Fat Cats & Starving Dogs

The Studio is painted.  Now comes the hard part, putting everything back.

Part of my goal with the painting project was to free up space for larger works.  I need more wall space to paint and photograph my paintings.  I also need more storage space for future paintings that will be larger than my current body of work. As a result, putting the studio together will be a real challenge.

Yes (I know, I Know) you can throw some stuff out, but supplies take up a lot of room. I have considered off site locations for storing paintings, but I not confident about the climate conditions or the problems of rodents. I used warm and cold storage and the climate and dust still takes a toll.

I will work something out, but it may take some time. In the meantime, it is almost impossible to work on anything.

o0o

 

Answer, I painted my studio.

When I moved into my current studio, the most pressing issue was getting everything setup.  There was no time to paint, and so I had to live with the wonderful deep red wine walls, vintage 1980.

Not only was this color very dated, but it created real problems with photographing my art work. The dark walls provided very little reflected light and this meant that I had to pump up the lighting, which in turn, create a glare on the surface of the canvases.  Not the best results for documenting art that was leaving your studio forever.

The problem with painting your studio, however, is all those wonderful paint supplies have to be move out.  It is my version of the big bang – starting with a very compact ball of supplies, thousands of items expand out from the studio and occupy the surrounding region of space. It is not a pretty sight and nearly two months later, all those supplies are still expanding outwards.

Of course, everyone is very helpful with suggestions about what I should keep and what I should throw out. Thing one and Thing two will come down stairs and look gravely at the situation and then ask for some art supplies for their latest craft project.  They appreciate the white walls, but what they really want is their crafts shop to be restored to its proper order.

Hop to it dad!

o0o

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to my re-booted website. This site is now dedicated to all art that is not abstract.  Hope you find my non-abstract activities interesting.

Update

In 2018, there will be a national jury show of botanical paintings at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

My goal is to get a piece in accepted by the jury and displayed at this event.  The challenge is to find something that is artistically different, but still acceptable to the strict conventions of botanical art.

While I accept the need for the focus of the work to be on the plant, and that the plant needs to be accurately rendered in terms of scale, physical structure, and colour so that the audience can tell one plant from another; I reject the notion that backgrounds need to be white and the plant isolated from any other details.

I believe that plant lives within a dynamic environment that gives meaning their form and function.  So, while some plants thrive, others are endangered. Particularly, when plants come into contact with urban development.

This clash between nature and man allows me to explore my other interests of urban landscapes and architecture.

I am inspired by the works of Martin Johnson Heade, Margaret Mee, and Marianne North.  These are artists who make the world within which plants live relevant to their artwork.

Unfortunately, I am not confident that the botanical societies will provide me the space to create work that will be shown in their exhibitions.

Without their support, I feel it will be very challenging to get acceptance by more traditional artist galleries.  Traditional landscapes and still life paintings is not my goal.  I want to create something that is contemporary and exploring the issues of today.

The submission deadline is January 2018, so in the meantime, I need develop my approach and painting skills to the point where I can accurately render native plants in oils.

Thank you for dropping by!  It has been almost a year since my last post. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time for both art and blog posts.  With the start of a new year, I hope to post more consistently, but less frequently.

Over the past 9 months I have been very busy with art projects:

1. Successfully created a digital sketch for the first ever online exhibit of botanical art that was staged by the Botanical Artists of Canada.  This work built on my summer efforts to use my iPad for drawings. This work also represented the start of new series of projects that explore themes of plants and architecture.

2. Successfully completed a project proposal that was submitted almost at the last minute.  While the proposal was not accepted, it showed me new possibilities for the future.

3. Worked hard to create and complete a piece for VAM39. Unfortunately, I was unable to make the deadline, but look forward to next year’s juried competition.

4.  Successfully cleaned and reorganized my studio.  While this may not sound like much, it represented 2 months of effort and many trips to the dump.  With this studio house-cleaning project done, I will be better able to create larger works of art in the future.

5. Finally, on short notice, I created a piece for a person who was retiring.  While the work could have used more time, the fact that I was able to successfully compete the project within a month is a major achievement.

That brings things up to date.

For the future, you can expect posts about once per month

Again, thanks for dropping by.

 

Nice piece about how public space is being re-shaped by digital and corporate influences.