Art History - Starry Night Master

Starry Night Master, Original Acrylic on Canvas, 2003 $450.

I love the work of Van Gogh. The heavy dark blue outlines around some of his subjects heavily influenced much of my earlier work and still today when I'm in the mood.

Late last century I started to shift from representative paintings into more abstract concepts.  This work involved shifting color and light through various planes imagined on the canvas.  This painting (turned on its end, CW) was a play on Van Gogh's The Starry Night, but turned as shown seemed to capture the insane vision that consumed the artist.

I have enjoyed this painting from this angle for many years and am looking for a patron for it to help fund the Holland portion of my travelart excursion.  There I will be able to visit the newly renovated museum which honors the work of Van Gogh.

Order an 11x14 Print, $39.

Three Ways to Have Creative Breakthroughs

I attended an opening of abstract art which includes two pieces of my work from Torn!

and another favorite paperwork, at Red Tree Gallery last night.  The work all around was impressive.  It is always interesting to see the materials artists include - paper, fabric, found items, textures from jars, scraping away, layering on, and all the different techniques employed by the artists while applying these that make each piece different. Many conversations included discussion of the artist's need to explore, discover, innovate and invent new ways of doing things.  

As is often the case for me, these chats connected directly with something else I had been working on.   I found a lot of cool research while preparing for a blog about using creative interventions in the workplace to discover and unleash the underlying creative talent in the workplace and transfer those skills to benefit organizational goals and interests.  Everyone possesses creative skills.  Whether they use them to create art, deliver innovations on the job, or produce the effect that they are not creative at all -- it is all creative.

Creative Breakthrough, Digital Collage 2014, Pic Michel

So I'm inviting you to have a creative breakthrough and consider how creative you are in everything you do. 

1. Check out this post about creative breakthroughs on LinkedIn
2. See what's new at HeartStudio Groups to access your creative nature
3. Buy a cup of coffee at Red Tree or some other local gallery/coffeehouse/restaurant and really look to see what goes into a piece of art rather than just how it looks when it's finished.

As I say in the studio, what hangs on the wall is not a painting, it is a painted.  
Joy, release, and adventure is in the making!

Peacefully,

Pic;)

Invention - Confronting the Past

Why would an artist work from a painting completed hundreds of years earlier by another artist?  It might be that one wants to learn how to craft like a master, but if you were Pablo Picasso it would be to make it your own.  Picasso saw art as invention and many times referred to existing masterpieces to re-work the subject matter in his own imagination, to his own liking.

An article covering the release of Picasso's Variations on the Masters: Confrontations with the Past, by Susan Galassi in the Smithsonian Magazine, September 1997, brought attention to Picasso's work from Las Meninas, Velázquez's masterpiece from 1656. 

In four short months, at the age of 76 in 1957, Picasso made 45 variations from the painting, 58 studies total, including isolated features, treating the process as an inventive constantly changing experience as he made the work his own. (That's roughly 1 painting/drawing every other day.)  (See on Wikipedia). 

Throughout the creative process artwork changes often and not always as expected, a matter of fact which can frustrate a less experienced artist until he or she overcomes the need to be right or worse - finished, and stops seeing an unfinished composition as not good enough. Taking a second look at what has gone before with new eyes to explore different ways of doing things was foundational to the innovations that were intrinsic to Picasso's work, and his contribution as an artist.  

In the studio, especially through the abstract method, but through every sort of approach and media, exploring and inventing is what our work is all about and we get there through confronting not just the past, but learning to balance the inner critic with the inner artist as we move ahead, pause to see, and continue.  That is the secret to making the creative process truly satisfying, then and now.

Consider practicing a little art yoga at The HeartStudio. 

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Observing the Dumb Brush and Ascending Drips

"Automatism" is a term used by artists and psychiatrists to describe mental associations which are more dream-like than rational.  The term was coined by French Psychiatrist Pierre Janet in the late 19th century based on observations of psychic mediums while applying hypnosis as a treatment for mental health patients.

Surrealists adapted Automatism into their work as Automatic Writing and Automatic Drawing, in the early 19th century and it remains a tool many artists use for subject matter today as well as simply engaging a more expressive, creative consciousness experience.

While Andre Breton defined Surrealism as 'psychic automatism in its pure state' in 1924, I would venture to suggest that the way children see angels and animals in the clouds is a much more pure state.

 

Recently my reference of what I call "dumb brush" painting came up in conversation.  For me, "dumb brush" describes a similar activity to what is hoped for in automatic drawing - elimination of the inner critic and the limitation that goes with it.  To hold a brush dumb is to handle it as one might imagine a big dumb ogre would handle a spoon at a bowl of soup, ravenously scooping the utensil overhand rather than in a more classic writing position. 

To eliminate the writing posture, for me, is to invite the right brain a little more into the creative equation - especially for the right-handed artist.  The goal is to be more in-touch with feeling the movement of paint rather than thinking about where it should be.

I combine dumb brush handling with all styles of work from representational to my flow and blow color field and ascending drip paintings.  It enhances the experience and expression and provides hours of enjoyable creative challenges,afterward, exploring what was made. 

A few years ago (okay, so maybe a few, few years ago), I did a big dumb brush painting (before it was so named) and took it home.  Over the next 24 hours 22 images emerged on the canvas.  All sorts of faces, wearing all kinds of expressions were looking back at me.  Interestingly, that morning in my journal I had written, "as you observe, so shall you be observed" as a reminder of how we form the lives we experience through our viewpoints whether or not we intend to do so.  The painting was a beautiful out-picturing of that sentiment, as the many figures and faces had observed and were the result of my every action without thinking about it.

Images pictured below were photographed from this painting, Bethesur, 24"x36", acrylic and pumice on canvas, 2014

While faces show up in much of my work, observers of the work come into play in their most "pure state" during what I call Ascending Drip paintings.  These are visceral works of sliding and loading color onto the canvas and interchangeably creating drips and loading more paint into the space between the drips with an ascending stroke.  For me, this movement is representative of the interchange of thought and manifestation, it also lends itself to automatic painting as I am absorbed in the expressiveness of the experience and my rational mind takes a back seat while my unconscious mind gets in the driver's seat (at least that's what Andre Breton would say).

Here are just a few of the dozens of images that are currently observing the observer in Bethesur.

woman with turquoise eyes and lips smiles under yellow-green bangs

face with red and yellow bangs

turquoise figures emerging from bright light to down from parapet

grey figure (head and shoulder)  peeks out between turquoise drips

Enjoy the day!

More Ascending Drip and other paintings on the canvas page at my website.
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