Back in Action - getting show ready

Feels good to get back to the drawing table, it took awhile to get the mind back into the groove of thinking out how I want something to lay out or tell. This week is finishing touches on pieces for the Springwood Art Show on 24th August to the 26th of August. I have got three pieces finished and framed, just need the wire to hook them up...but the last piece isn't finished.

First piece, "Bourbon Street Snooze", is graphite and watercolour pencil. Just subtle touches of colour in the composition to give a slower side of the fast pace of Bourbon Street. In a crowd of many this guy was resting in a doorway like no one was around. It touched me, and I hope it touches someone else with its undertones of suggestion.

Second piece, "Quilted history", is a collage of newspaper, card paper and scrapbook designed paper with oil pastel painting of the character and gold ribbon in the quilt pieces' ditches. The art of quilting is fading away, material has become to expensive, women don't have the time or patience for it and modern society finds going to a store more convenient than making your own blankets. There is more to the history of this work than just making a warm piece to your home - it is art, history, community togetherness, women bonding and making use of your resources. 

The third, "New Orleans Blues", is a collage of music paper, acrylic paint and ink. I drew this out while sitting at the hotel in New Orleans. It is a feeling that you get while hearing music there, a sort of vibration that reaches out to touch your heart beating with it. There is no face to the person playing, and his instrument is the torch between you both.









The fourth piece is a joker carrying a bag pipe through a crowd of people. The joker is the only one in colour, everyone else blends into everything else. It takes a lot of guts for a person to come strolling around a festival full of people dressed in purple tights and bag pipes. This piece will be about being your own person even when the odds are against you. I'll post a break down of it being completed (hopefully by Thursday for the show).

The other piece completed this month I am not sure if it is telling the story to another person as I feel it. This gentleman was playing his guitar busking on Beale Street with a big man playing the drums. He sat there with this cigarette hanging out of his mouth, but never did his fingers leave the strings, ashes just fell onto his legs as he played with his eyes closed and swaying with what the chords were doing with him. If I would have had the money their CD would have been bought. The emotions from this man were compelling. I stood there drinking in his features, mood and melody. To be that close with one's art makes me want to cry. I have only painted his image, I need to go deeper into what he made me feel.






For September I will be getting more work together for the Blackheath Art Prize. It runs 28th September to 1st of October. Maybe I can get my groove back for it. I have entered the Springwood Show for the past 3 years, but this will be my first for Blackheath.

Cheers!

Questions, Quarries, Quelines and ?

This week has been a mix of organisation, research and painting. I have been reading "How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist" by Caroll Michels to decide whether to pursue more work in a professional capacity, or just keep doing commissions and sales. There are also questions as to doing more commercial pieces or fine art contemporary...maybe both. Michels states that webpages for professional artists should be set up as either a fine art portfolio for curators and business managers to observe, or they should be marketing pieces for sales of work.
I have no formal training, besides four years of Mrs. Sharon Eck's high school art classes, just a love and passion for art. Where do I want to go with this passion? Am I satisfied with local exhibitions, portrait commissions and experimenting with different mediums? Since career prospects were mentioned in high school life, the counsellors have steered me away from the art field stating that it is not a career. The old starving artist can't make a living, which I am finding is more a conceptual ideal of bohemian artists than reality. The older I get my mind is set only on the figurative ideas of pieces for portrayal, but I find that life's necessity of full-time work keeps me holding that possibility under.

Besides the mind of queries, I did finish a drawing of Dad and Debbie that she asked me for. It is A2 size done in Derwent graphite and watercolour pencils. Now to get it safely to Florida when I go visit and find a place there to frame it.

This is another ongoing experiment in the works. I had a dream of this done all in sepia ink tones with dripping ink. The dream was regarding history becoming faded and forgotten. I did a workup sketch, but wasn't satisfied that it was conveying my idea. After doing some collage work in class, I thought the quilt background in clippings and paint the sewing figure in the foreground. I am now also thinking of adding ribbon stitching between the quilt pieces to mix my love of quilting and painting together. I am not sure how the canvas will react to being punctured with needles though, so still thinking it through. I just started painting the figure today, but have to quit to go to work. Hopefully will get back to it this week, planning on doing it in grey tones now. 

All for now... keep searching for answers.