Thoughtful Tuesday - The Suicide

In January 2015, I promised myself to complete a body of work. The goal was five pieces, at least 30 x 40 inches, all united by a theme. The theme evolved to something I still want to work on, but this is the first in that body of work. 

After years of hearing references and seeing images, I finally read Dante's Divine Comedy as a requirement in college. I remember sticking small post-it notes in my book not just for future papers, but future paintings. My professor also had book of Gustave Dore's prints illustrating the cantos that she let me borrow for a week. The one canto that struck me the most and still does is Canto XIII, the Woods of the Suicides. My imagery has always related in some ways to plant life, trees, etc. Last year, I finally felt the time had come for me to finally create my own suicide tree, and this is the final product. 

Over a year later, I'm still very proud of this piece, but there's still an itching feeling to continue with the same imagery - maybe create an entire woods of suicides of my own, or other cantos. I have so many ideas, but I've become a slow creator working on my pieces. Hopefully, this blog keeps me motivated. This public motivation.

The Suicide

You can find the image and other pieces in the 2015-2016 gallery. There are few more from last year to upload, which will happen soon. It's possible I may revisit more of Dante's famous work again. For now, this is enough. 

Next week, I'll promise myself to show images of what I'm currently working on, followed by another visit of last year's work.

Thoughtful Tuesday - Finishing and Beginning

The past two weeks have been productive enough for me to complete roughly 3/4 paintings, which means, I CAN START MORE PAINTINGS AND OVERWHELM MY ARTISTICNESS AGAIN. 

It's really not that bad. I snagged a bunch of cheap canvases for cheap because I don't mind cheap.  My art is for my own catharsis (most of the time) and if someone would like a part of it, I don't mind passing a piece along (depending on the piece and effort of course). 

Upcoming projects? There are at least 3 different bodies of work I want to do, 1 is a continuation from last year I have no posted yet because I'm still undecided how I want to list it, and a few out of my area pieces. Example: I'm going to paint an elephant...with wings... yeah....let's see how this one goes o.o.

Studio Monday: Reworking the Past

I'm happy to report I finished two pieces this weekend - one small study for fun and one I've been working on for almost six months. I plan to do a special blog about the latter once I have decent pics and it's uploaded to the site. Part of my goal is to finish paintings so I can start new ones. This goal involves a piece from my senior year of college. 

At the some point in the fall semester of 2010, I started working on a self portrait - this is back when I would paint on the raw canvas, no gesso, no stretcher bars - just me and paint usually on the floor. I miss painting this way. Low and behold while writing this, I found how this piece started:

Sometimes I wish I would just stop working a piece or leave them unfinished like this. There's so much beauty in development. 

I remember moving away from this style after a critique, left untouched, but knowing me, I have a hard time tossing pieces. Most of the time I try to salvage the piece, even if that means painting over. At the time of the critique it was already stretched so in theory I could remove the canvas and reuse the bars. Almost six years later, my parents brought me more stuff from home. I stared at it for a minute not sure what to do, but after posting the pic and getting feedback on Facebook (like my generation does), I figured, let's see where she can go now. 

Here she is, still a work in progress, the before and current, hopefully to be completed in the next few months:

Clearly I'm having a reinvention tour. 

Today's motivation music brought to you by Dark Tranquility's album "Fiction".

Thoughtful Tuesday - I'm a Painter, but I Don't Paint Like That

I didn't paint much at all this weekend, and sometimes that will happen. To make up for no Studio Monday post (I was busy baking, cleaning and errands), I decided to create Thoughtful Tuesday where I simply blog about... thoughts... related to art. Yeah........ let's go with that. *excuses*

For the longest time, I struggled with my art to the point that I felt like an failure. I even remember one studio day in college, mentally freaking out, trying to decide what I should switch my major to if it wasn't too late. Part of this is my tendency to a perfectionist nature. When you say you want to be an artist as a kid, people like to say, "Oh, you'll be the next Picasso!" When you're older, people hear you're an artist, and think you should be John Singer Sargent. Likely, this is the culture I was surrounded by - the expectation you can paint realistically or you're just putting blobs on canvas. The truth is I wanted to paint like Vermeer or Van Gogh, but fell in love with O'Keefe and Kahlo. I try to paint realistically, I'd love to do a realistic portrait someday... but it's just not me. At the end of the day and the part of the point of this blog, is to be me. I paint what I paint, I do what I do.... and slowly, I get better and better at doing what I do.