I didn't paint yesterday. But I did not do art and painting-related things either. I needed to go to the gallery for a few different reasons. I hadn't been there in a few months largely on account of being very focused on my job and less on my art and art career. I also wanted to bring the Whataburger Bag #3 to the gallery, I was pleased that he was very excited and grateful to receive it.
It was important for me to show my face there and sit down and spend some time together. A huge storm rolled in and I ended up being at the gallery for over two hours. It was good, I also wanted to look at some art yesterday so it was perfect. There is a very successful plein air painter whose name I always forget but he is represented by the gallery and often has new works there. His paintings are my favorite in the space. There was a new square canvas there (or at least new to me) that was probably about 3 feet x 3 feet and was a beautiful sky scene with infinite subtleties of cool and warm hues. The play between orange and purple and orange and blue specifically is my favorite spectrum of compliments.
While I was there a pair of two older women came into the gallery with the sole purpose of getting representation for one of the women. They went about it very awkwardly and clumsily and it will for sure not happen for her. But it did make me re-realize and appreciate how special it is for my work to be in that space and have representation - despite the fact that I have yet to sell one painting. I voiced my insecurity about that fact while I was there yesterday and he told me not to worry. It’s possible he’s pricing my work too high but that's his business, I am of course happy with whatever I can get and whatever happens. He would be slightly appalled to see how inexpensively I am selling my paintings here on this site.
The Drone painting (I guess that's what I'm calling it) is put up for the time being and the reference for it has been broken down in order to make space in the studio. I made a few changes to the color two nights ago with acrylic paint to flatten the drone and the sky and the picture looked so weird I know I need to not look at it for at least a week. In fact, it looks so weird I don’t necessarily not like it I just need to take space before working back into it. I won't give up on it, I am not afraid of making a weird picture, in fact, that's what I set out to do. I just don't want to make a compositionally bad picture. I posted a quick picture of it from an aggressive side angle featuring the staged reference in the background and many people gave it some nice attention. A friend of mine, who I consider to be one of the smartest people I know, even inquired about purchasing it.
I told him I needed to work back into it, and I’ll get back to him. It’s too weird a painting, I don't know if he realizes it. Anyway, the entirety of yesterday was spent socializing, but productively, such that I did not make or find the time to paint. It's okay to take days off, especially if during those off days I am productive in other realms of my art career.
I went to see some friends play jazz in downtown Houston last night and the bar that they play at is so wonderfully aesthetic and with some much character and ambiance that I immediately regretted not bringing a pen and sketch paper. I sensed the potential for a very special painting to occur from the impression of watching and listening to them play in this space. Magdalene did have a pen and a receipt in which I was able to make some quick notations of how the figures were arranged. Today, I will spend some time translating those forms onto a medium-sized canvas to see if I can get excited enough about the composition to put some paint down.
I have been reading sporadically throughout the day this very small (almost pamphlet) on Matisse by Clement Greenberg as well as “The Art Spirit” by Robert Henri - both discuss the idea of capturing the feeling of the subject and the finish of a picture not being based on any sort of material concern.
More specifically Henri says something to the extent of “decide what you want to say about your subject and once that is sufficiently communicated the painting is over.” As there is no degree of rendering that ultimately informs the finish of the picture. Greenberg also says in the Matisse pamphlet about how Matisse was concerned about capturing the mood or the spirit of a person, place, or thing, and less about developing a high-fidelity representation in paint of it (I am butchering this reading by Greenberg substantially).
The point is when I think about my friends playing jazz last night in this extremely pleasant environment I want to capture that feeling, that mood, in the painting and not some very anatomically correct definition of what occurred. I have made a very small amount of paintings from imagination/memory/sketch however the one or two I did make were very small (too small to take seriously) but successful. If I can get a sketch down on this canvas that pleases me, I will advance; however, if I am not animated by the composition, I will not force it, because there is a lot of other painting to get to in these days.
Another painting that I would like to do is a small mural over at one of my spots on the East Side of Houston, in which a small group of flowers is composed on a background with a fighter jet printed on a piece of paper. In this picture I want the background to absolutely swallow up the flowers in the foreground. I will be able to achieve this in a number of ways which I will not enumerate on right now. I think this would only take me two or three days to achieve anyway so I would like to make it happen. Plus I should probably get out of the house because that small municipal mural project is actually not likely to happen before I go to Virginia in two weeks.
For this project, shopoilpaintings.com, I would like to paint some more chip bags over the next few days. This is productive on multiple levels in that I get to build my catalog for this website while also making videos to post on Instagram and YouTube to do all the blah blah blah marketing that just needs to be done. Lastly, there is a nice floral arrangement hanging in the window, I think would be nice to paint because it is backlit and that will be a nice departure and challenge from what I have been typically painting, maybe I will paint that today…
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