Girls, Girls, Girls

I started a small commissioned painting today even though I haven't finished my turtle racing girls. It has to be done and delivered by November 13th so I figured I should start it as soon as I could. Here is the underpainting, which I finished today.

The mark on her face is not a mistake. She actually has a scratch on her forehead. It's looking pretty good so far but it lacks the slight "smirk" she has on her face in the photo. We'll see how it goes once the paint dries and I can really get in the details.

Despite not working on the turtle race today, I did get quite a bit done yesterday. Here are some photos:

Pretty Girls Get All the Attention

One of the turtle racers in my latest painting.

I'd like to think of myself as an artist who gives all women of all sizes equal attention in my paintings. I'm more interested in an interesting picture that will make a good composition rather than just focusing on whether the woman is pretty or not. I have painted some overweight women, older women, and some pretty darn plain women because it made a great painting. Have I painted pretty women? Yes, I have on several occasions. Do they sell quicker than the other paintings? Yes, that seems to be the trend. One may then say that I should focus on just pretty girls since they sell so well. If this was just about money and making sales, I probably would, but we already know that I won't. I haven't so far.

It's not that I don't want to sell my paintings. It's not that I have anything against attractive women. I just don't like to be told what to do! Okay, I'm only half kidding on that last statement, just ask my husband. But what I mean is that this is my creative expression and I have to follow my muse. If I feel the need to paint an average looking woman because the picture speaks to me, then I will. If the picture happens to be of an attractive woman, then so be it. I paint whatever inspires me not what I think is more marketable. I don't want to be known as the artist who only paints pretty women.

That being said, I recently had the request for pretty women and bathing beauties from a new-to-me gallery that wants to represent me. The owner was really attracted to the ones that I had already painted and wanted some more for her gallery. Do I just paint attractive women to satisfy this gallery director? Part of me wants to be a "rebel" and just say no just because I don't like people dictating what I paint. But when I look at the next few paintings I have lined up, they all contain fairly attractive women in them. Did I purposely pick these images out for their subject's beauty? I don't think I did. Is this any different than when a gallery requests larger paintings from me? It's still a request, right? Maybe, maybe not.

Galleries are always going to request things from their artists. Most of the time, they are reasonable requests. It's the artist's job to decide what is reasonable to them and what will compromise their artistic vision. I don't feel like painting a few pretty women that were already in the queue to be painted is an imposition and I don't really fault a gallery for requesting what they think will sell. As long as I am still painting pictures of people that I like and am inspired by, I'm happy. If some of them turn out to be attractive and make my galleries happy, even better.

Making Progress, Making Enemies

Okay, maybe "enemies" is too strong of a word but I know I upset at least one person by covering the eyes of the two little boys I just painted. As is my usual M.O., I painted these figures and included their eyes. I find that painting the eyes helps because it enables me get the expressions just right. I also tend to post my work in progress on Facebook and Twitter (I get less people thinking these are just photographs covered in wax by doing this).  Sometimes this causes people to request that I not block out the eyes. Sometimes it's more like begging than requesting. It happened with this painting. Unfortunately for that person, I have to be true to this series, the concept behind this series, and my own artistic desires and cover the eyes. Not everyone may agree with what I am doing but I am the artist and this is my work.

Here is the image without the bars over the eyes. It's a nice enough painting (even though it's still not done) but that's just it. It's a nice painting. There's really nothing special about it for me. Yes, the second boy has some pretty intense eyes, in fact, he looks downright annoyed, but the point of the bar is to make  him anonymous, to make his memory "anyone's" memory. That's hard to do when it's a "recognizable" person.

Here is the image with the bars over the eyes. Some of you may disagree, and that's okay if you do, but this painting is much more interesting. The bars never fail to start a conversation with someone seeing my work for the first time. It turns a nice painting into something more interesting, something with a bit more edge. It may not be what you would do as an artist but I am still happy painting bars over eyes and calling it my art. 

BTW, this painting is still in progress. I think one more day on it should do the trick.

TeePee Boys

It felt unbelievably awesome to be painting again yesterday. After two weeks off from the studio, going back in with two new pieces in mind was a more than welcome change. I started the underpainting of the teepee boys and have to say, I'm impressed with myself. The painting is off to a great start. Now before this sounds too egotistical, what I mean is that I feel like my skills have improved tremendously since I first started this series in January of 2009. Back then I had never really painted people before and wanted to challenge myself with doing something that pretty much terrified me. After more than a year and a half of this series, and about 100 paintings, I like to think that I have grown a lot and am no longer afraid of tackling the human form. I don't think I could have painted the underpainting as well as I did yesterday, a year ago. My work and technique is getting stronger and I am very pleased with myself for the progress. I am hoping this trend continues.

Teepee boy number one still needs high-lights and accents, and of course, the eyes need to be blocked out. I'm really enjoying painting the feathers in the head pieces. I have never painted feathers before so it is a nice challenge.

The underpainting of the second boy will hopefully be done today. He is not a happy looking one. Wait until you see what he is doing with his hands. I bet this was one of those pictures that this guys wishes was never taken and that he cringed ever time his mother showed it. Hehehe, and now I am painting it. Good thing the eyes are blocked out in the final piece!

Back to Work!

Sometimes you need a vacation in order to appreciate what you do for a living again. This vacation refreshes you and enables you to go back to work with renewed vigor. Now it doesn't actually matter whether or not you actually went somewhere or if you stayed at home (although I always prefer actually getting away...perhaps someplace sunny, with a beach). The point is to have a vacation from  your work, which is what I did for the past two weeks.

Week one was spent at home catching up on some sleep and general resting. It was a busy three day Open Studios and I needed the recovery time. Week two I took an "art vacation". I purposely stayed away from what I normally paint in the studio and spent a week just "playing". I worked on some "texture" pieces using a bunch of methods I hadn't used in a long time. It was a fun time of not worrying about anything other than just playing with different materials and seeing what they could do.

But now it's Monday and I am all revved up and ready to start on two new large paintings! The time away has made me appreciate what I do and how I paint. I am excited to start the next two pieces and see how they turn out. Here are the images that I will be working with this week:

Even though I told myself I was not going to paint anymore children, I couldn't resist this picture! That kid on the right is HILARIOUS, with his hand grabbing his crotch area while his little brother shoots him with one of those popping noise maker "thingys". I don't normally paint backgrounds either but I think it's important to get the teepee in the painting. I've already drawn this out and I think it's a strong composition. It will be a 30" x 30" painting when it's finished.

This is a turtle race. If you look closely you can see turtles in their hands with numbered flags on suction cups that attach to the animal's shell. Once again, a pretty funny picture. In order to make it work compositionally on my 30" x 40" panel, I separated the girls. The first three on the left are still standing together but the girl on the far right is separated from the rest and has a bit more space between her and the other competitors. It works this way because it gives the painting more white space and "rest", visually.

I will be sure to post the progress of these two paintings as I work on them.

Artists Collecting Art

I love art. I love making art. I love seeing art. I love collecting art. Having beautiful art around me makes me happy. People sometimes assume that just because I am an artist, I don't buy art. Just ask the gallery owners/ reps who, once they found out I was an artist, automatically assumed I wasn't going to buy anything and moved on to the next potential client. During the San Francisco Art Fair I was ignored A LOT once they figured out I was "just an artist", as if I couldn't possibly afford art. It has happened at a couple of galleries too. It happens often enough to bother me. But I have bought art. I do have an art collection.

Granted, I can't afford to buy very expensive art and often times I acquire my pieces through trade or I am given it as a gift. This doesn't negate the fact that I do collect art and sometimes I am moved enough by a piece that I will buy it, even if I can't really afford it, even if I have to make payments on it. So gallery owners pay attention: Artists do buy art, at least this artist does, so don't ignore us when we walk into your gallery. Not all of us are looking to hit you up for representation.

Here are my latest three acquisitions of art from this past month. I am very happy to own these and be showing them, along with the other paintings I've collected, in my home. (I apologize for the bad photos taken on my iphone. Please visit these artists' websites for better pictures)

Untitled- Rebekah Goldstein
Mixed Medium on Panel

"Round One"- Jeff Schaller
Limited Edition Screen Print

"Green Bean"- Lucky Rapp
Mixed Medium, Resin on Canvas

The Need for Change

It has been four months since I started painting full-time and I am already feeling the need for some change.  I don't know if this is normal and happens to all artists, but I'm trying to see it as part of the "growing as an artist" process. Right now I have an itch to do something different. I have the urge to experiment and break free from my now, very tight, painting style. I want to explore and let loose, the art equivalent of letting my hair down.

This feeling has left me feeling a bit torn though. How do I explore and still meet my obligations with the galleries that represent me? Do I give up my current work and do a complete 180? What do I do with these pieces that I create once I feel like they are completed?

What I have decided to do is give myself the week to just "play" with no expectations of creating anything spectacular. I've been wanting to work a bit more abstract and play with textures, or "implied" textures, by using different papers, perhaps fabric. I'm not really clear on what I want to do other than not worry about figures or forms. I miss working abstractedly and just experimenting with techniques. I am giving myself this whole week to get this out of my system and see what develops, if anything develops.

Am I giving up my regular work? No. I actually really enjoy my current series but I feel like I need to loosen up some. My style went from pretty loose to very tight in a short amount of time, and while I am very happy with how my skills have grown, I miss my former ability to "just see what happens" as I paint. I feel like I'm a bit on auto-pilot lately and I am hoping that this week will give me a much needed creative jolt. This work that I am playing with right now may find it's way into my current series, maybe it will morph into a new series that combines both styles. Maybe this is just what it is, fun and a creative vacation from my work. I don't know what will happen until it happens and I step back and see how I did.

These are really bad photos of what I worked on today, which are 5"x5" panels with multiple layers of paper, wax, and gesso. These pics don't show the subtleness of each piece or the true color of the wax that was used. In fact, they look pretty plain and awful on this site. I am actually really happy with the way they turned out. Are these masterpieces or ready to be shown in a gallery? No, probably not. But what I can say about these pieces is that it's a good start at my week of playing.