Art and Life

This will be my last post to Live Journal.  Hopefully everyone who reads here has gotten the information about my new blog address.

Here is more information for those who did not see the earlier post about my move.  Thanks for tuning in!

Changing Blog Address, Please update your bookmarks etc.

Oct. 3rd, 2011 | 06:09 pm

New post on my small works blog at Elaine Mari: Small Works.

The first person to buy one of these new pieces will receive a gift of a small drawing with their purchase. You can see some of my drawings here on my Drawing Blog.

Fresh new post on plein air painting, my experience    ..on my new blog at blogger  Art and Life: Painting Out Doors: How I Do It.

Outdoor and other art adventures:
I've spent a lot of this summer traveling Southern BC and the West
Kootenay's soaking up lots of imagery for paintings and painting en
plein air.  It has been an exciting, inspiring art filled few months.
The winter will be filled with Studio adventures and other art
explorations.

Keep in touch through my blog to read all the latest
studio progress and process news.

Thank you for all your friendship and support over the years. I feel lucky to have such a great audience for my work.  Keep on reading on blogger.

I'm taking the plunge.  I've decided to move my blog to Blogger, for various reasons that I won't go into here.  I'm taking the weekend off, starting tomorrow, until Monday.  More backpack camping, one last summer(ish) hurrah and some plein air painting, about which I will report to you on, on my return. 

When I come back I will be launching my new blog, and a new sales page for small work.  Finally.  This has been part of "the plan" as far as marketing my work goes.  I'm at a point in my production where I feel competent to produce good work regularly enough to keep up with a small work sales page.  I will give plenty of notice here and to all my contacts everywhere of the new addresses when I launch the new blog next week.  Next step, Facebook page?

The journey continues.  Doing this has been a ton of "Office Work" and the painting has slowed a bit as a result.  I feel good about doing this step though. It's a marker of moving forward. Number 60 on the list, checked off..etc. like that.

This is a piece I'm working on in acrylics now, it's almost there, some parts are a bit wonky and unfinished I can't decide if I like the wonky or not.  It has to be thunk on for a bit.  I'll soon post the "children on the rocks" painting that I am almost done with, mentioned in an earlier post.


View from the Running Trail (in progress)
Acrylic on Paper
9 1/2 x 7"

Here it is the end of the week again, gone, one more time, gone. I told myself this morning that this disappearing time phenomenon happens because I have such an interesting life. If life were not so interesting then time would pass more slowly. Yes, this is another of those tedious self help, glass is half full, optimist blagging ons but it helps, yes it does, it helps.

With this outlook, I do not see myself as an unfocused loser, but the owner of a fascinating life. And, it's true. My life is an adventure. I don't kill myself working too hard right now. Even though I don't have much money I get to get away, a lot. Yesterday, for instance, I spent the afternoon on the beach in Garry Point Park in Steveston, one of the most beautiful places and afternoons ever. I should be anxious as all get out due to my financial situation but, no, I'm feeling great. The summer is over but it was a fabulous summer which will be followed by a fabulous fall. I'm a little worried, if I let myself think about it, about the winter, but I'm not going to. I'm going to live in this beautiful short moment.

And, at this moment, I am in my studio dreaming up the next painting. I have some ideas floating about. I've been kind of all over the map, what with the car portrait, the plein air paintings, the ongoing nature intersecting with the built environment series that is moving more and more into abstraction, and now the introduction of figures into this piece in progress:



I think I gotta firm up my "artistic vision" here. Trouble is, that is not something there is any '3 easy steps' instruction for anywhere. I'm thinking the best way is to just keep scratching around till it happens, or not.

Meantime time passes interestingly and I dream, and paint and read and reflect as my daily work (along with the gardening, dog walking, chores for money, office work etc. etc. but they are also things I'm enjoying).

Thanksgiving is the next holiday and I'm getting a jump on it here.

Painting outdoors is a challenge for me.  But, I want to do it this trip, so I have done some prep toward that end.

I decided on the best way for me to paint outside.  It has to be convenient and small or I won't do it.  So, I prepped these little pieces of water colour paper that I already had.  My sister gave them to me as a part of a gift a while back.  The under coat is acrylic paint so that I can paint in oils on paper.

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I'm going to tape them with double sided masking tape to pieces of cardboard, two at a time and take them where I want to paint.  I will either work in the camp area or go in the car so that I can easily lay out the wet paintings for transport to where I can dry them.  They are tiny 4 x 6" so I will work on several at a time, quick studies. Rough and unfussy.





Here is my bag of stuff to take with me for making tiny oil paintings in the outdoors. 



In it are:
Water soluble oils (can't take the chemicals in the regular oils and mediums)
spray bottle
bottle for medium and one for water
palette knife
medium
brushes rolled in a bamboo place mat (just a few)
cloths
painted paper
cardboard mounts
small collapsible stool
a camera to use as a view finder and to record what I might want to work on later.

Lets see what I can do with that.

SAVING SANITY: In order to save sanity and to save uninterrupted time for making art I have been forced to do some scheduling.  This past year and a half I've  seen myself as working full time at painting and drawing.  At first I envisioned that as mostly time standing in front of a drawing or painting.  Of course it didn't work out that way. There is the prep, the buying of materials, looking at art, the sitting hitting my head with a brush not knowing where to go next and the organizing of the studio and reorganizing of the studio (a vital part of the procrastination involved in the creative process).  Being in the studio 9-5, 5 days a week was the real plan and that worked out pretty good for quite a while.

Recently I've taken on a few odd jobs to generate some side income while I'm living off my savings, hoping to make the savings last longer and continue to work independently at art and otherwise from home (near the studio). This has accreted to quite a number of hours a week. With this and our endless holidaying this summer:) I have had to decide that indeed I am not working 9-5, 5 days a week in the studio but more like 3 days a week and I had better come to terms with that or feel continually frustrated with what seems like not enough time.  I would try to get in there every day and have to come out just as I was getting going in order to do something else.  So, I am now scheduling Monday to Wednesday in the studio, Thursday and Friday for the odd jobs, and the weekend for art business, getting out for a hike, chores and all else.  That feels better, time organized is time well spent.

PROGRESS REPORT:  I decided early that it would take at least a year of no pressure to sell or show in order to develop a way of working and skills that I could feel good about.  It has taken more than a year.  I'm happy with a lot of the work I produced in that time and am just feeling the painting chops coming back solid and consistent now.

For me art making is about self-development. It's my way of growing and learning and being productive, making  work that means something and being good at what I want to do. I know it is a hard row to hoe but to quote Ralph in the Simpson's cartoon "this is the life I've chosen".  Like all work some days just suck, some days are great and some days are just days. 

Art making is what I want to do, it's most of who I am.  When I was working as an advocate I felt I was an artist who did advocacy, when I worked in admin work I felt I was an artist who did admin work, when I was a coordinator at a women's centre I felt I was an artist who worked at a women's centre, when I was a volunteer coordinator at an arts organization I felt I was an artist who worked as a volunteer coordinator. The people I worked with defined themselves as "advocates" "coordinators" "administrators".  I wanted for at least a year to be who I was without the split and I've done it.

Now I am an artist (I know that this title is bandied about too loosely but I can't claim to be "a painter" "a drawer" "a photographer" someone who works in mixed media. I have worked in all these media). I'm an artist,  at the present time, a painter.  I own it and try to live up to it.  The bits and pieces of other work I do help to support that and leave me free to make art. I garden for somebody a few hours a week, I get a few dollars here and there for tasks I do for other people, household work, typing, designing, dog walking, all stuff I enjoy but not work that takes over my mind and spirit. I work from home, I am my own boss.  Soon, perhaps, I will make more dollars from selling these paintings. That's a big project I'm going to ramp up efforts on in the fall, more focused marketing.

I've had some  gratifying response to my paintings, both in the studio, on this blog and via Facebook in a couple of other places that I have posted pictures of my work.Thank you for your positive comments anywhere you may make them.  It feels great to be getting on with it and getting support for what I'm doing. 

CHANGES: As I mentioned in my last blog entry I think some new developments are in the works. Perhaps it's a leap in development of the paintings. Last week I started a painting that I was very excited about, then I hated it, then I talked to Val about it, she pointed out that it was a good piece that needed some work.  I'm going to work on it and develop it and move on. We'll see where it goes. I'll keep working and the paintings will develop, that's all anyone knows. I'll keep you posted.

Maybe my next entry will be about developments and what happens when your work changes. I have found that people still refer to my last body of work while they are looking at my new and developing work and compare. It can be disheartening but is understandable because the work you just finished may be so much more developed than the new work with which you are beginning. Or, perhaps what you are doing is not so easy to understand as what you just did. The more you develop as an artist the more developed your audience has to be.  I think about it like literature or cheese. If you only ever read romance novels and lighter mystery fiction (my favourite) more challenging writing will not appeal to you. If you only eat supermarket cheese and don't expand your horizons with something a little harder to like then, well, you see what I mean.  Maybe another day I will look at this phenomenon.

It's time to face that painting now.

I'm all excited here today, maybe misplaced excitement, only time will tell.  I'm working on a painting ( I am not posting today) that is a big departure from the way I've been working the landscapes. As you have seen if you read this blog regularly I've  been moving away from realism to referential ism (I think I made that up). Today I took it to a more playful place. In the piece I am working on, I see humour, spontaneity, maybe even silliness.  It  has been my vision since I began painting again to loosen up, bring more lightness into my work. This new painting is coming closer to where I was with the last body of work, the drawings, without the angst and irony. I like to see that connection.

I want to live with it for a while before I can know whether it is as well made as I need it to be, whether I think it has anything I like about it tomorrow or the next day.  Sometimes when I make these leaps I have to leap back a bit for a while to find the true course.

When I say the excitement may be misplaced, I mean, I may look at it tomorrow and change my mind about it altogether.  I've asked Val (whose been doing some fabulous changes herself) to look at it and give me some critique.  After that I will see what I feel and move forward from there.

Meanwhile, this past week I completed this painting in the style to which I've become accustomed and I think it's pretty good, at least today I do.

BTW go on over to my website and check out the latest work and like me if you do, cause that feels nice.