Sense of Place

I really, really wanted to finish this painting begun last summer in my vendor booth at Saratoga. It's a warm up, stretching my pigment muscles and feeling the milieu of time and space, intending to transfer that aura to my mounting commission work. When your brushstrokes caress the canvas, you're getting it. Ya just gotta feel it, breathe it and taste it to paint it good.

"Barn Scene, Saratoga", oil on canvas, 16"x20"

It captures those soft mornings on the backside when the sun filters through the many big trees. People and horses are more relaxed and visitors are pleased to be able to tour the barn area. Must be the negative ions of nature. I know this because Michael had a stable there in the early to mid 80's. I so resonate with this place and it took me many years of persistence to get back my foothold.

There are beautiful race tracks across the country but there's only one Saratoga. It's a destination. A place to aspire to. A keeper of history with infamous records and facts and many stories both well known and whispered. Saratoga keeps it's head above the troubled waters. Owners dream of running and winning there. Graveyard of favorites, that it is.

"A man doesn't learn to understand anything unless he loves it." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ocala Art Festival

I'd like to invite you to attend the Ocala Art Festival this weekend. It's located at the McPherson Government Complex, 601 SE 25th Ave in beautiful Ocala, Florida (my home sweet home). Please stop by and visit me in my booth: E33. The weather will be perfect and you can enjoy a leisurely stroll through the rows of compelling and diverse artwork.

Remember, the holidays loom on the horizon and purchasing a special piece of art is a creative gesture of hip thoughtfulness. Way cool. Avoid the big box stores with the same old repetitious merchandise:

BUY ART

"Each time you purchase a piece of art, you're investing in a piece of history and in another person's life. " - Diane Overmyer (well said, Diane)

Like an Old Friend

This original oil on canvas is back in my own studio, VoilART! in downtown Ocala. I won't share with you the why's, from where or who because I guard the privacy of my collectors and galleries. Suffice to say it's great to see it again and I give my old work mixed reviews. Myriad technicalities I would have confronted differently though I'm impressed with the level of power portrayed. I remember how I felt while creating this piece. There's always that one horse with an attitude who can be relied on to behave badly at the worse time. It's dangerous and exhilarating, maddening and glorious.

"Blue Blinkers" oil on canvas, 60"x48"

If you find it interesting, click here for more info.

"A good picture, any picture, has to be bristling with razor blades." - Pablo Picasso

How long did that take?

Someone is looking intently at an artwork, turns to the artist and innocently asks: "How long did it take you to do that?". Ugh.

It makes an artist cringe. Some artists, feeling defensive, reply with a flippant "My whole life!" To an artist, the question insinuates perceived worth. I used to patiently consider the question an ice breaker, a safe way for the viewer to engage in conversation because they are not sure how to approach otherwise. Now I'm suspect.

Time, labor, materials, size. It's frustrating to deal with so much attention to physicality. I don't mind discussing technique. It's the reference to time = $$$ that increasingly annoys. If I say a canvas took me half a day because the painting session was immersed in a zen-like creativity, the reaction is...polite respect. However, numeration involving pained hours and hours (even months) spent on a piece concurs head-nodding monetary merit. Calculating value by the hours expended in a creation of art is not an indication of what it should cost.

"My whole life" really is. Accrued skill takes a lifetime of patience and persistence. It parallels general life experience and evolves into a total package as the artist becomes the art and the art IS the artist.

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." - Henry David Thoreau