This week is National Library Week in the U.S. If you’re checking out my site, you’re probably already aware that this is something close to my heart. If not, then you can see why here.
I was at my local library this afternoon picking up a book I had reserved (Patti Smith’s Just Kids). Unfortunately, I didn’t see much promotion for NLW 2011. So I am taking that matter under my wing.
I urge everyone to go check out (a book at) their local library!
I’ve decided to start a blog series on what inspires me in this world. What follows is my first go at this. I see this being slightly different in subsequent posts than what’s below, but this is where we begin.
When I began my art career, I was working in the two mediums of painting and photography. I love the process of both of these. Painting with oils gives you a lot of time to work to make the paint say what you want it to. It’s very much similar to working in a darkroom exposing the image onto paper. Dodging, burning working the image in every spot to make it just so. Even the action of changing pixels on the computer is the same. (The best  – absolute best – part of working digitally is that I no longer have to contend with dust. Ever!)
To this end, I have always sought ways to combine the actions of painting and photographing. For my university exit show I produced a body of work in which I had made my own negatives and taken portraits. I thickly coated emulsion on old, cleared negative sheets and made long exposure portraits. It was a fun process, but quite expensive and time consuming. The results were great. It was the first time I felt that I had accomplished my goal of integrating photography and painting. In that, it was a success and I was happy about it. I’ve put an example of this work at the bottom of this article.
One of my two most favorite painters is Gerhard Richter. He has no real peer in his work. Though he has greatly inspired later generations. To me, his soft paintings are the visual equivalent to my favorite type of music, shoegazer. His work combines the soft dreamy with the loose fuzziness. I realise that these are vague terms and aren’t necessarily applicable to every piece. This is just an analysis of how my brain interprets what I see, hear and feel and how that translates into what I do with that information artistically. I think this all relates to my larger fascination with German Expressionism and Romanticism at large. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the same. It’s a very beautiful ugliness.
This does not necessarily translate into the art I produce, but it’s at the heart of what drives me to produce art. I would say that, of all the work in my catalogue, it best relates to Notions of Eden and the aforementioned portrait series.
I now have new business cards for my fine art photography. I have had some for my commercial art, but to me, these are way more exciting. As always Moo does a standup job with their printing.
I found this in a used book shop today. It’s outside of my book photographs and outside of anything else really. I just thought it was interesting. I see that it was checked out the day before I was born (Feb. 11). This library card information was, to me, the most fascinating part of this particular book. It gives it an actual life that it has lived. That is the singular most interesting thing about books, or any object. To give it a location and movement at one particular time of its existence.
This is, by far, the sexiest treasury I’ve ever been included in! AND it has lots of items with my name on them. Triple WIN! Thanks to LazyDayCottage for including my work in this.
I wasn’t up to going out and taking photos for my projects. So I stayed home and took a few out on the deck while the dog had his last outside time for the day. The moon was bright and clouds were rolling in. I love the way clouds in the night photograph in such a painterly way.
I did one other exposure that was 5 mins. I should have stopped it down and made it a longer exposure, but oh well. That’s the Big Dipper just to the left of center. This one was a great night-for-day photo that is a bit of a rage nowadays. I can’t say that’s what I was trying for, but that is what I got.
With the making of this new site I have been unveiling my new show of work – Notions of Eden. I have been working on these photographs for a while now and am really excited about getting them out to show the world.
I am slowly working on my artists statement which will be posted with the work here. I have many ideas about what I want to say and am having trouble getting it to a more concise point to post. The gist of it is looking at the new artificial world we are creating around our industrial areas to bring the nature back.
I am also happy to announce that this work is just the start of a rather inspired period I’ve found myself in right now. So, hopefully, I’ll be posting many more groups of work here in the near future as I get them closer to fruition. It’s always very exciting to find yourself in an inspired time! It’s been too long for me an I plan to make the most of it.
I am excited to be included in The Genealogist – a treasury of Etsy items by ScrapHappyLyrebird. I’ve been fortunate to be included in quite a few treasuries, now let’s translate that into sales!!
I am excited to announce that my new website is hitting the world at large!!!
Those of you who’ve been to my existing commercial site SquidBelly Creative will be familiar with most of what’s here. Or, at the very least, my books. What’s new is my exciting new project called Notions of Eden. It’s a series of nightscapes that I’m currently working on and hope that they’ll be as well received as my books have been. It’s quite a departure artistically, but getting out of that comfort zone has done me a wealth of good and the inspiration is flowing like crazy now. I plan to be well underway very soon on a completely different project that I’m in planning stages for already despite being in the middle of  the nightscapes.
