This Is Not Another Blog Post

Just a referral to Nicholas Wilton's blog post about art practice.  Read my comment on the post as well.  I should post an image, but I'll post a quote instead:

"Saying it sometimes makes it so. This is one of the most interesting, compelling reasons to spend time in dialogue with other artists. Most of the time our ideas and thoughts about our work stay quietly within us. Once we verbalize, actually say it out loud in conversation, it releases it somewhat beyond ourselves. From what I have seen, this simple act then allows your ideas or thoughts about what you are trying to do within your art to occur." Nicholas Wilton

This blog has provided a rich source of dialogue with other artists.  Thanks for your participation!  This dialogue, and my one-on-one conversations with artists, contribute immensely to my creative momentum.  Still on "break" here.

This Is Not A Blog Post

I'm on a little break, remember?  But I came across this quote, and I just had to share it:

"If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path.  Your own path you make with every step you take.  That's why it's your path."  Joseph Campbell

 I suggest you print it out and hang it on the wall in your work space.  In fact, you can download it here.

This is quoted by Cat Bennett in her book "Making Art a Practice".  I have long recommended her earlier book, "The Confident Creative", and this one is just as good, and not redundant.  I highly recommend this one as well.  Check it out on Amazon, but do support your local independent book store if you are lucky enough to have one.

Taking a Break

I am taking a little break from posting on this blog, just until August 5.  I have some new technology to sort out, and some behind-the-scenes re-organization and up-dating to do.  So, please enjoy the posts that are already on the blog, or go to my YouTube channel for video tutorials.  Go to the Tutorials page for the posts that give instruction (one of the candidates for updating), or to the Artists and Inspiration page on my web site.  Make some art!  I'll post again that first week of August.  Cheers!

Make Some Marks!

Working Larger

I am having a lot of fun with these crayon pieces, and they work (for me) at this small scale, 10"x10".  I would LOVE, though, to see them really BIG:

Obviously, the crayons I'm using would not scale up like this.  So what?  Oil stick?  Paint on a brush?  I know I (and some of you perhaps) often see a piece that I'd like to do at a larger scale.  I'd like to feel myself in a different relationship, physically, to the painting.  Instead of Me the Artist at the table or standing at the wall/easel, separate from the Painting, I'd love to almost walk into the painting, feel it more like an environment, and then have to walk ten feet back to actually see it.  Two very different relationships to it in space. 

When working on small pieces, I can be the artist and the viewer at the same time, and I think those are very different roles.  As the artist, I need to be in the process, obsessed with the marks I'm making as they relate to one another and to the painting.  As a viewer, I see the final visual content, separate from process.  The piece becomes its own entity, no matter what my process or intentions. Part of the process of making art is going back and forth between these roles.  I wonder how scale would affect my ability to do so, or my perception of this back and forth dance.