of a 3d object that I am recreating a 3d object from that. This maybe makes no sense unless you are an artist (and it maybe makes no sense if you are an artist)...but somehow it keeps me more creative...maybe it balances my brain :).
MMmmmm. Balanced brain....
Of course I'm doing this too to generate more and more interest in my sculpture and in me as an artist over time. There is that.
Artists can sit in their studio and create...but that doesn't do anything to share their work with the rest of the world. I want to share what I do with all of you. I want this blog to be one way of doing that.
Sorry about the evening writing of this today...I'll have more in the morning and a newsletter out tomorrow for my newsletter readership. If anyone reading this would like a newsletter, please go to my website and sign up or drop me a note in FB or in email and I'll put you on my mailing list.
Thanks for reading.
~Alex
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