Friday, September 21, 2012

Color Craziness

I do a lot of color testing and settle on a palette before painting. 
The evidence sometimes looks pretty chaotically cool, so I thought I'd share. 
This one was tricky to work out but I think I have my almost final palette now :)
It was so nice to settle into work this evening. Hoping to do the same tomorrow.




Sunday, September 9, 2012

A Revelatory Manifesto ~ Patti Smith, Just Kids & Why I Make Art

mJUST KIDS by Patti Smith - a set of artist revelations

This book really touched me. Some incredible ruminations on being an artist, creating, love, collaboration and innocence:

'The creed we developed as artist and model was simple. I trust in you, I trust in myself.'


'Robert trusted in the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus influence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination.'

What is the soul? What color is it? I suspected my soul, being mischievous, might slip away while I was dreaming and fail to return. I did my best not  to fall asleep, to keep it inside of me where it belonged.'

'I didn't feel for Warhol the way Robert did. His work reflected a culture I wanted to avoid. I hated the soup and felt little for the can. I preferred an artist who transformed his time, not mirrored it.'

'I wondered if I had really been called as an artist. I didn't mind the misery of a vocation but I dreaded not being called.'

'In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.'

'In my low periods, I wondered what was the point of creating art. For whom? Are we animating God? Are we talking to ourselves? And what was the ultimate goal? To have one's work caged in art's great zoos - the Modern, the Met, the Louvre?'

'Robert had little patience with these introspective bouts of mine. He never seemed to question his artistic drives, and by his example, I understood that what matters is the work: the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon the sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution. From this state of mind comes a light, life-charged.'

THE BOOK: http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780060936228