Creating Thought

If you are an artist, what are your tools? Do you adhere to the rules taught when you were working toward your MFA? Use this, this way, and never never use that at all? Or does your assembly of tools include anything and just about everything? In my view of art as a creative force, creatively using any object or method to produce a piece of art is elemental to the process. Recently, I have been enjoying an app on my iPhone called Hipstamatic. It uses the iPhone camera feature and applies a variety of effects to the final print. The app offers as variables, 8 lenses, 7 flash units, 13 film types and 5 cases (skins) for the camera. The cases have no effect on the prints but selecting any combination of the other three categories produces different results. The flash units seem to have the least dramatic effect and I do not use the flash very often, leaving that option off. My favorite is a lens called Chunky. Chunky with any film produces soft subtle light streaks and ...

(Originally Posted on 10-10-2010) It seems to me that I spend a great deal of time considering where the concepts for my art start. I do this because my ending points are not always very closely related to the starting points. Afterwards by JKC  One artist I know, John Karl Claes, is very structured, very organized in his idea development. He paints landscapes in an expressionistic yet representational way. In preparation for a flurry of work, Claes will develop sheets of storyboards with concepts sketched out. It is from this storyboard that he begins his process of producing paintings that ranges from miniature (3? x 3?) to very large (70? x 60?). It is not evident that size matters to Claes at this point, it is the composition and the elements withing each painting that matter. Each of his paintings always starts with a drawing. The starting points for me are not consistent. Unlike my friend Claes, I am not formally trained. I do not have the hours of class ...

(Originally Posted on 09-19-2010) I believe in nice. I believe in nice people. I believe, unless I know otherwise, that every one is nice. This is a dangerous way to live. Before I know it, one of these nice people comes to a point on her or his agenda where it becomes necessary to play me, and I do not mean as a team player. In order for them to maintain or protect themselves, they have to use other people and I am easy to use. I don’t see it coming and BAM! I end up off my feet and feeling very foolish or hurt or both. Yea, I know. Y’all are out there saying I should easily see this coming and I should not be so naive. I agree. But it goes against my nature to start a casual relationship with a list of suspicions to check off. I married a very smart lady who takes care of all of that. Problem is, she is not always around and I am not always willing to pay attention to her intuitions. So, instead I continue to dive into things, begin projects, take on responsibilit...

(Originally posted on 09-14-2010) Who is the artist you have discovered that has walked or walks in an almost parallel path with you? Is there an artist that seems to “ooze” (if you permit me to use the word) the feelings and deep thoughts you believe could as easily be yours as theirs? Do you have an artist that is not a mentor or teacher but is simply an artist that seems to understand what makes up your drive and desire for art? Mine is Sean Scully. And I do not know exactly why it has been so appointed. When I want to recenter my focus or remember why I paint what I paint, I look at the drawings I did as a young and younger person. All I have to do is pull out one of the note books from my high school days – of which I have very few – or from my time in upper education. I am very easily bored and can very quickly wander off mentally while listening to a speech, if I do not semi-occupy my mind with something such as drawing. The margins along my notebook pages conta...

Posted on 09-11-2010 I’m more of a blog reader than writer. How about you? Do you write more words in blogs than the words you read? Or are you like some today who depend mostly on the micro blogger to provide them with just snippets of blogs they find useful. It is humorous (almost) the number of people who will read a Tweet that references a blog and then pretend they have read the blog. Perhaps, you do not write a blog at all. I know you read blogs or at least are reading this one so that qualifies you as a blog reader. My experience with blogs has been sporadic. My first blog was in 1998. As one of the early web designers from the mid 1990's I discovered a small program attached to my server software that allowed me to blog. I began in earnest and continued until I was attacked with overwhelming spam and the only way to stop it was to delete the blog completely. Today I have a collections of blogs that I comment on for different reasons. This one is about art...

(Originally Posted on 09-05-2010) I’ve been thinking about the rules of art recently. Mostly, I think, it is because I learned the rules that I know through individual study, watching and talking to artist about their process. Why does an artist do what she does or the way he does. I’ve searcher a great deal on the Internet for a concise set of accepted rules and, of course, there is none. Now, just to be clear, I am talking about the rules about the creative process of art, not methods and activities that surround it. I believe we have learned rules such as the danger of solvents or other materials and it is wise to follow what has become established safety rules. Just about as I learn one rule from one artist, I find another who dismisses it completely. Here is an example: an artist friend who stretches and preps his own canvases does so because he can not find any commercial outlet that does it to his satisfaction. Because he produces a large number of painting for several...

Originally Posted (Posted on 08-30-2010) Almost everyone knows or is familiar with the poem by Robert Frost, The Road Less Traveled. If you are not, then I encourage you to do a search on the Internet and spend a few minutes reading the verses. It is a very powerful poem. I am an artist. That is something I find that I have to remind my self of daily. Because I actually make a living in a different field, I am often distracted from the fact that I am an artist. That is how God made me and if I had been a more perceptive person with a stronger will than most around me when I was younger I would have entered a lifework that fulfilled that calling. Today I am in my third 30 years. Just begun for sure but two 30 years have gone by and I am finally where I need to be, where I am called to be. But I still do not know what exactly is my road. Every accomplished and successful artist…did I say every?….no I do not mean that by any means. But, many of the accomplished and success...

 (Originally Posted on 08-27-2010) The Turkish Art of Erbu An artist friend who I have only met online (sometimes the best kind) shared still shots from a class she took learning how to do paper marbling.   She then shared this video of the process.  There is no voice over only music to what is a lyrical process. You see the finished process only at the end but throughout you will see several different works of art created.  The process includes a solution into which pigment is placed, dripped, splattered and then manipulated with various tools.  When the work is the way the artist wants it, a large sheet of paper is laid on top of the solution.  The paper absorbs the pigment and the patterns.  The paper is removed by pulling it along the edge of the pan.

(Originally Posted on 8-26-2010) This past week I was introduced to two new things. One is paper marbling (did I spell that right?). And the other was genealogy. Genealogy is nothing new, its been around for ages, eons in fact. But what I refer to is that I finally succumbed to and advertisement on the telly here in USA. The commercial was for ancestry.com. With a 14 day trial I decided to see what I could find about who I came from…. Paper marbling is brand new to me and a good friend in Columbus, OH published a series of photos on Facebook from a class she took on the process. A wonderfully interesting thought went through my mind. Sort of the same thought when I was introduced to the ecaustic process. The problem with both of these “new to me” interests is time. I’ve yet been able to figure out how to preserve and save the time I normally waste and keep it available for those times when I do not have enough. I said to my lovely wife, “I don’t need to be doing this!” I was ta...