"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.
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.
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