How -- and why -- (visual) art suddenly matters

Actually, art has always mattered. No doubt about that. Art (of many kinds) and music have been staples of human experience for as long as we've been able to draw figures and sing and dance and make stuff that is not only functional but also beautiful. They're staples of the human experience, and they have a way of getting to us in ways that only they can.

I'm going to talk about visual art, here. Much as it dovetails and consummately integrates with visual art, music is a whole other massive world unto itself, and I'm going to leave it alone for the time being.

There's a reason that art collections, whether corporate or personal, grow over time. There's a reason that art has become increasingly valuable over the past years. It's not just about art portfolios out-performing stocks and bonds and real estate in long-term appreciation of value. It's not just about striking a pose and chatting about your latest acquisition at a dinner party thrown for the parents of the kids your child goes to private school with. It's not just about making a good impression when you're standing in front of a piece at the MFA or MOMA or WAM and some good-looking (and apparently single) individual stops beside you to admire it.

I've been working with colors and lines and light for decades, now. I've been doing it in the privacy and comfort of my own home workspace(s), building pieces out of whatever was available, and being alternately surprised/dismayed/pleased/distressed/annoyed/encouraged/invigorated by the results. I haven't had a lot of formal training -- almost none, if you must know the truth. I've had a sort of "fringe" arts education -- hanging with people who have had the means and the opportunity to receive formal training, who assured me that what I was creating was every bit as inspired as what they came up with.

But I never really took it to heart. Art for me was always something that was, well, for me. A sort of poor-woman's therapy that kept me going through thick and thin.

And while I haven't shown a lot of my work to a lot of people, I have had a lot of time to think about art and light and color and lines... not in the context of a formal educational environment, but in the context of my own life, my own art, my own impressions. And the ideas and approaches and attitudes I've developed around art and its place in the world have had the freedom to grown and change in a sort of hermetically sealed one-way mirrored container of sorts -- always looking out, always looking out... reading various things along the way, contemplating those things, changing my views, adjusting my attitudes... all along the way...

And what this isolated thought process of mine has come up with, is that (visual) art is, in its purest form, simply information. Its lights, colors, lines, textures, shapes... it's all information. And it is non-verbal information that is actually a synthesis of and extension of verbal information -- a visual-spatial "echo" of the linear-sequential info we are constantly taking in, which sends out ripples of effect throughout the whole of our lives, the whole of our world. What's more, color and lines and shapes and textures enable our brains to synthesize the linear-sequential information, so that it can be integrated into our whole selves, and so inform our own growth and evolution.

Visual art, to me, is a complement and logical extension of this linear-sequential-information-rich modern world we presently inhabit. Each and every day, those of us who are connected with computers and other media are bombarded with information at a dizzying rate that probably would have driven our great-great-grandparents over the edge. We can't possibly take it all in. We can't possibly make sense of it all.

Unless, of course, we use art.

More work from last year

I'm working my way through my drawings and paintings from the end of last year, digitizing them and posting them. Eventually, I will get around to posting them individually with information on their media and original dimensions. The colors don't always translate exactly, but I'm pretty happy with how they've come out.

Here are some more:

Central Sun (October, 2007)

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Circus (October, 2007)

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Double Fuse (October, 2007)

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Feather (October, 2007)

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Gemini (October, 2007)

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Green Fuse (October, 2007)

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Gridlock (October, 2007)

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K-Type (October, 2007)

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Mountain Air I (October, 2007)

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Mountain Air II (October, 2007)

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Mountain Air III (October, 2007)

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Ode to Kandinsky I (October, 2007)

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Of Earth (October, 2007)

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Omen (October, 2007)

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Piet I (October, 2007)

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Ringlet (October, 2007)

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Self-Portrait (October, 2007)

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Splay (October, 2007)

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Stormy (October, 2007)

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Suess (October, 2007)

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Sundown (October, 2007)

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Swept (October, 2007)

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Treetops (October, 2007)

Okay, so I've got all this art...

It's pretty wild, how much of it I have. I mean, tens upon tens of works, in a variety of media. It's like my poetry -- I have a lot of it, and it comes very naturally to me, so I end up not thinking much of it -- I mean, I do think much of it, but it doesn't make as much of an impression on me, while I'm creating it, as, say, coding up a web app or something like that.

For some reason, if it comes easily to me, it just rolls out, and I forget about it -- sometimes -- almost as soon as I've created it.

And since I often (usually) work in solitude, frankly, not many people know about it.

So, I'm working to change that. The web is full of social networking opportunities, so I need to just avail myself of them, I guess.

For starters, I've uploaded a whole bunch of my artwork to my Flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaystoner/. I haven't gone in and created a whole bunch of descriptions (yet). I just got them up there.

There's plenty more where that all came from, and I'll eventually get to it.... But what I wouldn't do for an intern, or someone to help me organize myself...! Or someone who has a real knack for marketing... and who knows about art... Oh, hell - whatever.

I'm just glad I'm able to do this, and that I'm able to share all these pieces.

Maybe someday I'll find a benefactor who can help me get this out to the world. But in the meantime, at least I've got Flickr. And my blogs.

Engineering co-creation

It's the day of a Total Solar Eclipse, and I've been painting since about 5 a.m. I woke around 4:04, when the eclipse started (on the East Coast), and I tried to get back to sleep, but it was nothing-doing. So, I got up and went to my studio to see what was becoming of the pieces I've been working on.

I had given some thought to modeling some figures for friends of mine, to capture the spirit of the day, but I got caught up in painting.

I've been wanting to paint for some time -- with brushes, I mean. I do that type of work periodically, when I want to hone my brushwork. But honestly, it's just not me. I don't have that kind of dexterity to manipulate the brush pressure and direction, and my lines end up being more blobby than I want.

A whole lot more blobby.

Not good.

Now I'm presented with several choices that I can see:

Either keep at the brushwork and try like the dickens to sharpen that skill, running the risk of developing a skill that really isn't "me"... and losing valuable time in the meantime, when I could be creating works that are much more in line with what I'm like, and my orientation to the world. I figure I stand a pretty good chance of becoming a middlin' brush gal, if I keep at it.

Or I can cut my losses and limit my brushwork to occasions where I'm not as dependent on precision as my smaller works are... and develop ways to "engineer around" the blobbiness that tends to emerge from my attempts at straight lines. And let the paint do the actual work.

I choose the second option. Already, I'm coming up with ways I can not only have the precision that I want, but also work with the media I have in ways that are totally appropriate to them... and in ways that let them "do the work," using their very qualities to achieve the effects I'm seeking, rather than trying to impose my will on them.

It's an interesting concept I'm working with here -- how do I relate to my media? How do I work with them? How do I honor them as equal partners in the art I create, while still bringing my own vision through?

I think it's a new approach whose time has come -- a new approach for a new time.

The "standard issue" approach to creating art (and being respected as an artist) appears to be all about "mastering your medium/-ia"... putting in long years of work in your preferred media and then showing that you've got total control of it.

It seems (to me) to be the way folks go from art aspirations to art school to art vocation out in the world. And it seems to be what folks look for when they're considering the skills of artists in question.

But my approach is not to "master" the media, but collaborate with it. Learn its ways, its temperament, its moods, its inclinations... and then blend it with my own vision and bring forth something that is not all me, not all the paint/pastels/gouache/watercolor, but rather an amalgam of us all, equal partners in the creative process.

It sounds a little hokey to me, talking about "co-creating" artwork with the media themselves. A sort of "media animist" approach. But I am essentially an animist at heart, and I do believe that all things have spirit within them.

I'd much rather work with the media, as the media, and allow it to "do its thing" in the creative process.

Ultimately, what comes out of it is an exponentially greater expression than I could achieve on my own, by exerting my own "mastery" over the colors and textures I choose to work with.

Re: Testing my posting from afar...

It's time to start posting more of my artwork on this blog. I've got literally tens of pictures and paintings and drawings, and it's time I digitized them and put them up.

The past six months have been eventful in ways I can't even begin to express.

Now, it's time to get back to art.

The Art of Strange Bedfellows is now available online

The art of Strange Bedfellows is now available online at My Imagekind Gallery.

Giclee prints on paper, as well as canvas are available... and all of them can be custom framed at Imagekind.

Pay a visit to see what the artwork looks like on its own.

Fame - Feng Shui - Inspired artwork available at my Imagekind gallery

This piece incorporates the concept of fame in vertical triangles of red, with smaller visual elements incorporated into the intersection of horizontal triangles.

Buy it here

Purchase a print with this frame, or use principles of feng shui to choose another frame that fits your space better.