Art is art and work is work. But artwork is also work.

Yeah, but of all the work I've ever done, I really dig it the most. Exploration, learning, hand in hand with drudgery and error. I love it.

As I transition back into a less computer-centric world, I occasionally lament that there is no Great Undo to withdraw my simple acts of human stupidity. But as I paint more, I also learn there ARE methods to undo error — but they're typically convoluted and require much time and energy to deconstruct and reconstruct. Control-ZZZZZZ.

My latest painting effort began in April, and combines scenes from our visit to the old town near where I lived as a kid. It also steals a Beatles' jacket from the Sgt. Pepper album, throws in my fiddle, a friend's trumpet and a Fender Stratocaster as homage to the gentleman central to the composition, Stewart McDonald.

Stewart's a Scottish photographer and musician I briefly met online discussing HDR photography. He posted a highly stylized self-portrait, and I commented that it would make a really cool painting. He visited my site and saw that I painted, and offered permission to use it. After many iterations of concepts, I went back to my childhood...

I think that's what we must do as we reach a certain point in the aging process. So, here I go! The painting is entitled "Aldeburgh Festival." Commenced in 1948, it's now called the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts. I imagined creating a poster for the event, and this is it...

 

 

The near-finished painting, Aldeburgh Festival. (Click to enlarge and scan the canvas details)

Getting Lucky in a College Town

I attended the Santa Fe College Spring Art Festival in Gainesville April 1–2, 2017 and was really fortunate to both collect an Award of Excellence and sell a painting! It was somewhat redeeming to be acknowledged in this particular judged ranking (top-to-bottom ranking goes: Best of Show; Award of Excellence; Award of Distinction; Award of Merit). Only last month I was in my hometown, and couldn't muster any acknowledgement of the sort. A slight "clash" with the judge from the get-go occurred on what was — and was not — "photorealism" and it was all downhill from there. It's been said, only respond to questions and shut the hell up, otherwise, when it comes to talking to judges...

The painting Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright couldn't have been sold it to a better patron. He's an author and radio host on the topic of dream journaling, dream recall and dream integration.   Originally I sold him a print, but he contacted me online later the first day of the show to say he wanted the original painting. Of course, I've been given the "I'll be back" line before, but we met the next morning before the show began and sealed the deal.

To my own amazement, as much psychic energy as I put into that work, it left me with no pangs of departure whatsoever! It couldn't have gone to a better home, and may all my positive energies pass on to whomever may view it henceforth.

While I am somewhat acutely attuned to my own intuitions and senses, I simply take them for granted as everyday experiences, and don't put much emphasis on their significance, though I note their symbolism. Thanks to Sting's Jungian songwriting, I used to log my dreams, and journal, but I think I put too much emphasis on hoping some cure-all would come of things, and soon. So I trailed off. These days I rarely dream, or at least have recall. And not all dreams are positive — I once awoke from a dream of kicking an attacking alligator in the snout, only to find my wife's feet at the other end... A reason not to dream, perhaps.

Eking Forward (Yes, That's a Word)

I don't typically write about something before it happens, but I'll be in Gainesville this coming Friday setting up for the Sante Fe College Spring Art Festival over the weekend.

Thinking about the limited range of my efforts, we decided that some "spinoffs" as supporting cast to a larger painting would serve to catapult its brethren by collective association. Artist Christopher Still is meticulous in his pre-project studies and I've seen a great niche market he has created by showing and selling these alongside his "master" painting.

Already late into the process, in the short term I simply needed to create smaller, accessible paintings. The buyer of anything large I might sell is already a one-in-one-thousand or greater odd. Smaller paintings are for smaller walls. Let's get real.

So, in a contrived reverse mode, I created alternative spinoff components of a "master." Hung together as a grouping, I feel amplifies the works such that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That's Aristotle, by the way. I think he was Jackie O's rich husband or something.

 

Here's some iPhone shots of the 8x8-inch spinoffs...

Still figgerin'. Hope to see you there!

The Sweet Misery of Happiness

My last showing at the Lake Wales Art Festival (February 2017) was nice, in that, again, I met some GREAT folks! I also was selected for an Award of Excellence. There was a very broad range of awards and prize monies at this event, even though it's relatively in the middle of nowhere on the edge of the very small downtown of Lake Wales.

Once again, I dragged a couple of my "completed" paintings just a little further by adding new compositional elements to each. Where I recently added several hummingbirds to the self portrait/figure study (entitled, Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright), I squelched the question finally as to just "why" those birds are flittering around my head — it's because of the flowers emanating from my hands and hidden face! I certainly hope it's at last done!

And for The Moth Eater, I added depth to a studio image by putting a horizon and pastoral scene behind the subject...

 

I wish I was a faster painter... more driven and prolific. But I certainly don't need the baggage of being so wrapped up in my artwork and its "meaning" as to be removed from my real existence —which, by the way — is blissful and beautiful already. Oh the sweet misery of happiness!

Honored by the Kind People I Meet

In preparation for my most recent showing at the Dunedin Art Harvest this November (2016), I made some modifications to a couple of existing, completed paintings. I was trying to follow some personal advice from a very friendly (and extraordinary) local artist, Steven Kenny: Tell a story. But let the viewer assemble the tale— you just provide the props.

Steven's work is mostly surrealistic. While always a great fan of surrealism, I must not have met the minimum mushroom or hallucinogen intake in my youth to effectively have capitalized on the fantastic. Too rational. Too tied-to-reality. Too ... real?

A simple figure study suddenly suggests a narrative when a small bird and a moth etching in a locket are added. There's a Portlandia episode, "Put a Bird On It" that comes to mind!

 

Another simple figure study (self portrait) adds several hovering hummingbirds and an ominous sky to imply a story where none actually exists!

Where all this leads, is that these simple narrative devices substantially elevated the same show content that couldn't muster a print sale or secure placing in the competitive component of a show in Brooksville earlier this year. I believe curled paper won best of show, and I lost out in the painting category to painted gourds. But the art gods smiled upon me in Dunedin — and a Florida photographer friend, Adam Pourciau. We had per chance sat together and each of us received an Award of Merit and $600!

Another cool coincidence occurred: Papa Bear of the Biker and Dog painting showed up! An acquaintance recognized Jack, and put us in touch. He stopped by for a gratis print of him and Little Bear, his comfort dog. Looking forward to a homeless vet fund-raiser with Jack and Little Bear.

And last but not least, a very talented and generous photographer Mikell Herrick stopped by and chatted. Later she posted this absolutely beautiful shot of the inside of my tent:

As always, the BEST part of these shows are the kind and generous people you meet.  

Art Is a Strange Beast

Just got back from the Mayfair by-the-lake art show in beautiful downtown Lakeland. Once again, not much to show for our efforts but a tan — and the new connections with very nice people, specifically the artists. Not their great works, per se, but their earnest interest and kind, generous words.

Beforehand, I was wallowing deep in indecision as to continue this tack. Then, several conversations ensued with folks who approached me to express their appreciation for my artworks. These were also artists, and their encouragement and discussion regarding how to find a channel that met both my urge to create and show, and a potential customer base. Productive, positive vibes. Thanks.

When things start to turn commercial, I admit, I begin to lose it. I've always turned AWAY FROM the money, and I'm not really sure why. Perhaps I sense it's corrupting. Perhaps money's not something that I really need so badly; lucky, but still relatively broke. Perhaps the whole gig of being an artist is all a little pompous and preposterous. I wish I knew. I DO know that I prefer to stay in the shallow waters; I've met too many folks with an inflated sense of self worth that gets them in way over their head. Never pretty.

Art is a strange beast. I have acquired — or been blessed with — a certain skill set or two that I can at-will choose to exercise for various reasons: To explore my own psyche; catapult a venture; impress the impressionable; make a quick a buck — or not...  Each seems at odds with the other. Can all of these be accomplished simultaneously, without contradiction? Dunno.

So, while I have a little time before the fall season to consider/reconsider putting out more money on entry fees, lots of introspection will occur as I finish some carpentry and masonry jobs around the house in the summer heat. Always good to have these types of questions running through my mind while laboring, rather than regret or fantasy. At least their consideration will ultimately bear some fruit. And I'm feeling hungry.

Below: My latest painting (a self portrait) and the tent as viewed from the promenade. Do I look just a little angst-ridden?  

2016 In Full Swing

"Been awhile," he wrote to himself, knowing full well the audience scope of his blog. But that's okay — this whole process of creating paintings can be like talking to one's self for long, long stretches of time.

Just now finishing up a month-long one-man show of my first works at the Michele Tuegel Contemporary gallery in St. Petersburg. Thanks to my many old friends — and new ones that attended out of curiosity — for your moral support and kind company at the show's opening!

Wrapping up my latest painting, "Uroboros and the Serpent Handler" (below) just moments ago; a few touch-ups and a varnish before my next appearance at the Art in the Park event in Brooksville, March 12 and 13. I'll be focused a little more on presentation this go-round. We'll see if that helps to create a viewer's psychological elevation of the works exhibited... Hope to see you there!

About Uroboros and the Serpent Handler

In a dry period of struggling with where to go, what to do, et cetera — all the things one does in the process of second-guessing one's creative self — I was sitting in the dark with coffee early one morning, when an image randomly appeared in my mind's eye: a nude figure (mine) was curled inside a box on a quilt. So I sketched it out, so as to not lose the thought, and immediately commenced conjuring a means to construct a box into which I ultimately crawled into, and, using the camera's self-timer, took a few images.

However... What was THAT all about?

I had no idea why the image seemed so arresting to me, yet meant absolutely nothing! I saw similarities in old masters paintings of the descension of Christ from the cross. As I commenced the painting, I was feeling doubts about a Christ image — especially since I was the model. I read much on the topic of artists throughout art history who modeled images of Christ after themselves. I mean, who is the most-available model to an artist, but himself? Finally after many discussions on the topic, I saw the trepidation of the concept in the eyes of friends and family. But I plodded onward. Finally, after testing a few of the wounds of crucifixion on the image, even I decided, "No way!" And so I investigated a geometric symbol within the square area of the composition, and decided a circle worked best, interweaving itself with the figure.

Uroboros: A circular symbol depicting a snake, or less commonly a dragon, swallowing its tail, as an emblem of wholeness or infinity.

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A symbol of Ancient Egypt and India more than 400 years before Christ, the snake worked well for me. Coincidentally, I was reading an interesting website, The Bitter Southerner, whereupon I chanced on a story investigating a serpent-handling church on Sand Mountain in Alabama. In the painting was already an Appalachian quilt made by my Sand Mountain grandmother, Darcus Wade Rusk.

But as I near its completion, I have but one recommendation for other artists before embarking on a representation of a uroboros: Don't! That's a lot of snake scales to render, and there was as much study of Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake markings that went into this as there was general painting of the figure and quilt!

Later! (Likely MUCH later!)