Fishes or Brushes

Fishes or Brushes   oil/canvas   14 x 11 x .5

 After one has been drawing and painting for a while, the notion of transparency arises....the background seen behind the object, the shape of the object, the material of which the object is made and yes, the lighting as well.  All of these factors came together for me as I painted this set up at the art center where I teach, right down the overhead fluorescent lighting tubes.  I have always found the distortions intriguing...a simple-yet-complex idea.  Paint the confusion.  Paint what you see not what you know.

And while I have been tempted to buy some gold fish for the sake of painting them, the responsibility seems daunting and I am content to house art supplies therein.

Red

Things in My Pantry That Are Red   watercolor   12 x 20

 has always been a color for others.  Red turns up the spotlight and puts a target on your back.  Although I do admire strong background reds in the work of other artists, that simply would not, could not ever happen in my work.  Objects with the local color red seem to be immune to this personal rule.  (Where did this come from?)

In order to try to reason with this dislike, I pulled a few items from my pantry that were indeed red.  The focus, however, was to be the transparency of the jars.  That way, I could sneak up on the red.

Enough said.  Enough red.

Self-Definition

Vintage Vinegar Jar   watercolor   11.5 x 8

as an artist is difficult to come by.  Long ago, I read somewhere that it takes 500 + paintings in order to find one's style, one's place in the painting spectrum.  In the beginning, we are just trying to "get it right".  It takes plenty of brush yielding to attain the freedom to own your work....to make it your own.  Contemporary galleries often desire work that is incredibly specialized....the painter repeating the same forms over and over with slight variances, in order for collectors to be able to recognize THE WORK.  I am a naysayer.  While I enjoy figurative work immensely, I also enjoy painting all kinds of things...even a landscape or two now and then.  In this case, I found this vintage vinegar jar at our local art center where shelves are filled with all manner of interesting objets, all ripe for the painting.  I enjoyed this little exercise.  I like to think that it is my manner of application, my stroke-making, my individual hand, that defines my work.  My life.  My decision.  My self-definition. 

I can paint whatever stirs something in me.  Yeah!