Month: August 2011

It is important to have a trademark look to your art.
Your model is so important as they are going to be your whole look.
Especially when you are doing a series it is good to have a model that is your main idea.
Today I found my hawaiian girl face.
It turns out that she is a gal that is working out in front of me in strength training class. I overheard her say she was going to Hawaii to see a grandmother so I asked her if she was born there and she was.
What I did not see before was that she happens to have the perfect face to do over and over in many different lights and looks. Her actual face is a cross between “Blossom” and ” ” Blue Butterfly.”
I am so glad to have found an actual person to use for a model.
Pegge Hopper is a well known painter who does Hawaiian women and it looks like the same person over and over. She is a “Pegge Hopper” woman.
I have my girl now I have to do 10 paintings of her till she is a part of my soul,
I will post when I get the first one done.

To paint someone I have a relationship with is way way different from painting a face that I do not know of course.
All of them comes into play. I am looking past the face and the spirit of them is flying all over the page.
I think about how they are. If they are sweet or kind or creative. All that has to come through.
It is very personal and I feel like it is my duty.
If I can do this I should do it of all the people I know really well.
A camera made picture may say a thousand words but a painting says a million.

I realize now that this kind of portrait is not about me. It is about them. It is not about my skill or anything to do with me.
I am just being with them for an extended period of time. So it is all them.
You paint your own portrait by who you are.

There is a term in art that is “a sure line”. When you say an artist has a sure line it means a line drawn with such confidence that you can feel it.
Most lines are not sure lines but when ones comes along it is the greatest line and the whole painting hangs on it.
The energy from a sure line is infused with a whole lifetime of learning.
You eye will go to the sure line the first instant it hits the canvas.
The line will be drawn with more than you had before you drew it.
It is easy to mistake a sure line for a bold line but when you see them side by side the sure line is obvious.
Sometimes you don’t need much else to finish the painting.
To paint a sure line you cannot have any awareness of yourself, The line must come out of you but you can’t be in the way. Things done without thinking about it too long are alway the greatest gifts.
An old saying is ” An artist is a person who knows when to stoop painting”
You can’t overanalyze things or it will stop breathing.
A sure line is the total breath of every painting.
The insert is an example of a sure line that is pretty obvious. You can feel it breath.

The main thing is the spark and you cant make the spark happen. You can only be there when it does.
What is talent but being at the right place at the right time.
You can develop skill but that is not the spark.
You can develop discipline and that also is not the spark.
The spark comes from somewhere else outside of you.
And it comes through you.
The East Village was a spark.
It was just an idea that snowballed into a special place that I have not been able to replicate again.
My husband and I lived in the East Side of Tacoma where it was sort of scary.
To overcome that I decided to write a newsletter to send to my immediate neighbors in three blocks. So about 100 papers. I just talked about what was on my mind and asked people to write back and talk to me about what they were thinking and who they were.
Before I knew it the East Village was born and we had not only a newsletter but a Poetry club , a Film Club and a creativity group. We were just neighbors but we meshed together into a big thing. We painted our front doors and had a contest that was covered in the newspaper. WE were always in the newspaper for something.
We had signs made that the city put on the streets to denote where the East Village was.
It was like a force that was a miracle. We would have street parties that were incredible. We had live bands. We had east village tee shirts made.
We were a dream. I remember walking around the neighborhood passing out the newsletter and thinking that this was the only thing I ever did in my life that mattered.
People moved away and before you knew it the East Village lost its band of followers.
But it did happen. It really did occur.
LIfe is like that, you think something will never end because it is so great and then it is gone.
I don’t think I could ever do that again. It was a special thing .. It was a spark.

The reason people pay a lot of money for original work is because it is close to the spark. The spark is the mysterious place where all things are invented,discovered, or created.
Before in the universe there was not this painting and now there is this painting.
It does not matter how good of a copy you can make of someone elses work, it will never never never have the value of the original.
The spark is the thing, and it is the only thing.
All skill aside, a new thing that no one has done before is important.
That is why original art is expensive. It has to be.
There are more ways than one to be expensive.
It is expensive to the artist too. They can never do it again.
I am doing some works on paper for the gallery right now that will be more affordable.
I thought well I will just do some redo of older paintings that sold before.
Now comes the expensive part. I have to make new pieces because even I try to  duplicate the first one the feel is not the same. I have to make a new piece.
I am the one who made the first one and I cannot duplicate it.
You would think if anyone could it would be me but that was a moment in time and that time is gone and I have to move on.
I can never bring that time back and with it that spark.
that is why art is expensive. You never get that moment back.
Prints of art only are a shadow.