Thoughts

The Terribles

Ayin Es3 Comments

I’ve been working on “terrible” paintings lately. I am doing this because I feel I’ve had such fear of making a bad painting, that I over-think my approach. This idea has really been helping me to get back into the swing of things again.I have quite a few pieces in progress and only a couple so far really are terrible.

I got this notion after speaking with a good friend of mine, Robin Cracknell. Robin is an amazing fine art photographer in London. His works are compelling with deep-rooted issues around giving a voice to children that have perhaps not been taken seriously, believed, or otherwise ignored. It speaks volumes, to me especially. His work just continues to resonate with me. And having this inspiring conversation with him has brought new light to my process in making my own work. I don’t know how to thank him, but I hope this new energy lasts a good long while. I’ve needed it.

So here are a few works that are still in progress:

thedealip

This one is called The Deal and the painting on it is done. Now it needs to be embroidered all over. A time consuming task.

This next one, Ofrenda, I’ve been working on since I moved into my studio and I would say that the painting bits are very close to done. Then I’ll have to wait for it to dry and start on the embroidery.

ofrenda3aip

Now this one is a complete piece of crap that I still don’t know what to do with:

shit

It seems pretty unfinished, but you get the basic gist of what it is mostly looking like.

The following is finished, but it’s, well, I have no idea about it. But it’s called, Have a Beer.

haveabeer

What the hell do you make of it? Actually, nevermind. No comments from the audience, please. I need to make my own decisions, and that’s something that is not so easy for me to do, but I’m learning and getting a bit better at it. I am good at making instinctual decisions, just not conscious ones!

I’m also working on this big square the has a giant red circle on it. I know what I want to do with it, it’s just a little weird. Trying to be weird and allowing yourself to be weird are two very different things, mind you. Giving yourself permission to be free is one thing. Attempting, and trying, to be odd and original does not work. It’s all about listening to your true voice. This is genuine. Letting all the crap from the art world, commercialism, galleries, critics, and other people enter your mind is just suicide. This kind of focus is not easy. “How does this work with my other paintings” is another fucked up thought that tries to sabotage me in my studio. You have to stop thinking in terms of shows, series, bodies of work to really start making art that is true to yourself, and all these tasks are not as easy as one would think because we all want to be loved and we all want success. I guess it’s just a matter of redefining what success is — all the while living in a society that clearly dictates which achievements are successful. Fucken society! Who needs em?

Okay, in other news, artist Jeremy Quinn has featured his studio visit at Moppet on his blog. What a nice treat!

Happy Halloween everybody!

I was going to ramble on about something else, but now I forget, so bye.

Fear-facing

Ayin Es5 Comments

Okay, so for the last few days I’ve been painting in the studio, totally skipping out on my computer. I wake up, have my coffee, do a very quick check for important emails, put on my jeans and a t-shirt and run out the door before I get caught up in something that will inevitably distract me from getting my ass in gear. It’s been good – I am working on I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck/fear-facing stuff, mainly a 36 x 48 inch canvas that is not too terrible.

When I come home, I eat and have been working on my City of LA Individual Artist Grant Application – a very hard grant to win, but I try every year nonetheless. I am a little worried about my all-too-honest project narrative this time though. I blatantly state I will be working on a body of terrible art. Hahaha! But I do explain it so it’s not just left at that. Every day I have been trying to recommit myself to making terrible work so that I can just bust through my little inner rut/boredom/depression about my art. And it’s working.

Yesterday, I had a very wonderful visitor come to my studio: Hendrik Stooker, the co-founder of the Arroyo Arts Collective and retired, senior curator at the Occidental College Art Gallery. It was the first time I have met him in person, and truly loved him right off the bat. I am sort of glad when he left though because I really could have talked to him all night long. He was also very encouraging and full of ideas about how I can sell more art, but I fear I disappointed him with my pessimism and general disinterest in selling anything. For the Discovery Tour however, I do plan on putting out my least expensive work, like small paintings and drawings. I’ll tack them all over the place for November 22nd like it’s some kind of last-chance bake sale. Honestly though, I think people on the tour will be looking for art on the cheap and I am probably not their greatest bet. But I am going to make my best effort and put out as much work under $400 as possible. I will even slash my prices on my books and a few other tidbits. Whatever it takes to help make the day successful.

Last 2nd Saturday went well. No sales of course, but a ton of people came through. All my cookies and veggies were gone before 8:00, and all my bottled water went to the bike-riding looky-loos. I will be skipping next month’s 2nd Saturday NELA artwalk so that I may focus all my prep and promotion to the Discover Tour.

Tomorrow I have a studio visit from my gallery director, Tressa Williams. She started at George Billis LA not too long ago and I will be meeting her in person for the first time as well. She is picking art for the Miami fair and I’m really nervous about not having any – or having to “sacrifice” some pieces set aside for my Houston show, but I have to think about number of eyes with checkbooks, and more of those will be in Miami than at my show in Houston. It’s a no brainer. She can take whatever she likes tomorrow (or today rather, it’s already 12:30 AM). I better git.

Tonight!

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Getting ready for tonight’s Open Studio at Moppet, which starts at 7PM – and no earlier mind you! 🙂 I don’t have too many confirmed Facebook friends coming this time, but that’s okay considering I am going to be doing this every month or so. It’s the all-day Discovery Tour that is going to be the BIG one, so I hope that brings a big turnout in November. In the meantime, I am not promoting the Second Saturday open studio every month as much as I probably should. I put out a few veggies, cookies and water and haven’t been serving out the wine – which just makes people not want to stay very long. I know art is better with wine, but I just cannot afford to get you all drunk once a month. Myself being plastered is another story all together though.

 

If you came last time, don’t bother coming again because I haven’t done much to the painting that was sitting on the easel. I was sick for a month and so have been working on the one at home, which is coming along. Here it is today (below), and it’s nearly done with the oil painting part. Once it’s dry, it’s embroidery time, which is the most fun.

 

 

I got invited into a show next month at Highways Performance Space and Gallery by curator Jane Brucker, an artist and professor of Art and Art History at Loyola Marymount University. It is to accompany a performance called Bias Cut held on October 16 & 17. The exhibition portion, Behind the Seams, will open the day before and will also feature Curt LeMieux, Lea Redmond and Browne Molyneaux.

Dabbling Along

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I decided on the perfect song for the painting I am working on at home to be Dreams by Fleetwood Mac.

 

The one at the studio is slow-going (well, they all are really these days). Yellow and green is about all I’ve added to this one besides drawing more flowers and extras to it. It seems convenient that the one away from the studio is about separation and the one at the space is an ofrenda to my parents. They busted up several times as I was growing up, but the worst one was when they did it 3,000 miles apart. It was around 1976-77 and I flew back and forth between LA and Philadelphia several times. Dreams by Fleetwood Mac was one of the songs that played over and over in my headphones on the flights while I traveled with a TWA chaperone. It was weird and all I wanted was for my family to be back together. My mom was in LA and my father and brother were in Allentown. I was the yoyo that was pulled back and forth between them while they argued like children themselves. Total chaos. The song was fitting for the situation because I thought they would never work it out.  They finally did before Rumors won Album of the Year.

 

(the one at the studio)

In Progress at Home

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Not much has transpired but blending and coloring, thinking, planning. I think cursive text is coming into the picture here, but I still haven’t decided on which poem or song it will be coming from, but I want it transcripted from something else and not the usual stream of consciousness. I feel like the difficulty in separating heart and mind is already obvious here, so I want the text to illustrate more about the reminiscence of the memories this painting is coming from and make it less general and more specific actually: which is why I am thinking of grabbing it from a song. But these are the colors, with the exception of a little more of the pattern yellow, which I may pull in from the right side a tad. I haven’t decided if that will help it or ruin it! I like the main composition and coloring as it is now, just need to refine, refine, refine without losing what I like about it. I wonder about the yellow is all. Patterns are yellow, yes. But this is art. So what to do, what to do? Hmmm. Do I pull some in from somewhere else to make it “make sense?” Or do I leave it and go with white… Is there a “happy” medium? And Am I ever going for “happy?” No. Well on some level, maybe. I thought I just learned that the search for happiness is a sham and feeling satisfied with being contented is a lot longer lasting. It’s that greedy little More Witch that wants it all. I must strangle her and knock her teeth out someday.