The Art of Nature and the Nature of Art
  • Musings on Life and Work in Progress
  • Find my gallery
  • Contact Me Directly

Croquet, anyone?  My butterfly is dead

27/3/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture"Untitled" 11 x 14 oil sorta alla prima
The Queen of Hearts had something.  This is the time of my year when being an artist loses all of its scant allure and I start to nose around for other pastimes.  

Of course this feeling springs from the fact that our annual show is imminent.  

Challenge #1: this event always necessitates the premature naming of offspring yet to be conceived, let alone born.  I toy with various vaguenesses such as:  "Her Face" (12 x 16 - glaze oil on panel) "A Bunch of Flowers" (20 x 24 - oil alla prima) but seeing as I don't actually know the size or medium yet, let alone the subject matter,four of this year's works will have to meet their public under the moniker "Untitled" -- code for "just finished, probably still wet."





"Time, Time!" cried Bilbo Baggins.  "Time" is the answer, but there's never enough of it, pre-show.  Jon believes that large glaze oil paintings are my metier.  Easy for him to say.  If you have endless time and good feet, glaze oil is your baby.  But baby won't be hurried.  If I try, chances are that even I won't like it. Seeing as it will probably spend eternity in our own living room, I know it will whisper "Feh" every time I glance at it.  That said, I don't want to saddle anyone else with Ugly Baby either.

 Some artists can paint furiously and brillliantly.  I am simply not one of them.

Even when the paintings have been "finished,"  they are not "ready."  That is, they aren't wall-ready. That might involve continuing the image around the deep sides or staining the edges of a panel or buying a frame to surround it.  It is this stage which is hardest on my clothing budget because paint or stain or blood turns up everywhere.  I do not recommend cream leather seats in artists' cars either.

And invitations.  I probably should have waited until after our show to upgrade my operating system. Okay, okay,  it hasn't been upgraded since I bought it in 2009.  But the warning from artist friends not to upgrade was only recently outweighed by the clear and present need to do so.   I tried to stream Shomi and got a hurtful message along the lines of "Wow, that's some ancient operating system and we don't like it." So Yosemite was unavoidable.  Now suddenly I'm in a different country;  the inhabitants may speak the same language but nothing's quite right.  Remember Ray Bradbury's short story, "A Sound of Thunder," where a time traveller's inadvertent crushing of a butterfly profoundly reshapes the present to which he returns? Once that insect was flattened, there was no going back and now I really really miss my 15000 "keywords" which let me find a photo immediately.    Yes, Apple granted me the ability to send show invitations as an iPhoto jpeg; it also, however, saw fit to remove my ability to choose bulk mailing. Dead butterfly. And no more printing of my own business cards.  Doubly dead.  Apparently iPhoto is also doomed.  RIP Snow Leopard.  

Apple giveth and Apple taketh away.

And this is why artists look haggard at shows.  And shop for croquet sets.

 

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Archive

    July 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    October 2021
    July 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014

    Categories

    All
    ALLA PRIMA PAINTING
    ANIMALS
    ART SHOWS
    BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
    CHRISTMAS
    COLOUR THEORY
    COMPOSITION
    GARDENING
    GLAZE OIL PAINTING
    HOW SHAPE MATTERS
    INSPIRATION
    OUTDOOR LIFE
    PALETTE
    PHOTOGRAPIC REFS
    PORTRAITS OF CHILDREN
    PORTRAITURE
    SEASONS
    STILL LIFE
    SUBJECT MATTER
    THE FUNCTION OF TITLES
    THE HUMAN COMEDY
    THE ISSUE OF SIZE
    THIS OLD HOUSE
    TREES
    UNDERPAINTING
    YouTubes

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.