I don’t have that issue these-days with taking a break from ART - I barely get over to my studio once a week - but I’m also thinking Art very often, and for me Art and Web Analytics are not a seporate activity, they’re one.  And I don’t take a break from that too often.

So maybe Knowing when to take a break from art does apply to me and a lot of other people I know.

“….Emotional reactivity is essential for making art, but out of the art-making process, it can be annoying, disruptive, counter-productive. The soldier and the policeman are trained not to have emotional reactivity, but the artist needs to develop it, harness it. The challenge for the artist it to be able to switch it on and off at the right moments.

There are the simply structural solutions for getting out of the art mode: don’t go to the studio on off-days, turn the pictures to the wall. The psychological solutions are more subtle: don’t think about that difficult painting or series at the wrong moments.”

We had an English Model who is a modern dancer who travels and lives between Europe and here; I imagined I was painting a woman coming out of the lake, near Stonehenge - but I don’t think she comes from that part of the United Kingdom (she’s closer to Bath, if I recall what she was saying).

First time we had a paid model who was told to keep her clothes on; I’d have preferred she had taken them off - since I liked the model I painted her, else I’d not have bothered.

 

One thing with the model ….everything is there - nothing really needs to be invented - the human model has everything - all that’s needed is to extract what I want - that’s why I like painting models.   I also put in a woman I often see painting from the model with her drawing of the model in the lower right.

I took the painting to the adjacent room so I could look at it away from the setting it was done and my first thought was ..  the colors hit me from a distance - I want my paintings to hit the viewer before they even know what they’re looking at.  That seems to be something I’m achieving more often as I trust myself as a creator. 

I’m not sure my digital photo really captures the effect I’m talking about.  When I go to a museum and look at the painters I most admire, like Cezanne, Manet, Matisse, etc, often the colors have a power beyond the painting, they speak directly to the soul.  I try to allow that to happen in my work.  When I looked a this painting from 30 feet away - the colors spoke to me.   If that’s my gift, I try to stay with it…amplifying it ….letting it happen.

Also, a curious thing is beginning to happen, and I noticed it today. 

To step back a bit -  I often sketch, I carry little black sketchbooks that I spend several hours a week sketching in whenever I have spare time - it empties my mind and sets me a peace with myself - and often when I’m in turmoil - or just captures a feeling, I sketch.  

I’ve developed, or refined a cross-hatching approach that feels right to me and do most of my drawings that way - creating a lot of subtleties in tones and lines - all that I’m usually aware of, as I am sketching. 

I consider my sketches every bit as important as any other painting I do and I’d feel very sad if I lost a sketchbook as I put so much of myself into my sketches and my sketchbooks.

The curious thing that happened here - in the rainbow effect in the left part of the painting - I began cross hatching just as I do when I sketch with pen on paper. 

I used many colors rather than one pen color - and I noticed the cross hatching approach added an additional element to this painting today.

I tried to capture the spirit of this woman - European, Celtic (not sure if she really is of Celtic background or not - but as long as her features remind of that, who cares if she really is or not - it’s only what is in the artist’s mind and heart that really matter), almost as if she was Guinevere rising out of the Lake (or Lady of the Lake).    

A bright red shirt/blouse was my aim to fully capture - but I could not get all the bright reds that I wanted.

Overall, I was pleased with this work, only I would have rather painted her nude than clothed - but that was not my choice; a woman with a great body like hers ought to be painted nude, its more interesting that way, at least, to me.

After, I went into Manhattan, over to the Metropolitan, which will be the subject of another post and video.

I was briefly at the Chelsea International Fine Art Exhibition” benefiting UNICEF at Agora Gallery (Chelsea) last night and was impressed with some of the work I saw; I was not expecting that ….. and the curator of this show has very good taste (I spoke with her for a moment).

I had dinner nearby and went home.  Been an exhausting day of an exhausting week.  Worked a lot of my Second Life Metrics deck for IBM and I needed to clear my head…and I think this show did the trick.