Some months back, I created a painting on cardboard in a series of deliberate steps. And as I went, I took pictures of each stage of the painting, with the intention of eventually creating a sort of narrative about this creation.
And then I got busy with job stuff and tucked it away in the back of my mind.
Well, the other night, I was showing my work to friends, and I pulled out this finished piece and showed it to them and explained the process I'd gone through to create it. And they thought it was way cool.
The piece I'm going to be displaying in the coming weeks is an end-creation of a deliberate process. A narrative in color and paint, if you will. An experiment in textures and merging of phases. It's the story of a life -- a life of a woman, growing up from a young girl to a full-grown woman.
It's starting out as an online installation, then I'll be turning it into a full-color book.
I hope it will be enlightening and thought provoking. Barring that, I think it will be fun to create. The painting surely was.
More to come...
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
15 June 2009
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)
Circus (October, 2007)
Double Fuse (October, 2007)
Feather (October, 2007)
Gemini (October, 2007)
Green Fuse (October, 2007)
Gridlock (October, 2007)
K-Type (October, 2007)
Mountain Air I (October, 2007)
Mountain Air II (October, 2007)
Mountain Air III (October, 2007)
Ode to Kandinsky I (October, 2007)
Of Earth (October, 2007)
Omen (October, 2007)
Piet I (October, 2007)
Ringlet (October, 2007)
Self-Portrait (October, 2007)
Splay (October, 2007)
Stormy (October, 2007)
Suess (October, 2007)
Sundown (October, 2007)
Swept (October, 2007)
Treetops (October, 2007)
22 May 2009
I am neither painter... nor poet...
I am an adventurer who ranges far and wide to see what life has to offer, and then records my experiences in color and words. If color happens to use paint and canvas as its medium, or even pen and paper, then so be it. But it can just as easily find expression in wood, stone, clay, marker, colored pencil, graphite, oil pastel, watercolor... or on the monitor in front of you.
Acrylic paint on heavy canvas suits me better than the more refined "professional" supplies that promise to make a work of art an "investment" for the collector. And it gives me a broader, wider, deeper "vocabulary" to work with.
Just as written words, spoken words, felt words shaped and plied in solitude feed and sustain me far more than public performances or "poetry slams" (heaven help us).
These media give me a way to record/express/memorialize/archive my adventures in a shareable and (I think) exciting way. Through the use of color and light and texture... through the sing-song lilt of vowel and consonant... the nuances of not only what I've experienced, but also how I've experienced it, can be captured and expressed.
Through the eye and ear -- and through touch as well -- the full range of human experience can reach into the deepest centers of the brain and tickle the mind to new knowledge, new understanding, new appreciation, new experience, and renewed humanity.
I don't "think" art should ennoble us. I know it should.
Acrylic paint on heavy canvas suits me better than the more refined "professional" supplies that promise to make a work of art an "investment" for the collector. And it gives me a broader, wider, deeper "vocabulary" to work with.
Just as written words, spoken words, felt words shaped and plied in solitude feed and sustain me far more than public performances or "poetry slams" (heaven help us).
These media give me a way to record/express/memorialize/archive my adventures in a shareable and (I think) exciting way. Through the use of color and light and texture... through the sing-song lilt of vowel and consonant... the nuances of not only what I've experienced, but also how I've experienced it, can be captured and expressed.
Through the eye and ear -- and through touch as well -- the full range of human experience can reach into the deepest centers of the brain and tickle the mind to new knowledge, new understanding, new appreciation, new experience, and renewed humanity.
I don't "think" art should ennoble us. I know it should.
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.
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.
01 August 2008
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.
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.
30 July 2008
11 November 2007
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