Sale on canvas prints! Use code ABCXYZ at checkout for a special discount!

Blog

Displaying: 1 - 2 of 2

Art Thoughts

October 19th, 2014

Art Thoughts

I often wonder about why? The various causes of effects. I can't help myself. It's my philosophical approach to everything I see, hear and do. I'll be in the studio, or behind the computer, and be wondering about the direction my exploration is heading. Who is this for? Well, for me obviously, but who will eventually buy it?

This is of course a conundrum, for tastes change, and as much as the back of my mind may be considering someone in particular I know that probably it won't be to their taste by the time it is finished. It is possible, and it has happened, but more often than not it finds its way in completely different, unimagined, hands - hands that I would never have guessed my art would never end up in.

Taste. I think that's the thing with creating - by which I mean something new and different. People need new art: new music, new books, new cinema, new experiences. But whereas new art is prospective, taste is retrospective. Certainly, everyone likes a pleasant surprise, but they also like a hint of what's in store.

It's the reason we have personal libraries, music and film collections. Articles which have made our life journeys more pleasant and eye-opening we tend to need ready access to, to refresh and remind ourselves periodically. So a prospective purchaser visits galleries, looking for new experiences, finds many and may even be shocked by some of the sights. But it is a quest for something which speaks to them personally, something that is perhaps already familiar, or perhaps the new aesthetic/story strikes them immediately upon first acquaintance.

An Untypical Day

October 17th, 2014

An Untypical Day

It happens every morning, or evening, or night. You wake in a fit of inspiration. Your mind is running at a hundred miles per hour as you try to sort your thoughts. A mix of of dreams and dramas, work to finish and new work to begin. Scrambling for the nearest pencil and writing surface you start scrawling and scratching away, words, images, forms, much which shall remain unintelligible until you later attempt to decipher after a breakfast and coffee or two.

But you now possess the groundwork for both the beginnings and the endings. Paintings which you've been grappling with for months have suddenly, finally, been grasped. Fresh ideas appear like sunlight after a storm. You take a shower, dry off a bit, and leap in with boundless enthusiasm.

Where are those notes? Oh, look - yesterday's notes too, and the day before. You check around the studio and see that yes, yesterday's work was largely completed, good, but in the jumble you find a shopping list for various supplies. At some point you'll have to make time to run for the errand, that or start working in charcoal, but that's okay.

"Where was I?" you wonder, looking for a blank canvas, a photograph that had blown off the table, an empty tube of ultramarine, a dried brush you neglected to clean, and finally found, time to get down to work!