Didn’t get a chance to paint this week - going to my dentist and my accountant plus PodcampNYC yesterday finished me off - I had nothing left to paint with while today I need to finish up a client’s report but I may take a long walk for just relaxation and thinking.

Next week I’ll be at Search Engine Strategies in NYC Monday - Thursday and be covering it for various publications including Search Engine RoundTable and my own blogs Webmetricsguru and TheAnalyticsGuru; there will probably be a few parties and interviews I’ll conduct as well.

But I didn’t want to post nothing - so here’s something that I could post about Will new media breed new artists?

I would think so - and I’d even include this blog as part of my art - and it a way, my work over the last two years can not be seporated entirely from my blogging and now, Social Media and Twitter.

Last year I applied for a NYFA grant - and I’m almost absolutely sure I wont’ get one this year - just don’t think my work and approach fits into whomever is doing the judging - it has never has. (I covered my thoughts about NYFA.com at the end of a post I did in January   - Friday night visit to the Metropolitan provides insight).

And yet, in a way, I’m doing more for Art, both my own, and for many artists that I know and write about - through this blog - which is a work of Art, in its’ self.  But does NYFA have a category for it?   I bet not.

I bet most organizations that are divvying up the crumbs of money that do come to be granted for Artists, have no idea about what Art is - who who supports it.

Was it ever any different?

Art exists and justifies itself.

I worked on Into the Blue, the painting I started last week; I wasn’t sure it was done but the work I did, while I moved it further along (and maybe it is done - or I’m just sick of it - which is more or less, the same thing) makes me wonder if I had been better off to leave it alone.

In other words, I challenge the idea that continually working on paintings makes them better …. I don’t think it does in many cases.

Let’s see what you think of the two versions of the same thing - did you like the “before” or “after” version, or do you like/dislike both?

Before

Not bad, it seemed to have what it needed except for one thing in the middle, an extra dab of red - that’s what I started with today - and looke what I ended up with.

After

I advanced the painting much further - but is it really better?

I’m reminded of Delacroix’s saying that “one always has to spoil a painting a little to finish it“.

But, while I won’t paint on Into the Blue any more, I am not sure I got anything more by working on it more - in fact, I lost much of the freshness I had and replaced it with some push/pull/popping color stuff - but did I achieve any more, really? Probably not.

So people to tell me to keep on working on stuff - do more than one sitting - do several sittings … on one painting - consider this - if you can’t finish a painting in one sitting - you probably won’t be able to finish it in two, six or ten sittings.

More may some times be required, but in a lot of cases, I believe, the best is done quickly and in the beginning and the best execution is one that allows the beginning to remain as a permanent fixture of the work.

I also felt unready to start something new and realized it’s often easier to have work to go back to - that it’s not necessary to start something new all the time - and it might actually be too much pressure to expect myself to do that.

Again I questioned why I bother to have a studio if all I do there is come one a week for a couple of hours - even though it feels good being there - when I’m there. Fact is, often I choose not to be painting when I could be - often I’d rather party and go to art openings or museums and see art, and not so much be locked away, somewhere, producing it.

But without actually having a place to do it - do Art, can I really fully participate as both an artist and art blogger?

I don’t think I can.

On another note, I went back to the Metropolitan Museum last night to see the Nicolas Poussin exhibition again and it was great - I even took the audio tour this time plus I got to appreicate how Poussin constructed his paintings - his concept of “modes” of painting and how Paul Cezanne also contructed his paintings - but not in the same way.

Idea being that nature is a “dictionary” or resource - along with a story or stories to be told - Poussin told stories and composed his pictures to tell the story as best he could - he probably chose his palate different depending what “mode” his painting was intended to express (along with the times of day - of which there were 4, morning, noon, evening and night).

Cezanne’s approach was much different - he composed his paintings from everyday objects - but he constructed much as Poussin did - even if the vocabulary was entirely different along with the painting technique.

At the end of the day, both painters created works that blend emotion and intellect (who says you have to have one or the other) and while Poussin and Cezanne’s work can be appreciated visually, without knowing anything else about the painting or the ideas of the painter- in both cases, knowing what the painting is about - or what the painter is aiming for, brings a much greater dimension to both painters’ work.

Enough for one post - this could have been two or three posts had I wanted to make it so.

Six or seven months ago I did a drawing of a house near where I live and about a month ago I noticed the house was gone - did I have a sense of that when I chose to draw it?

In a way, is my drawing predictive of change? What do you think?

Here’s the drawing

And here’s the “missing house”, along with the missing tree at the center of my drawing but missing from the photo.    Did I somehow sense change and is that why I drew the tree, stop sign and house?

What I’m looking for here - is how an artist picks motifs - do they reflect, in a very real way, where they’re at, or where they’re moving to?

Just a thought on a rainy Saturday.