Category: Creativity

Nothing. You need to know  nothing to do art. No method or technique or style or anything  else is required to do art. Art is big. It is too big to push into little boxes. I think it would be great to have a group of never did any art in their life people do some art. Art will find you. You don’t find it. You cannot tame it. If fact once you have tamed it becomes rote. I cannot tell you how many times I have forgotten this. This knowledge is almost like a vapor. Here to see and then gone as quick as it came. Selling paintings sort of gets in the way of doing art because when you sell something then you try and do it again. But you can’t. It won’t feel the same. Can you tame a wild lion?  and if you manage to somewhat make him less wild , haven’t you killed him. No art is free. all you can do is make art everyday and wait for the wild animal to show up. When it does you have enriched the world with something only you could have done because you were where it was.

 

Just as any painting needs lots of negative space to breath, it is not always just blank space. Negative space can also be the same thing over and over so it reads calm negative space. I did a painting that is full of  shapes  but the negative space was the color repeat, You can have an idea repeat in a play and you get negative space, a shape repeat and you have the effect of negative space. People do that in interior design all the time to make you feel calm. repeats of the same anything reads negative space because your mind does not have to keep reacting to new images.

I was thinking how that is like life. We have  a heart beat that beats a steady pattern , We have a routine everyday. We sleep at the same time each night.

If we don’t we go crazy pretty fast. Art is just us seeing what is already going on all around us. But it was fun to think about this and how it all fits together this morning.

I did not know what my show was about until I finished the last painting. It is a story of Death to Life. I thought I was doing a show about angels but that quickly gave way to death to life. Instead of depressing it gives me joy to see how this unfolded.

And it did unfold on a lot of levels. It was a game changer.

Art is never static. It breathes. It does not keep secrets.

It tells the truth.

The paintings I did before were outside looking in and these are inside looking out. This is the most personal show I have ever done and I think the best.

You have to grow in anything you do or you start to die.

this show is about death and life  and how it is necessary for one to have the other. Even if circumstances look different they are dramatically dependent on each other to be. What we all have in common are these two things. Life and Death. and that is what this show is about.

Leaving reality behind and going to the place where there are no guidelines or clues or ideas is scary. It is easier to get a plan and execute it. Just do it, it is right there.

No staring at a white canvas and say speak to me… is harder. You just have to start and see where it goes. Let the first line tell you what the next line will be.

How do you correct a line that is just random??? You have to see it. How do you see it. This is how. When it stops making you sick and starts making you feel settled then it is there that you stop. Writing , or anything really is this but they only way to find it is to start looking and you can’t start looking till you are in process.

My Web master is going hiking a lot. I am sure he did not know what he would find till he started going on that first hike. Then the next , then the next. It is an abstract thing too. one foot in front of another. It is a faith thing that you aren’t just wasting time. You aren’t . More than getting there is all you find on the way.

Painting, walking, writing, . really who cares about the end when the journey is the main deal. Finishing just means get on to the next first step into the unknown.

Artwork should unfold. You should not be able to take it all in immediately. It should keep talking to you. It should say volumes over the years not just one thing. Thats why you can look at the same masterpiece at a museum and see new things each time you see it. Art has infinity written in the body. Infinity is well, infinite. It is not about you. It is about infinity. If you do the work out of skill it won’t  go on forever. I am a firm believer that you should paint more than you know how to do. It is not about great you can crank a work out and sometimes skill gets in the way. You depend on yourself too much.