Artist diaries

Okay I am starting a new painting project and I wanted to follow my progress on the blog here. There is a big art show in Castle Rock every year called the Castle Rock Artfest, and this year I am going to try to get in. This is a juried show which means every artist has to submit slides of their work to a jury and be selected. This show draws about 25,000 to 30,000 people. I am desperately trying to create more work because I don't have enough to bring to a show. So over the next 8 weeks or so I am really going to start focusing on my paintings. The first one I am starting is a collection of two paintings that will hang side by side. They are long and thin, 51 inches by 14 inches. I am using pictures from the same series that I painted "Where the skirts Fly", but in these paintings I am intending to abstract the image even further than before. I have been thinking a lot about my art, who I am as an artist and what sort of relationship I have with my art. I can't say that I have any answers but I have started this dialogue. I have also been considering the work of one of my favorite artists who is Georgia O'Keeffe, and last night I was reading in one of my old art history books and they briefly discussed her work. I will quote from the book titled Art Since 1900 by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. They state in the section of Early American Modernism that, " It was left to Georgia O'Keeffe to salvage the lyrical subjectivity that some artists hoped to wrest from the machine age, but in order to do so she abandoned images of production and consumption altogether. After a decade of intermittent paintings of New York, she turned away from the city, and eventually rediscovered, in the desert landscape of the American Southwest, a relation to objects and images that reasserted rather than overwhelmed the body... with her abstracted flowers and landscapes... [she] recaptures self-creation for her own art of nature... In doing so, she charts an alternative identity for American artists, especially for women, one that departs from the machine age and its myths of modernity," (2004, p. 225). I love the idea of turning away from the hustle and bustle of society and rediscovering the beauty of creation. I feel that through my art I am creating a place that I believe exists but that I can never quite find. I love the beauty and yet the solidarity found in the American Southwest. There is this duality and tension between lively, colorful culture and the quiet reverence of the desert. Anyway these are some of the initial thoughts that I am having.

I wanted to post some pictures of my temporary work space and the canvases that I've made. I will try to keep updating as I make some progress.

Pictured here is the first canvas and you can see that I have begun to draw out my painting. Essentially the blue edge of the skirt will weave in and out of the painting. The size is turning out nicely because if it is hung low and you stand next to it you almost get the feeling that it is your skirt flying through the air. And yes that is a bag of sunflower seeds, which is a necessity for me and making art, I'd like to thank my brother for that.

Late afternoon sun.

Here is a slightly clearer shot of the sketch so far. 

Until next time...