jak's parade

jak's parade on the day of the dead, 16x20 oil on canvas.

on november 1st, 2003, i couldn't sleep. two months prior, i decided with my girlfriend of well over 5 years that our relationship was as good as over. on the following day, my mother died. since then, i'd been trying to catch up on the week of studio classes i missed before the funeral and stay caught up on the current work i couldn't afford to get behind on and i'd gotten used to sleeping a few hours a couple of nights a week.
i don't know what has to happen for a person's mentality to really start bending. it might have been the lack of sleep or the grief of losing the two women that really meant something to me or the diet i'd adopted of red bull and peanut butter powerbars, but at some point i decided i wanted to paint rust, or rather, what rust looked like, and that became very important.
i think it was around 2 am when i started digging under the bed for the box i had full of unopened oil paint left from a momentary renewed interest in the medium that had diminished as soon as i got home from the art supply store. when i was 8, my grandmother tried to teach me to paint landscapes but i didn't think i was good enough, so i quit. then i got to college and started learning about abstract art and wanted to try it but was afraid of not being good enough again. but at this point i felt like the failure of not being able to paint the essence of rust was nothing compared to the failure i felt i'd been as a person, so it was just dumb not to at least try.
i took everything into my bathroom and sat in the floor. i had the kidney thieves' trickstereprocess playing on my headphones. i got thru about half the album and i abandoned the brush in favour of clawing at the canvas with my hands. i was mixing crimson with black and white. it was when i saw the way pthalo blue mixes with titanium white that i stopped and completely changed direction. the way the vibrant blue forces the white to bolt forward like a chemical reaction in the brain before a seizure. and there's that thin part between them where they blend to make a new colour that is endearing for being at the same time soft and bold. this shock of the white and blue was how i really felt. the rust i'd wanted to paint was my frustration with not knowing what to do with it, but now i knew. i used those two colours almost exclusively in my next painting, into which i tried to put every bit of guilt and grief i had as a sort of healing ritual.
so from there i took to painting the streaks and layering them. some i even did with the brush. and as i kept going, the image of confetti in a parade came to me. and since it was the day of the dead, i named it for my late friend Jak, because my mother wasn't the parade type.

faeries travel on slipstreams

I think it's time I start posting and discussing some of my art. Summer is quickly approaching and I can never paint in the summer, so this break is the perfect time to get my shit together and start putting my work out there.
This is called faeries travel on slipstreams(a general statement). It's 28x34, oil on canvas. It was a part of that first gallery show I posted about last December. This photograph doesn't depict it, but rather than paint the edges I elected to write the following, starting with the left edge and working my way around: "Generally speaking, faeries prefer slipstreams to all other forms of transportation, exepting, of course, shooting stars and the shoulders of small children. The one in my garden told me this morning and I, for one, believe him."
I found a sick satisfaction in watching people approach the painting, which was hanging at eye-level, and (if they even noticed the writing) bending sideways and backward and frontward and standing on tiptoes to read the edges while trying not to draw attention to themselves for having done so.
This painting started as an attempt to paint Despair of The Endless, from The Sandman graphic novels, but very quickly became something else. I decided about 10 minutes into this painting that the blue figure wouldn't be Despair, but rather an ethereal creature in transit. It seemed a much more optimistic subject matter, so I switched to warmer colours and continued on in my usual way of just letting the paint go where it wants.
I didn't write the text around the edges until the day before I took it to the gallery. I had just done a painting based on a short piece of out-of-context flash fictionesque stuff I once wrote about a man with an increasingly altered brain chemistry and I felt that the faeries needed a little something to say. I should note that I love the way Donald Roller Wilson just writes in narratives concerning the subjects of his paintings right on the canvas. I know I could never conceive of an entire mythology of characters and storylines as he's done, but I like the idea of stories and paintings playing together. And abstract art, i feel, is a perfect medium thru which to tell odd little indie-film, from-out-of-nowhere, yet entirely compelling bits that make you tilt your head and go, "Quoi?" I want to create art that is stimulating emotionally and intellectually that makes you feel as if you're witnessing something strange and intruiging but you can't quite put your finger on what exactly it is. So that's the point of the text around the outside, not pictured here, written in black sharpie at the last minute to add another level of perception.

so you're an artist?

last week i had to lie to get a job. the guy saw my resume and made reference to all the art classes i took at university. "so you're an artist?"
i told him art was just my hobby. i studied it so much in college to mark time while i decided what practical subject to study and dedicate my life to. because, let's face it, who ever heard of a guy making a living as an abstract painter? i learned two job interviews ago that they don't want to hear that i aspire to own a gallery someday or maybe go back to school and study art education so i can teach young artists. when they ask what i want to do when i grow up (which is almost insulting. i'm 23 and live on my own.) they want to hear that i have no real intention of ever doing anything but working for them as a loyal and dedicated drone. and that sounds like complete bullshit to the part of me that remembers what it was like to be 18 and determined never to compromise myself. but the part of me that's about to turn 24 and likes to eat more than once a day and has a son to look after had no problem telling the guy that my real passion is computers and that i genuinely miss working in a cubicle and wearing a tie everyday.

so today i started an IT security job at a bank not far from my house. i have job security for the first time since november, and i'm relieved. i know for certain that next week, i'll have a paycheck. and the week after that. and i know exactly how much it will be. but i'm bothered by the fact that i had to lie about who i am to get here. just having actually taken the step of saying the words, i worry that i'm not that far from going one more and believing the lie. i don't want to be 35 and say to my son, "you know, i used to be an artist."

One of my paintings was printed in the Arkansas Times in a bit about last night's show, which went really well. I met quite a few great people.

I have officially sold a painting in a gallery. And the show doesn't open until tomorrow. I am cautiously excited.

one small step

Two weeks ago, I submitted a portfolio to a gallery for the first time. Yesterday, the gallery called me and asked for three paintings for an abstract art show in December.

Some of the excitement has worn off, but I'm still finding it hard to believe. When I started painting, I joked about becoming an artist-celebrity, but I never expected to do more than sell a few pieces on the web. In the past week I've sold two large paintings, received a relatively sizable commission, and now I'm going to be in a gallery. It's almost overwhelming because I haven't sold a painting in months and suddenly I have more than just ramen in the cupboard. I've been eating so little in the last month or so that i've lost 10 pounds. The money I made from the two paintings I sold last weekend felt like a small fortune.

And what if the paintings in the gallery sell? What if they ask for more? What if I don't have anything else they want?
What if they don't sell at all? I would almost be more comfortable with that. At least I wouldn't have to wonder when the luck will run out.