Robot Visiting with Triceratops

Astronaut with Godzilla

Dinosaur and Cow

Pseudo Lomography

I'm not sure this is going anywhere, but recently I have been playing around with optics and digital photography. All of this emerged out of a curiousity about lomography. And giant robots. I got some plastic lenses from a science surplus site, and I've been recombining them to make myself a holga webcam with horrible lens distortion. Hmmm... trendy, interesting.

Frog and Deep Sea Diver

Yesterday I sent off this postcard of my little deep sea diver. I played up the negative space a bit more than usual because I thought it was a particularly nice shape and helped offset some of the compositional problems of cutting off the frog. The diver guy has a real copper helmet, and that blue around the ear is actual verdigris.

Stonington Houses (2008)

Still Life with Dinosaurs

I'm up in Maine on vacation, explaining the recent resurgence in landscapes. But out back on the porch I found a trunk full of large dinosaur toys, and I love the expressions on them- scary, but almost comical. In the evenings I've been trying to sketch them. Then yesterday I went to a little local fair and came across an old deep sea diver toy. Without delving into the psychological ramifications, as a kid I always wanted armor, a wet suit, or a deep sea diving equipment. So, in the evenings after chores, poking around, and painting all day, I've been setting up a little still life to do some ink sketches. I could do this for a living.

Warner Point (2008)

Arlene's House (2008)

Comeback Trail

I must have traumatized myself. I chased myself away from doing art for several months, but I'm not exactly sure how. I applied to a show and got rejected, which wasn't unexpected but certainly didn't help. My dad died after a lengthy decline. I got lost a bit trying to find a trendy schtick with the dog paintings, and that ran out of steam. I spent a lot of time looking at the work of other artists who seem like they have a stronger technique, color sense, or vision, and maybe got a bit dejected. My job went through a rough stretch with a grueling project, which is thankfully over. Mostly, I guess art didn't seem like fun and the basement studio seemed too gloomy to enter.

Today I stopped by Momopeche's blog and read about her recent fascination with lomography-- photography using truly horrible 80's era eastern bloc film cameras with plastic lenses. I'm in love with the photography of a local artist, Erin Antignoli, a master of the genre who reignited my flagging interest in art photography; the creative diarrhea of digital imagery has overwhelmed the market a bit. Unfortunately I am too neurotic about precious film to participate in a movement where the golden rules are to not think and be fast. I tried reading online about techniques for adapting a fixed focus digital camera to using cheaper lenses, but the engineering involved is way out of my league. Instead I took my ancient Olympus C-4040 camera, poked a hole in a piece of tin foil, put it over the lens adapter, and took some photos to achieve my "crappy camera" effect. Instant creativity.

For those of you waiting on my "Pay it Forward" promise, I have the pictures all finished. I just hate shipping stuff so it's taking forever to get them in the mail. Apologies.

Dinosaurs and a Cow (2008)

It's been a while since I posted. I took a little hiatus after generating a pile of unfinished paintings. Now I'm just trying to loosen up a bit and get back to enjoying myself. I'm using some slightly creepy lighting-- when I was a kid my grandfather had eerie art deco dolls hanging in his bedroom that were underlit by tabletop lamps. They always looked like they were plotting.

The Downside to Painting on Paper

I've been debating the wisdom of painting on paper for some time. Though storage is easy, matting and framing are costly. Last weekend I was talking with a more established artist, and he gave me some insights into some other shortcomings of paper and how I've been presenting works on paper.

One of the key points he made was that people respond very differently to a painting under glass. It's certainly true that you lose your sense of the surface when a painting is under glass. I have seen some shows, for instance the Hopper show at the National Gallery of Art, where a few paintings on canvas were under glass-- and I always was distracted by the glass and wondering why it was there. The point my friend made was that, under glass, a painting often loses much of what distinguishes an original from a glicee print, undermining its value.

A second point he made is that mats may not be working well for me. I came from a printmaking background where the deckled edges of the paper were prized, and floating your work unmatted in the frame was the standard operating procedure. Recently I had resorted to matting to avoid tearing down my paintings to get a clean edge. He was strongly recommending floating over matting, because it is a more polished style. Or, better yet, switch to panels and get rid of the glass.

So much of selling art is creating the perception of value, and I can certainly see how not obscuring work behind glass and mat board might be a cleaner, preferred look. I'd been starting to move towards panels, and this conversation certainly encourages me to follow through.