Category: My Art

#379 in B&W and color. Finished. For real this time.

I’m posting this in B&W, as well as color, because working with intense color, tonal contrast can be a problem, as hues of equal tone can give an appearance of tonal contrast: warm hues, like yellow, will spring forward while cooler tones will recede–something you can clearly see when you compare these. When I look at the monotone photo, I think that I might like to have made those blues even darker. One can have strong intuitive sense of color expression, but there’s no substitute for knowledge of color theory. This has been a weak point in some of my pieces, so I’m pleased with the how this holds up in monotone–it would make an interesting etching!

66×23″ Acrylic on weathered plywood, with leaves (I think I was channeling my Saturday morning “Trees of Fairmount Park field trip for this). I used strips trimmed from stretched canvases to define the borders.

#379 new sun

#379 BandW
View GALLERY HERE.

 

Work in Progress — taking a break.

A break from painting–working on two pieces, 379 and 380. The last of the broken plywood–these are 6 feet high or more. I have to stand on a milk crate to work on the top, even when one is on the floor, and the other, on the lowest rung of my easel.
Being poor is a material factor in choosing my color schemes. When I have paint left on my pallet from one, I use it on the other rather than let it go to waste. I have several pieces like that–as variations on a color scheme.

#379 - 380 WIP 2 pieces

You tell me, what does it matter?

Time to go into sleep mode. Whadeye do today to justify my existence?

I worked at making art.

I did drawing exercises… anatomy–working on the arm. I finished #178, made progress on another in that sort-of-figure series (like 176, 177)–on the tall pieces of plywood.

I try not to think past doing. Like.. what is going to happen to all these pieces? Where am I going to put them? I played out a fantasy as I walked to the wine store… getting a commercial gallery to give my stuff a show, and they make a bunch of money… and the gallery peeps tell me when i show them new pieces that seem to have no relation to what was selling–that I have to make more like the one’s in the show… it always ends on that kind of note. Different downer, but always, that going that route would be wrong, wrong, wrong. Why I refuse to sell

Fuck Capitalism!

..and not think past but I have this deep down thing about growing in what I’m doing. And I’m encouraged in the sense that, yeah… I am getting better.
But what does better mean? What does it matter? That’s what channels my dreams. If I could only admit that it doesn’t matter–but then… in saying that about my work, am I saying that ART doesn’t matter? So am I an artist? Is the stuff I’m making, ‘art?” If it is–if that’s what I’m doing–how can I say, it doesn’t matter? But then… the stuff I make, piles up, gathers cement dust in the basement. But then… the Universe doesn’t give a shit about us. And soon, the Sun will go Red Giant and consume all the inner planets. All it comes down to in the end.