Time to Breathe and a New Painting
I first joined an art collective in 2019 and then soon becoming one of the admins. Now, I’m the president of the board of directors for the gallery, and that is because nobody else wants to do it and I can’t say I blame them. I took the position because I could see that our group really needed some cohesive management and I’m pretty good at that. Also I’ve got tons of experience in web design and web management and those things were non-existent before I stepped in.
Each year the gallery puts on a State-wide juried art show, which was how I got into the gallery in the first place. Now, I manage the submission website for the show, handle the invited artists and the juror, produce image files and videos for PR purposes, manage the opening ceremony, and oversee all the graphic design for the show. (I create some of the ads but not all.) This process all starts many months ahead of the show but it all comes to bear during December and right up to the show opening in mid-January.
In late December, just as things were going into high gear, my kid was involved in a car accident that left her without transportation, without resources to get new transportation, and physically hurt- all after just started her first adult full time job. There’s more to all that but it’s all details- and there were a lot. I am so proud of her. With support from me and her father, she picked herself up, brushed herself off, and went forward. She took Ubers to and from work until we could get a car rented for her. She didn’t miss a day. She went car shopping and found one. She feels physically and emotionally better now and things for her are finally settling into a good routine again.
Understandably I didn’t have a lot of time for art during any of this. Pottery is a different head than painting, and I did try to spend a few hours a week making things out of clay. That almost satisfied my need to create but the yearning to paint is always there.
Also, the winter quarter at the college started right after the turn of the year. I have 25 students in Art Appreciation. As an online-only course, there is no travelling but still lots of interaction with my students. I really prefer it this way. But the timing meant there were new tasks added to the ever-burgeoning list.
The art show opened 2 weeks ago.
It was a success, and the show itself is very good. I actually got in this year, too! (The muffler painting “All That Quiet”) As jurying is always a blind process, there is no identifying info that the juror sees on any of the submissions, so I feel comfortable entering. Each year we have a different juror. Some years I get in, and some years I don’t. It’s arbitrary and capricious, so I try not to take it personally when I don’t. That’s a wee bit hard to do when I don’t agree with some of the juror’s choices, though!
Well here it is the end of January. I spent almost 2 weeks doing nothing much, and then was able to find the mental energy to return to my easel, where a nice big canvas was waiting for me. I had blocked in the basic composition about 2 months ago.
And here’s the painting. This is a peony I saw at Heronswood Gardens in Kingston, Washington. The BLP and I went there on my birthday in June. As always, I took tons of reference photos.
No title yet but I’m sure one will come to me eventually. This is oil on canvas, 24″ x 24″ with a 2″ gallery edge and the painting continues over those edges. I like that this means it looks finished and doesn’t need to be framed.
Next, I’ll probably be working on a portrait of a pileated woodpecker. it will be paired with a poetry entry in an Ars Poetica event the gallery will be hosting in April. It needs to be finished within the next 4 to 6 weeks so it has time to dry.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
243 total views, 1 views today
01/28/2023 @ 7:18 pm
Excited to see the Pilieted Woodpecker. They used to tear up the old stumps at a place we had near Mt.St. Helens. Large and exciting up close.
01/28/2023 @ 9:29 pm
Hi Art,
I’m looking forward to getting started on that. My reference photos for the upcoming woodpecker portrait are of the nesting pair in our yard. Most of our property is fully wooded, but they seem to prefer the trees at the clearing by the pottery studio. And the trees by the driveway, which are full of their square holes.
01/28/2023 @ 11:48 pm
Read and learned up until snowy owl: Bubo Scandiacus {thunder snow!}
Clear in Flint, banana boat sparks inside yon old mine, sparrow upon elm sliver keg. 1 would presume an English Major moi joy toy oughta know howdy spell Pileated Woodpecker yippity-dang-whoa-soy! Or not. First
1 said to the 2ND1 there: MAGNIFICO ROSE! All right already all lefty~ I’ll quash the fire, fall asleep and dream my dreams of sunlight. Lonely quant club band, wonderful to be here square everywhere right there.
… :: 0 :: … public domain unknown dust-rust paragraph break … :: 0 :: … world on a string wild always weird and wonderful booze in the blendjet far from lent you bet get-get song so far away sway roam really play display winter’s day. Yep shucks:
Wild Tawny Owls Adopt 6 Orphaned Owlets 🦉🦉
—————————-The Full Story of Bomber & Luna ———————–sum of all fears boat ashore, long time ago. Ago time long ashore boat beers all around . Hey what’s that _____?
01/29/2023 @ 12:01 pm
I think…we have a title for the painting here…”Dreams of Sunlight” works for me. Thanks!
01/29/2023 @ 8:51 am
Rose, saw this painting on IG and wondered if you’d talk abt it here. It’s a lovely painting, your usual elegant approach. I enjoy your background pan from violet to ochre. It adds a floaty beauty. We need more floaty beauty in our lives these days. I also like the central pollen-y stamens, glowing like a light source.
Hats off to you for falling on the adminny sword, hopefully you are appreciated. I’m guilty of becoming invisible for that in my artist group, also book artist guild. The old chestnut about herding cats originated in art groups I think. Or maybe the fable about the hen who made bread and no other barnyard critters would help until it was time to eat it.
Re: woodpeckers. Did you read that there have been multiple ivory-billed wp sightings recently, despite their designation as extinct? I’m psyched. That might be my next piece. Just finished up woodstork vs crayfish, might post on IG. I’m not there much these days though, seems like all ads and posts from people I don’t follow 🙁
I hope your new class is way more fun than the last one!
01/29/2023 @ 12:24 pm
Hi You! This (Bindle) is a much better platform for me to write about what I’m thinking/doing. IG and FB are better for short sound bites. Also I may not want the gallery folks who follow me to see everything I have to say.
It’s funny how the color of the painting is not quite represented correctly. The flower itself looks right to me but that background is closer to blue-green moving to yellow-green. On the computer it really does look more violet to ochre. It’s actually a lot more vivid in person.
I saw your gorgeous Woodstork v Crayfish drawing today on IG- gorgeous meticulous work as always, and that paper! Whoo hoo!
01/29/2023 @ 11:51 am
When your artist’s imagination and creativity are manifest in your work as administrator and manager, everybody wins.
I won’t say keep up the good work here because, apparently, you can’t help yourself and can do nothing other than good work and a great job.
01/29/2023 @ 12:39 pm
Hi Ron, thank you for your comments. I work well with the artist we hired as our gallery manager. That’s so important.
One of the reasons I allowed myself to get involved in the admin side was the terrible financial state the gallery was in. Our past treasurer had talked the last admins into hiring an accounting firm to handle our finances because they had been in sad disarray for many years- to the point that two previous presidents had quit the gallery for fear of liability. The firm he hired did NOTHING but charge us exorbitant fees and failed to file our taxes etc. So, when I had the chance, I talked the board into firing the accounting firm AND the treasurer, and I installed the BLP as the new treasurer. (His career experience was in running a mortgage company and he is very savvy about financial stuff) It took a boatload of time and work but it’s all cleaned up and under control now. Needless to say, I did not make any friends with the old treasurer, who is a founding member of the gallery. It took a year but now he talks to me politely when we are at the same event.
At times my people-pleasing head comes into direct conflict with my admin head, which causes me anxiety and stress. It’s a roller coaster for sure.
Which is why this is probably my last term in this position. BLP can train one of the other members to take over as treasurer. He really hates doing it but does it for me. And I will hand over the reins to the next prez and maybe get some decent sleep for a change.
01/29/2023 @ 12:48 pm
I hear you on the digital reproduction. Sometimes I see the distortion and wish I’d really drawn it that way.
Thank you abt Woodstork vs Crayfish. I have a nature photographer friend, semi-famous, plentifully published, who saw it and scolded me for always drawing ‘ugly’ birds. He sent more than a dozen of his photos of ‘pretty’ birds, and said I had the rights to use them as reference if I wanted. How do I tell him? The more gnarly the bird, the more I want to dig in. On deck is a female blackbird ripping into a crabapple, am thinking of her like the original Eve. My content sub-agendas sound weird, I know 🙂
I am not on any social media save IG, but am beginning to think I’ll dump that even. It keeps showing me ads for jewelry, dainty shoes, and prepared meat dishes at Trader Joe’s, how wrong can an algorithm be?
01/29/2023 @ 1:15 pm
I am a HUGE fan of your bird- and content- choices. Each one tells a story as long as the viewer takes the time to read it, and your work demands that. Of me, at least. I may hear it telling a different story than you started out with but that’s only because my internal universe is it’s own weird thing.
You had asked about my current college class. They are not giving me nearly the grief of the last one. That makes a big difference. They still mostly wait until the very last second to submit their work by deadline, and consequently the vagaries of internet access etc manage to get them fukked. That’s one thing they just don’t seem to learn. But I am extremely hardass about deadlines. Especially when every single assignment in the course is open. They only close in sequence.
But the work coming in is fine, and they all seem pretty enthusiastic.
01/29/2023 @ 1:59 pm
Now those deadline procrastinators have ChatGPT and Craiyon! Some profs have returned to requiring that students write papers longhand. It’s funny how they use tactics we used: making it too illegible to read, writing really big, lots of line spacing, expanding a single sentence idea into three paragraphs of BS. Images generated by AI at least have a certain identifiable look, but that won’t last. My feeling is that if students want to waste their tuition dollars cribbing stuff instead of learning it, and graduating with the same skills as when they came in as freshmen, fine.
You know how it goes with classes. If you like them at the beginning you’ll probably adore them by the end.
Thank you for getting my weird content. Once an IG commenter said how cute, and what good friends that giant orb spider is with that kestrel. I hope I was diplomatic enough in responding that they were predator and prey in the ambiguous moment before one ate the other.
My IG fangirl story: there is an amazing book about caracaras by Jonathan Meiburg that inspired me to make a crested caracara drawing. I tagged him when I posted it, and he dm-ed about a talk he was giving and followed me. It felt like brushing the hem of a super star. Except when I told people, they’d ask who he was and what’s a caracara?
01/29/2023 @ 2:17 pm
HAHA! Well two of the papers I ask for really can’t be cribbed. And they have to type into the online format.
They have to watch a movie (Exit Through the Gift Shop) and comment on the idea of what defines an “artist”. An almost impossible question but gets them thinking. Another short paper is on an art gallery visit- they have to actually GO, include what gallery and date they went and take a picture of a work in site. They can’t take a picture through the window, either. The written part is a narrative on how the artists used the elements of art and design inside the work.
The only paper they might be tempted to crib is the short bio of an artist. Mostly they seem to pick one they like and are pretty good at getting the basic details right.
Oh, loved your IG story.
Thought you might like to know, an artist we both follow, outsider artist Anne Marie Grgich, was in our juried show last year. She came to the opening and I got to talk to her about her process and her work. Wild stuff up close. Mixed media/collage with a bazillion tiny interrelated elements takes on a very dimensional feel that is impossible to see via images. I love her stuff. I could get lost in it.
01/29/2023 @ 3:28 pm
“They can’t take a picture through the window, either”
Crack me up! There’s always one who would try that though, who’d argue with you that they required a maintained distance from the picture plane. You’ve built some good anti-cheat anti-slack measures into the projects. Except, if you asked me the what is an artist question, I might copy and paste that photo of Duchamp dressed as Rrose Selavy, then go back to bed. I’d watch Exit Thru the Gift Shop twice though. Maybe you’d give me half credit for that?
I LOVE Anne Marie Grgich’s work! She may have appeared in my follow suggestions because you follow her. Her work reminds me of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Scale is an IG weakness, and a tiny phone screen is far too small for her. It frustrates me too. My birds are typically eight to ten inches high, yet look as small as sparrows.
01/29/2023 @ 4:07 pm
Yep, your answer would work just fine. It’s so interesting to me that a lot of the comments I get on the movie start with “I thought I was going to hate it (or be bored) because it’s yet another documentary and then how cool to find out a whole bunch of neat stuff about street artists”.
In the past I’ve had classes watch “Frida”, “Pollock”, “Georgia O’Keeffe”, or “James Castle: Portrait of an Artist.” “Exit” seems to get the most investment in watching and the best responses.
I had no idea your birds were that large. wow!
01/29/2023 @ 4:31 pm
That was my response to Exit initially as well, even though I’m a Banksy fan since way back. Mr. Brainwash was gross, and there was all the speculation that Banksy made him up, which Banksy would do, and he’d also leave it unresolved. Will you show them his projects in Ukraine? That’s some five star artist validity right there, also the video he made when he was working there is heart-wrenching.
Birds have to be that big in order to get the pencil point in there. If space is too small, details are too hard to fit.
These periodic chats are fun 🙂
01/29/2023 @ 4:45 pm
I hated Mister Brainwash. If he’s real, he was an opportunist and a complete glom without any self-awareness. If he’s not, then kudos to Banksy for inventing him anyway.
I don’t go any further about Banksy unless asked, and then I direct them to his IG account and his current projects. The man has a soul.
And a great sense of humor. I really loved the self-destructing piece from a couple of years back. Sure, it was a publicity stunt and extremely effective. It makes people pay attention when it really counts.
Well sure, that makes a lot of sense regarding size and scale and pencil points.
These periodic chats are fun for me as well. The artists in my group are less prone to these types of discussions than I would like. Maybe because none of them are also educators. Different mindsets, I guess. And I don’t really get to interact much with my fellow instructors at the college, esp. since going to an all-online format.
01/29/2023 @ 6:13 pm
Part of the rumor around Mr. Brainwash is that Banksy based him on Jeff Koons. He was exactly like Jeff Koons! If the rumor’s true, I love that Banksy would make an entire film just to diss Jeff Koons, then make it seem like a hoax.
Three favorite Banksy pieces: the shredded Sotheby’s painting (he filmed testing the shredder on his IG, where it worked perfectly, apparently the partial shredding was a malfunction). Second, was when he was in NY for what he called a sabbatical. An old guy set up a card table among the artist tables lined up in that stretch of park outside the Met, and set out original Banksys, priced at like sixty dollars or some outrageously bargain price, for three hours. People walked right past, did not buy. Few even looked, until one guy showed up who looked like someone with art knowledge, but acted as if he didn’t, and asked if he could buy three. The old guy said no. The rat image was there. I would have bought that so fast. It would be in my house with a pin spot over it this minute. Third, was his painting of the cruise ship docking in Venice. He pans back from the painting until you see the real cruise ship, and it is so sickeningly monstrously huge, so out of place juxtaposed with a fragile historic European city. The line of Venetian architecture is dwarfed by just a small section of ship. The ship horn blasts, so loud I dropped my toast, and that’s the vid.
Let’s meet back here next painting. I used to have an account here, but it seems to have disappeared. The site lets me comment just fine though
01/29/2023 @ 6:17 pm
forget my blathering description, here’s the vid of the NY piece, it’s short:
01/29/2023 @ 6:40 pm
I love this. So much.
01/29/2023 @ 6:30 pm
Venice:
01/29/2023 @ 6:44 pm
Wonderful. Thanks for sharing these.
Yes, I’ll be back pretty soon with the next painting. Prelim sketch/composition is done. Now I need to wait for Jerry’s to send me the very specific support I want for it. Couple weeks maybe.
Spent the afternoon making clay things so that is next.
(((hugggg))))
01/29/2023 @ 7:05 pm
hug back!
BindleSnitch - Crazy for Octopi, That's Me
03/24/2023 @ 4:35 pm
[…] hardly at all. I finished one painting earlier this year, another flower, you may have seen it here. The next painting I started after that one ended up getting scraped down. Every painting I do goes […]