nowhere series

Born from my occasional boredom with abstraction--these paintings aren't finished by any means; they are currently just underpaintings. I suppose I will continue to work on them (practice glazing or something) when I feel the need to do something different.

A northwestern Ohio landscape is plainly beautiful - simply land and sky. 

4 x 8.5 in

oil on gessoed paper

7 x 7.25 in

oil on gessoed paper

 5.75 x 7 in
oil on gessoed paper

6.5 x 6.5 in

oil on gessoed paper

6.5 x 4 in

oil on gessoed paper

3.25 x 4 in, 3.25 x 4 in

oil on gessoed paper

fractions continued...

Citrine

7 x 4.25 in

mixed media on paper

Rhodochrosite
6.5 x 4.5 in
mixed media on paper

Cerussite

4 x 6 in
mixed media on paper

the one and only...

watercolor on cut paper

10.75 x 7.5 in

2011

first fraction

2011

12.5 x 13 in
acrylic on paper

hiatus

After about a month long (too long) hiatus I have started working again. First I had to fix the easel that my landlords/amazing artists Mike Neary and Amy Maclennan gave to me. I replaced the hinges, nuts, bolts, key screws, and even fixed the crank (sort of). The crank didn't work before, and actually doesn't work incedibly well now, however, it raises up and down with a little elbow grease. Now I'm back in business and working on this painting.

watercolor

fleshy/valley

watercolor on Reeves BFK

5" x 7.5" in

I think this is pretty much complete.

some paintings (BFA exhibit)

Like Magnets (sold)
oil on maple
12" in diameter
2009


Unfamiliar (sold)
oil on maple
12" in diameter
2009


Southern (sold)
oil on maple
12" in diameter
2009


From a Ring-Finger (sold)
oil on maple
12" in diameter
2009


Muscovite/Biotite
oil on canvas
30" x 30" in
2010

finished

MUSCOVITE/BIOTITE
oil on canvas, 30" x 30"

introduction to personality theory hehe

She covers three slides, I move on...

looks like me from behind (before i cut my hairs)

girl with a bob in a sweatshirt

dude

zipper

as big as your seat

looks like a fat john lennon

On my mind...

I started this on a 16x20 panel (I think) a couple summers ago (self-portrait as a snake. it doesn't quite look like me, and i only had prussian blue, hansa yellow, titanium white, and alizarin crimson). I think it should be the next painting that I start, or perhaps one that I complete over the summer. I have a 28x40 canvas free that I could do it on.

an assortment

I want this kind of life...
"Fortunately, I am a member of an academic community where I enjoy (not suffer) the privileges (not rights) of rank and tenure. While I never think I have enough time for my own work, in fact I am able to go about painting on a fairly regular and intense basis. I am paid well enough to stay a bit ahead of my debtors, to travel, and to give modest support to causes or projects which seem important.
Moreover, as an artist in an academic community, I have the opportunity to rub ideas daily against the ideas of colleagues and students. Despite the burdens of administrivia and the irritations of committee work, I teach courses in subjects I value. At least a certain amount of my time can be given honorably to the preparation of material for those classes, for thinking about interesting problems, for looking at paintings or sculpture that i find compelling. in short, I am able to earn my living doing something I like very much to do. Be it bias or faith, I believe my lot in life a good one, a pattern that might be equally engaging and stimulating for other artists."

In the University by Lee Hall

Art and sexual politics; women's liberation, women artists, and art history.

Tonight I'm starting a new painting. I've made new compositions that are closer to what I was doing before when I was working on the round paintings. I'm trying to make them so that they make more sense as "landscapes". By doing this I hope that they will give the viewer more of a sense of how (I think) microtexture images can look like the landscapes in which they [the rocks] might make (at any given perspective, close or far). I hope this goes well. I think it will. I feel like I'm lacking some direction with all of this this, however, it seems like my feet are appearing closer to the ground now. This is all just trial and error.

Over spring break I finished an acrylic drypoint of a Jade plant dad's growing in my room. This accomplishment made me feel wonderful, and strengthens this longstanding idea that I work best if I'm working directly from life and not from a freaking photograph. I think I'm going to do more drypoints of plants, but on zinc... maybe. I do like the ability to have a fractured matrix, and using acrylic makes that easy. Anyway, more plants. FUN. I'm going to hit up the greenhouse on campus. This week I'm attending a screen printing demo--we'll see where this goes, if anywhere (could be exciting).

back to work on wednesday

Craig

24" x 40", oil on canvas

This is what I've been working on for a semi-short while this winter break. I decided against doing pretty much everything else, mostly because I over-obligated myself to myself and others, hah (this is the story of my life). This painting isn't nearly finished at all. I'm at the point where I'm not sure what to do next because I never work representationally and I'm not very good at that style of painting haha. It'd be nice if I could work loosely. I know how I ended up here, I sort of know where I want to go, I just have to get there; however, I'm waiting for the semester to begin again first, so that I can get some opinions from peers/academia (or, simply anyone/everyone).

Today my brother and I went to Turkey Run State Park in Parke County IN because at some point I'd like to do something, whether it's drawings, prints, large paper cutouts, or paintings, based off of ice on rock. I've never been to Turkey Run during the winter, but I'm glad I went despite there only being a high temperature today of 10 degrees. I'm especially glad that my brother likes to hang out with me and went along. Had he not, I'm not sure if I would have been as adventurous, nor do I think I would have enjoyed myself so much. I got some pretty nice photos in the process.

procrastinating again

Painting was so incredibly wonderful. I was only able to paint for three hours, though.

My focus was the stool and the sheets deep within the nook created by all this junk.

I shouldn't have made the stool and the sheets the same color... not sure why that happened.

Oh well.

winner

I won a the Violet Helen Rich scholarship today for two drawings and for the I did for Sara.

Sara won the cognitive achievement award for art history!!

Description: The Violet Helen Rich Scholarship was established in 1986 in memory of Mrs. Rich by her husband, Theodore Rich. She received an art scholarship from the Rhode Island School of Design when she was 12. Throughout her life she expressed her creativity in both watercolor and oils for the joy of her family, friends and society. Her artistic talent won her many awards throughout the region. She moved to Terre Haute in 1943 and held her first exhibit in the area in 1944. It is hoped that her 61 years of sensitivity and creativity exhibited in the beauty of her watercolors and oils will be an inspiration for many young artists who will receive the endowed scholarship at Indiana State University to develop their own talents.

Open to: Undergraduate art student with painting emphasis and at least junior status.

Selection Criteria: The recipient shall be an art student at Indiana State University with a declared emphasis in painting, both oils and watercolors. The recipient shall be in good academic standing at the University and shall have achieved at least junior status at the University. The scholarship can be renewed for a second year, if recommended by the committee.

Award Amount: $1,500.00 (hooray!)

pienture (summary)

3 of 4 (unfinished)

I think I learned a lot about painting this semester. After taking into consideration the time it takes early in the semester to get supplies and the time it takes to build canvases and gesso them, I think I would have liked Nancy's assignment better if she had decided on a total of 6,000 square inches instead of 12,000. If it were an advanced class and I had paint and brushes etc. in my possession already, then it might have been different. If I had started painting in August instead of in September I would have totally finished all four of them.

Perhaps I interpreted the assignment the wrong way though? This is totally possible. I think about what I have done all semester and I think, what? Why? It makes me think I'm totally weird. Why have I been painting still-lifes on a 30"x40" canvases all semester? Why did I decide to paint in as high of detail as I could given my skill level? Could I have perfected such technique more efficiently if I had done smaller scale paintings? Perhaps smaller paintings would have been more cohesive to each other too. I feel like there were issues in painting that I wanted to delve into and couldn't because I had to complete the assignment. I also decided on a totally ridiculous composition of weird items to paint. I might have just made it a little too complicated. With all that said, perhaps all of this was the perfect way to go?

I think about what someone looking at these paintings might think. I think about how the perspective is off because of various viewpoints on different days--that makes me think about Cézanne, and then I think about how critics claimed he was unschooled because he didn't paint in correct perspective. It wasn't that he couldnt, he just didn't. Whether he didn't want to, or because it served greater purpose to the composition to vary perspective, whatever, he made the choice. The perspective in my paintings isn't off because I can't make it right, its off because I am lazy haha. My lack of care for perspective is my personality coming out in the painting I guess, but I don't know how I feel about that. I don't want my viewer to think I'm unschooled, or even that I'm lazy hah (despite the fact that I am sometimes). I also think about how I totally disregarded what I was seeing sometimes and depicted things partly from nature, partly from my head, and how that affected what I was painting, it flattens the image for sure, makes objects appear fabricated.

In the begining Nancy said to aim for something we didn't think we could do and I didn't think I could complete four large-scale, high detail (eehh, naturalistic perhaps) still-life paintings. I succeeded in not being able to complete it haha, but I definitely see a positive progression in my ability to paint throughout these four. I don't think they're any good as a whole, but I can pick out parts that are wonderful.

Another thing that I realized is that I'm really an awful painter right now and so I need to paint more. I can paint OK because I can see really well I guess, haha, but my brain doesn't exactly know how to make my hands manipulate what it knows onto a canvas. I think I am more unlike Picasso, and more like Braque. Painting is love/hate, but so much more love. The good days make it easy to endure the bad days of simply standing there staring at the canvas not having any idea what to do. When I can't paint I'm thinking too much. The trick is to think a lot before one starts and keep that in mind, then just paint don't think, and afterward reflect on the disaster haha. Eventually I will just know and effort will be minimal. Is it really a learned thing? Does one learn to paint well? I guess, I don't know.