Category Archives: Artwork

Here share images of your artwork of the week.

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I finished my painting yesterday. The yellow ochre I bought was so helpful in creating better skin tones. Creating art outside is so relaxing to me and the natural lighting is better for color mixing I feel. When I paint in my room the colors are never true and I find out in the morning that I was mixing weird colors. There’s something about being outside in nature that I love.

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I painted this in my room last night. I had been trying to create flowing water for a week, but the colors were just not right and I couldn’t achieve what I wanted. So I painted over it and did another explosive water painting of Prince. I originally did this of Angus Young. This is the first time in a long time that I have used black paint!!

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This is the original Angus Young drawing. It is 7ft x 3ft

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I started a new painting that is leading into the winter. I sat outside in my neighbors backyard and noticed that all of the leaves had fallen off the trees. The canvas that I was working on was an old canvas that my uncle had given me. He painted a portrait of his parents, my grandparents, and he really didn’t like it. I think he painted it when he was my age. My grandma recently moved out of her house so he told me to take the canvas and paint over it. I felt real bad painting over my grandparents image but now it just seems like its not so bad. I haven’t finished the face yet, but I started the background. I’m going to head outside now to finish the rest of it. With my new green paint 🙂

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I took a trip to Michaels yesterday to pick up some paint. I went there looking for a yellow that wasn’t so bright and better for mixing skin tones. While I was looking at all the paint, I realized I needed green. It’s not that I was running out of green, I haven’t had any green oil paint in over three years! Long story, but I got all of (and only) my green oil paint stolen out of my college apartment. I lived without green for a while and then when I needed green, I just made it. It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized I spent a month painting landscapes in Ireland without green paint and all my recent landscapes mixing blues and yellows to make green! Today, I’m going to paint all day!!

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One of my classes was invited to sit in with the AP art students today for a lecture from the art school, Monserrat. The representative put together a great slide show that demonstrated student housing, majors, course of studies, student work, gallery spaces, studio spaces and provided information about potential careers in the art world. We also leaned that alumni have gone on to work for popular companies such as Puma and Nickelodeon.. ..John Jay High school has 6 students actually, that have been through the college. But besides that, I was thinking about the importance of space after viewing some of the slides. It is so imperative as an artist to maintain some kind of studio space, whether it be a small corner in your classroom or in your garage. As I sit here surrounded by papers in a small, grungy office on my prep period, I am grateful for having some place to go, I even have a desk here! In the past I have been in janitors closets, hallways, and mostly living and planning in my car. I have thought over the years how space really effects a job performance, and it truly does. But I am asking how studio space really defines us as artist? Currently, I do not have a studio, I used to. It was in my fathers barn, it was dirty, stuffy and cold. But, it was my space, and only mine. I miss those days.

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During my last talk with Andrea, she had suggested looking more at Gerhard Richter and his painted photos. I thought it could be interesting to take pictures of my everyday teaching environment and paint on top of it. Over all, my school is very dark and can feel quite depressing at times. At first, I began to paint in some shallow ditches that everyday I worry kids are going to trip/injure themselves in. They also have been known to pick at the bricks and have thrown them at us as well.

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I decided to push it further by going more Richter-style and create more visible brush strokes over the pictures. It really allowed for me to consider just how I feel in these spaces and how I can best represent those feelings.

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I had an Uncle Charlie, he is since passed on. One of his many accomplishments, besides being a scientist, art collector and dealer in France, was his astounding ability to discuss art. Uncle Charlie was a talented pianist, printmaker and also an expert on Chinese Art.  I came across a handwritten card I received from him after my graduation…. The message he delivered to me is as follows,

Before the dawn of history, according to popular Chinese legend, was an enormous egg. One day the egg split open; its upper half became the sky, its lower half the earth, and from it emerged P’an Ku, primordial man. Every day he grew ten feet taller, the sky ten feet higher, the earth ten feet thicker. After eighteen thousand years, P’an Ku died. His head split and became the sun and moon, while his blood filled the rivers and seas. His hair became the forests and meadows, his perspiration the rain, his breath the wind, his voice the thunder- and his fleas our ancestors. A people’s legends of its origins generally give a clue as to what they think is most important. This legend expresses a typically Chinese viewpoint – namely that man is not the culminating achievement of creation, bit only a relatively insignificant part of the scheme of things. Never not lose sight of yourself, persevere, and create….

As an artist I have kept these words close to my heart, they almost serve a beacon of light to continue going when I feel like true surrender. Sometimes when I feel like I’ve lost, whatever endeavor at life I am struggling through, I take out his card and read. My Uncle loved me and also cherished my work, we shared a close bond and connected so deeply through our love for art. He served as a truthful companion for most of my adolescent life, most honest and always willing to critique my work and provide valuable feedback.  Since his death  I have yet to find a trusted companion to evaluate my work.

While reading this article I can identify to author Lamott in  a sense that she describes writing as seeing three feet ahead of yourself. The artistic process is similar. Countless times, I have become frustrated, angry, stressed out and overwhelmed trying to complete a piece of art. Often, I have begun painting a  piece and it becomes to transform, metamorphose into something completely different than I originally planned.

She describes the power of being cheerful – art is like a desperate end. Take it day by day, bird by bird…. As her brother did.

This was a reflective piece to read, I have formed new thoughts, questions and ideas after reading. Do we take ourselves too seriously with life, or as artists, educators? I think I most certainly too. Lamott suggest the difficulty when we seek out honest, and people in our lives to validate our works, ourselves even? Was Uncle Charlie a crutch for me to depend on, did he give me most honest opinions? Without him however, I have never thought about asking anyone to survey my work. As Lamott states, “Few writers know really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.” This is true of my art.. Sometimes my emotion drives me to just create, my mood often dictates the end result. Lamot is most certainly accurate when she states that the right words ( in  my case, drawings, art…) do not just pour out natural and fluid. “Shitty first drafts” are similar to my preliminary planning I do in my sketchbooks…

Truth is in fact a hard apple to throw and also to catch.