Anyone who has followed my blog or social media pages knows that I have largely eschewed the too prevalent “buy my stuff” postings. I want an audience, not customers.
Showing what I do is easier with my visual work than my writing. With that, I do once or twice a year call attention to a new release. Not a bad average in trying not to annoy or pressure for those who take the time to follow me.
My latest release is just out. It is available for Kindle & paperback on amazon Most likely I have said this with the last three releases, truly, this is a personal favorite.
There’s a cottage industry devoted to helping people to pursue the dream of becoming a working artists. There is a lot of advice, some contradictory and other things just not how it works in the real world. Or, if it works that way, it is far slower going and heavily sprinkled with rejections and other unavoidable negative aspects.
The one commonality though is that one must have an online presence. Starting with a personal page which should not look as if only free sample software was utilized. There is also the need to have a social media presence. This is the thing so many get wrong.
Have updates of what you are doing in regards to new releases, shows, concerts etc. (It is strange though to keep up a steady stream all day long on twitter et al. When are you working? )
The biggest mistake with social media is the machine gun approach. The theory being if you have something you want people to buy/see just send a deluge out onto social media non-stop. Ten, fifty, one hundred thousand people see it and then if only “X” percent act….
Rarely does it work this way, to a higher percentage of people you are being an annoyance or another thing to mark future communications to go directly to spam folder.
Of course all artists want their work to be seen, myself included. But you should want an audience, not customers. Social media has definitely made it so that there is potential to reach many people with the press of the button, but done too often or two impersonally the only thing achieved is adding to the volume of cacophony of voices yelling “look at me, buy my stuff”.
I have several pages which have been around at this point for years. Anyone familiar with them sees that I rarely steer people towards commerce side of my artistic life. Exceptions being mainly when i have a new book out.
My newest collection is just out and you can find it at amazon in Paperback & kindle versions.
For artists in any medium an online presence is now necessary regardless of how one’s methodology used to be. Connected to this online life for amateurs (even if they are not aware of being so) is the myth of the numbers game with its implied short cut to money and visibility/site numbers.
The basic premise, which has a myriad of variations depending upon who is explaining it, can be parred down to a basic concept of the greater amount of times one puts out there a work they have for sale or perhaps an appearance/show, then the better chance there is of achieving satisfying sales/head count. The true believers explain it thus:
“If you have one hundred thousand views of your post and only five percent of people buy your thing, well that still works out to be…”
Aside from the fact I think machine gun firing (this is making constant mention everywhere) what one has to offer out onto the net is uncouth, it also is naively optimistic. It’s one thing to look at a posting, it’s another to purchase something. Regardless of how inexpensive it is, most people follow at least a few hundred people and it can easily add up fast.
All that aside, I personally want an audience, not customers and this is the great disconnect often now occurring between artist and public. I dont want to hustle for sales etc. If I were going to do that, then I would just have a straight job where sales would equate to large commissions and expense lunches.
It’s all right to mention something available to the public when pertinent. As an artist you hope your work gets seen. Anyone who reads my blogs knows that I rarely make mention of for sale things except for when they are brand new.
I am proud to say that my latest collection has just came out. It’s available now for kindle & Paperback on amazon.
As I wrap up various projects for 2022 time feels oddly accelerated. There’s not enough hours in the day.
I was recently turned onto the Post website. From what I have seen of it, I like it. By way of saying thank you and showing appreciation to all those who have bothered to seek out my works I posted a free essay from my last collection Funeral Clothes.
The magic of the internet, artists no longer need face the prospect of spending a life in service of the process but with their oeuvre largely unseen. The flip side of this coin is that there are some artists who, without easy access to an audience would have to work harder and ultimately become better artists. It also has made artists seek not an audience but customers, their output reduced down to just another commodity.
I try to largely eschew promoting what I have for sale. A cursory look at my blog shows what a rare occurrence the promotion of things for sale is.
However, I am not anti commerce. Art is meant to be seen, to be read. I have a new collection which just came out. Succinctly, it’s beautiful, it’s heavy.
A painting of a woman (or anything) is not a woman but rather a thing unto itself, offering up an emotional pay off not limited to the specific real life moment of the subject. The subject is merely the starting point. Art allows for a great myriad of feelings to come forth, more than a photo. Onion like in layers, of emotional cadence, there is also the injection of the artist’s voice to the subject. This allows a viewer to return to a piece multiple times, finding new things and creating a different narratives in their head.
Emotion should not strive to encompasses any type of perfection, the same with beauty. I always aim for a truth in my work, honesty inherently being beautiful. Emotion, even the seemingly “negative” ones appeal to me to portray for this same reason.
This is my third tan paper piece. I was very pleased with it. It is my voice, the same effect as a musician switching instruments to play a different type of song.
For all my work regardless of medium, emotion is my main goal. One way to ensure this happens is fostering a constant evolution.
I received many great responses to my last collage and it is a personal favorite. For my next one, I knew that I wanted to do something as dense but also different.
I limited my color palette which I have done before but this time i went with darker, more somber colors. There is a return to a more outright sense of narrative in this piece too. The last piece was a beautiful scene but not story. To my core I will always be a city boy and now I have created another one to visit in my daydreams.
As with all my collages, there is no digital magic worked. I utilize the old school method of scissors & adhesive applied w/brush to photos which I personally took. (new camera for photo)
“A Million Ways To Die” 11×14 (the lines visible beneath pieces don’t mean anything , they were resting on piece scrap paper w/discarded sketch)
I greatly admire the work of Jenny Saville. I was given one of those huge, beautiful coffee table books on her work. She works in a very different manner than I (this book was not of her recent work, so I am only speaking of this moment of time, no idea if she has changed). For some of her portraits, she would take photos from medical books of grimacing mouths and use those for subject’s mouth as opposed to just painting the subject’s mouth as it was. A lot of portraits in the book were pieces where the subject looked as they are in real life but a lot of the attributes were Frankensteined on from other source material.
I have no desire to work in this manner, i do not know that I even could. But, it did inspire me to do another of my close up portraits. One of the genre of portraits I do is a compositionally tight shot so that it is not necessarily immediately apparent what the viewer is looking at. One of my great joys is in portraying flesh in my works. With these type of portraits, it forces one to really nail the effect as the viewer does not have the usual visual clues which serve as a short hand in revealing what they are looking at (i.e an identifiable limb such as a hand or foot et al).
My original conception for this piece was to had a bit of canvas on either side of the body which would have been a different color and served as a clue. I decided to tighten the shot into more of a zoom.
I am very pleased with results. Long story short, this photo was not taken w/my new camera but rather my phone. You very much get a sense of the flesh and the blood below the surface, in person there is even more going on.
“Ils s’appellent Zabbahdoo 2” 9×12 Watercolor & paper
I have a pretty good rhythm going in what medium I use. Painting, collage..And regardless of what I am working or just finishing, drawing every night. Within each medium I mix things up to keep it fresh. Different types & sizes of paper.
More often than not I prefer not to give concrete explanations of my work. I would rather each viewer forms their own opinions as to what it’s about/means.
“Time of Legend” is not meant to be mocking nor satire. Originally I had imagined the skin to show more signs of sunburn but thought the splotches of angry red would serve as visual prompts for a program which I did not intend.
“Time of Legend” is about someone completely comfortable in their skin. I am sure that there are moments when the model has dark nights of the soul. Unhappy with his lot in life, angry and sad that he will never get the (beautiful) girl or some other type angst. But for this moment, he was satisfied and living the life.
I imagine at the end of the day, he goes home sleepy from the sun, his phone rings. One of his friends desiring the Joie de vivre which he brings with him to gatherings:
“Hey, what’s going on?”
“I just got back from the park, I had the best sausage sandwich, got some sun.”
I greatly enjoyed creating my last collage “To the Sea”. I decided to further explore the use of a limited color palette.This piece is a companion piece to my last one in wanting to go by the same “rules”. (limited color palette, utilizing my two main techniques within one piece to equal degrees, smaller sized paper)
As usual I only used photos which I took, my trusty scissors and adhesive applied with a brush. The sort of Maxfield Parish coloring comes from the times of day that I took the photos, all Pre-Raphaelite luminescence playing upon the neighborhood but for a few minutes at a time.
For all my work regardless of medium I prefer a certain amount of density. Especially with my collages, I like the effect of the viewer being able to find new little things with each viewing. An open ended narrative which leads to one’s own personal daydreams.
Paper Life Painting 