Cole with his anxious dog spirit animal! 

10:28 pm  •  12 May 2013  •  1 note

New painting on paper!

11:18 pm  •  8 May 2013

[Work One] 

Mixed Media on Kraft Paper.

Part of the tales of the city thing I’m doing with fine art and all that! Maybe i’ll edit this and write more about it if you’d like me to. If you do send me a message and let me know I’ll describe more. 

11:12 pm  •  7 May 2013  •  1 note

[Graffiti One]

Oil on canvas

8’X6’

This was my final painting in my painting one class this semester. The whole semester was my first try at oil painting. I’ve sort of fallen in love with the process of painting and abstract painting. There was a great freedom in painting this big of a canvas it has opened up my eyes and arms in a huge way. Hopefully in the next few years I can grow and explore the painting world as a whole and make some sort of impact on the art world in some way or another. With this one I was really interested and looking at abstract expressionist. These ideas were running through my head while painting. My biggest influence was Lee Krasners work along with a bit of Steve Rodens work, ( I had done a replication painting of his work earlier in the year.) Along with these expressionist ideas I was thinking and looking at a lot of various street artists and their large mural works. I think I’m going to learn a bit more about the content involved and hopefully some sort of theme and idea behind the paintings. But that will evolve later as I paint more and more I believe. 

10:43 pm  •  2 May 2013  •  3 notes

[Time Is The Real Bull]

Oil on canvas 4’X4’

We had an assignment in class to create a painting based on a drawing we did of one of the paintings at a museum on campus. The Blanton was holding an “Eyes of Texas” Exhibit and it was showcasing all this work by various almuni collectors or something like that. Either way there was a huge collection of art that was just great, tons and tons of variety and really something for everyone. I was going through trying to find all these paintings and figure out what I wanted to do. I ran into a big painting upstairs, Lee Krasners “The Bull” It was fantastic. The application of the paint the whole abstract nature of it was wonderful there were too many feelings and expressions when I saw the piece, I must have starred at it for hours just trying to understand how the paint was applied how the marks where made what the point was. I sat down and did a drawing of it and it was great to watch people come by it and comment on it. In particular there was a group of older men who had come to look, typical sports dad kind of guys looked like they probably played football back in the day and now had some respectable job at a stable place. They were just some typical middle class looking older men, their comments on the piece were some of the best, they were so excited to see the work and spent a great deal of time explaining and arguing on if there was an actual bull to be seen. Turns out later that these guys knew a good deal about art, I took to following them around the exhibit while I was looking to see all the history they knew about the pieces. They knew such a great deal about anything to do with western themes it was un believable. If the painting featured any sort of western theme or southern artists they knew all about them and where they were working it was sort of mind blowing. 

anyway I started to read more and more about Krasners work and I really enjoyed the shapes and the breakdown of space she was using in all of them. In particular I became interested in her paintings that focused a lot on eyes or lillies or whatever but used a particular color palate that was muted. In some way shape or form once I started painting it translated into this piece. I was thinking of more street art works as I was painting this one and two other’s I’ll show in the next week. I was thinking about linear work and more contemporary artists and artworks while in some way trying to make a subtle nudge to the past. 

12:18 am  •  1 May 2013  •  2 notes

I’m pushed to do a text post now to explain a little bit to anyone following me or maybe to just talk for a bit.

See the interesting thing about going to art school is you find yourself in a situation that’s contradictory right off the back. You came to be creative and it seems like everyone there want’s you to be anything but creative. It starts to bring up the idea of what creativity even is. I talk to a lot of people of different majors and they all seem to believe that art school is some sort of magical place where everything is fun and you are doing what you love. But it’s almost the complete opposite. It’s work, it’s hard grueling work where you get out of class feeling that you don’t belong. I’ve seen it in so many faces, there are the sunken eyes and the sadness and fear in all the faces around, the act the happiness to mask emotions the excitement and the apathy all of it. If you want to see people struggling go to the art building on your campus and just watch them, watch them for some time you won’t always catch it, it happens when they are away from  big crowds when they have time to sit and think and reflect on the little creativity they’ve gotten to do that it happens.

But I will say that art school while being one of the toughest and most depressing grueling times is also one of the best times. It is the time when you are allowed to be most creative. (see contradictory) There’s a certain joy in seeing someone find something they are interested, breaking free of that idea of what they have to do and instead do what they want to do. There’s a certain joy of seeing people start to understand and grow, and there is a brilliant and beautiful point where you realize the people around you are growing along with you. 

I see these people with sunken eyes and tired faces, I see the lines of stress in their face and the weakness in their voice, the uncertainty in movements or speech or application of whatever medium and I feel for them, I’m the same way, I go to draw and I can’t help but feel there is something wrong something not right there’s some way of doing it.

The truth is there is no way, anyone who tells you that is a liar. There are a million ways, there are a million applications and mediums and choices and artists and history and ideas running through the air every second. The hard part is to grab one of those, to take all these contradictory ideas and say “How am I going to apply them to anything how am I going to make sense of this insane amount of bullshit being fed to me by every voice.” 

For me I’ve taken to using that as a sort of sensory overload, and i’m liking work based on that sort of collaboration of idea upon idea upon idea upon idea. Some strip it all down to the bare essentials and promote minimalism and design, others sit some where in the middle. 

The difference is with a subjective major, a job a skill used to be creative you have to sit and think well what does this mean. And it’s not to say that something like math isn’t hard, that’s not the point to be made they are different sides of the same coin. But the idea is there is no one path of application in art.

I heard from a TA my freshmen year that they are told to be extra careful and aware as TA’s in the art department. That the Studio art program has the highest degree of depression in the school. Imagine that, a top tier university in a major city in a major state, with some of the best major programs out there, and the highest depression rate comes from someone who every says “It’s great that you are doing what you love” it’s almost awfully ironic. But here’s the catch, we are doing what we love, but what we love most of all is being able to make others love that work. Anyone who says different I’ll fight. What we want to do as artists is make work not just for ourselves but for others. 

We want to share an experience we want to make the world a better place in some way. The scientist the mathematicians they use their craft to make the world a better place, why can’t we? Why can’t we create work that inspires or eases the tension. why can’t we make political work, why can’t we revolutionize. 

It’s the end of another year and with it has come a whole new degree of artistic maturity, a whole degree of confidence and whole degree of self doubt. 

I’ll leave with a quote from my portfolio review today.

“It’s never fucking done. It’s never going to be done. The important thing is you keep asking yourself that question, the important thing is you keep asking what can be done.” 

11:17 pm  •  30 April 2013  •  1 note

Setting up for a presentation in my DTA class. 2 images running side by side, one a peaceful scene overlayed with city sounds like cars backing up and all that good stuff, the second a visual overlay of cars and buses and city sights with peaceful sound.

11:25 pm  •  29 April 2013  •  1 note

[These three walls]

11:58 pm  •  18 April 2013  •  1 note