"Concerning the Spiritual in Art"

Third time is a charm, I hope. I am done with graduate applications for the year 2010 and now can worry about something else, like if my flannel shirt makes me look too redneck or something.

Yesterday was a good day. I managed to get my graduate applications sent out on Tuesday and yesterday was the first day that I was able to work on some things without the feeling that I should be completing or tweaking my proposal. I do think that my applications look good this time, which is great, because actually getting in to graduate school is definitely more the goal than merely applying, but all of that aside, yesterday, I got to work on new concepts.

When I say new concepts, I am not really sure that is entirely accurate. My proposal for graduate school involved a lot of planning around working on the types of pieces that I was working on in 2006 and 2007. I had something going with those pieces, but they were not well received in the second showing. The first show was at Gallery 110 which is to this day the best show that I have had for sales. A lot of that is probably due to the location of the gallery, however, so I am not going to stress that show, but the second showing was at Lunar Boy Gallery. I thought the pieces were great, unfortunately the public was not of the same mind set. It was about there that I started to try to work on more cute things. I thought to myself, "what sells here, is the cute stuff" and I also thought of a man who had said to me, "well if you're living in Maine and what sells is paintings of lobsters, why aren't you painting lobsters?" So I started painting birds. I love my birds. I think they are unique and 100% my happy and fun side, but I am a Virgo, which I have learned means that I am a moody cuss. I like to make pieces with a lot of depth, and disguise them as cute.

So anywaaaaay. Moving on to 2010. I don't make New Years Resolutions. It seems silly to me to make a goal based on a calendar, but when I really started to get into my paper and started to pour through some books again looking for the right vernacular to speak about my proposal, something started to click into place again. So now, I bring you some random sketches from yesterday, because yesterday, I spent in my new sketchbook, which I love.

I'm sure you remember stuff like this, and if you liked it, fear not, there is more to come, and not only is there more to come, but it will all be connected, like NY Telephone. Sorry, there was a jingle for NY Telephone when I was a kid that went something like "We are all connecteeeeed, NY telephooooooone". I think of it nearly every time someone is talking about all of us being connected. For instance with the 6 degrees of separation. Anyway.

I was doing some sketches with these before, but I wasn't paying much attention to composition or color in how it produced a mood. My colors have been kind of the same on every piece for a little while here. I wouldn't expect that for too much longer. I actually started a painting of this guy yesterday. We'll see if I get enough of it done to post it later today. It's a little different, but not too different. I really want to make the palette work for me. If successful this will just be the start to a much larger project which I will tell you about if and only if stage one is completely successful. There you go, I'm keeping a secret from you, you'll have to check back and see if I tell you what it is.

I also purchased a Kandinsky book yesterday, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art". I haven't even made it to Kandinsky's text yet but the introduction by M.T.H. Sadler was enough to make me purchase the book. His discriptions of the post impressionist and Munich scenes of art are fascinating, and it is interesting to really think about the different schools of thought that are prevalent during certain art periods. How, really their art was all about breaking rules, but they made new rules, to set how you broke the rules. Very interesting.

Things are happening here in Lewis Acrylic land. And it's mostly good. I will catch you soon.
peace
Mike