Someone else's thoughts

Friday April 25, 2008

“Sidewalk Dining” 12 X 16” sold

A friend through the internet, Mike Chamberlain, e-mailed me a response to my last post about good vs great art, and he made some interesting points. He gave me permission to post them here:

“I think greatness in any creation is like a beautiful sunset or any other random thing of beauty. With art I feel you must be in a place mentally and emotionally where you can truly let go and let nature take it’s course. That’s the only way true magic can occur. Often the result will not be worthy of a sale, but other times the result will be truly great. Putting yourself in a position of letting go is tough. It’s unpredictable, this is not a comfortable place to be especially if you hope to make a living selling your creations.”

“You must (leave your comfort zone) in order to create truly “great” work. If that’s not important, if that’s not something that you’re interested in then ok. But if you want to work comparable to the greats, you’ve got to take some chances. You’ve got to be ok with being uncomfortable.”

Well put Mike. You can check out some of his paintings at his website:
http://www.chamberlainpaintings.com/

I’ve been out painting alot in the past week. Some of my new paintings I’m really pleased with, and others I am kind of hot and cold about. I’m psyched about them when I’m finishing them on site, but once I get them home and spend some more time with them I’m a little less sure about their quality. Some of these have gotten pushed into the pile of canvases that I can rip off and salvage the stretchers, while others are still on the fence. It’s amazing how often I change my mind about some of these paintings. Some of the paintings that I’ve liked the most from years ago, are paintings I had the most doubts about while I worked on them. Overall though, I’ve come up with some paitnings that I think capture some really nice light… I’m geting excited to bring the paintings I’m proud of to the summer shows. It’ll be exciting to me to hear what people think of them.

With the warm weather this week, we’ve been getting the garden ready. We have some bulbs up and flowering, and Kathy got some seedlings started inside. We’re already trying to get a head start on weeding in the flower beds, and I’ve seen alot of the trees around here just starting to bud out. I’m excited for the warmth, but as a painter I’m also looking forward to getting a little more color in my scenes.

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