Thursday, February 18, 2010

Passive Aggressives...so far



Passive Aggressive 1: Smile



Passive Aggressive 2: Grind




Pregnant With Anger


And I don't feel like reposting my paint off picture.

I do have one more but I don't have access to the photos right now. Just wait, it will appear, and I believe that there is more to come within the series.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Street Photography

And now what I like to take pictures of people not looking at me....which relates to the human figure, but again...cohesive?

A man getting onto his bike:


Walking on Cobblestoned streets Parma:



Ravenna:





Determining Cohesiveness

So I have to come up with an artist statement for my professional practices class, in which I'm supposed to talk about a collective body of work. Sometimes the art world is a little bizzar. There is a strong tendancy to want things to look extremely uniformed. Or at least that's the notion that I'm getting.

Well I have a wide range of interests. And I like for my ideas to drive the piece. And apparently that ends up to the comment,"Oh I never would have thought that all three of these pieces came from the same artist."

Well a great deal of graduate programs want a collective cohesive body of work....and with comments like that I wonder, is my work choesive?

Granted all three of these pieces were in different series. But still the comments have been you paint so differently than you draw.

And I agree in general. Though being well aware that I did infact create all of these things set before them it is a bit harder for me to be sympathetic to this idea.

But then I look at each individual series and I wonder, should I have tried to limit myself a bit more? I have a fear series going, and in reality each fear could have been a series. I started out broad, so maybe I should narrow?

I have this strong desire to do a creation myth series and have started with that, on the end of Adam and Eve, since I'm closest to that story. Which is a more narrow approach, but then I look at what I have so far for that series, and it does not really scream out "cohesive thought" to me either.

I have my passive aggressive series, which I should probably title something else, since after doing research I have realized that my presupposition of what passive aggressiveness is, is not all that accurate.

I have started a found object art series for scuplture, due to lack of funds, and well all I have right now is one of my old sculptures wrapped in red yarn....and yes it is that bizarr and absurd.

I did that room based off my short story 32 canvases, definetly most cohesive even though its not finished.....

I want to take as many pictures as I can of all of my stuff that I've done, that's worth its salt and try and figure out what the hell it is I'm trying to say with my art.

I'm sure that there is an underlying connection, if nothing else the human figure, because I do love the human figure. And use it in almost everything that I have mentioned above.


The other thing that I have decided to do is to try and revist all the series I have previously...so far the ideas that I like the most are based around one from my fear series, The fear of the Monster Within.

I just don't want to hear the comment anymore, "Oh you're still a student? Well then its okay that you're all over the place." Its not the exact words that people say, but that's what they mean.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

The Plight of the Paint Off

Yesterday I traveled to Brownwood Texas to participate in my first ever, paint off. It was an interesting experience, fun, but slightly stressful, mostly due to old ladies coming up and talking to me asking me annoying questions when I had an hour left to finish my piece.

There were 22 entries, and about 10 of those were landscapes, five were still lifes, five were traditional portraits, one of a yorkie, and then there was mine.
A traditional portrait painted from a photograph done in oils won second, and a landscape done in pastels won first. I may not have won, but I certainly heard a lot of buzz while I was painting, it probably helped that my piece was about three times the size of every one elses. And it sold! So I'm happy, for 150$ the most I've ever sold something for, so hey I'm happy.

I actually don't know if I like it all that much, I want to do it again, more planned out, and accurate. But hey its not too bad for six hours of total time from painting, to concept. Normally I think about what I want to paint before I start, but in this case, I walked in with a 4'x3' painting with out of clue as to what I wanted to paint. And this is what I left for the nice lady which she bought for her daughter.

Passive Aggressive 3: Plight of Womanhood


Monday, February 8, 2010

What Happens on Mulberry Street




Poly Plate intaglio (This Photo does it more justice)




Photo