Just thinking about Jean Baptiste Greuze “Aegina Visted by Jupiter” here at Metropolitan.

Aegina is unfinished, and I like it that way, better.

How much good painting and natural feeling gets covered up by trying to paint to please someone else, like the French Royal Academy.

And how lucky we are, Greuze never finished this painting.

What more did it need?

I went to an art opening at my studio tonight and a lot of people came – here’s a video I made of, what I think is, the best part of the opening.

I have a painting in the show – and I posted a video on it – last week. I wasn’t happy with the placement of my picture in the show and wanted to get some feedback from my friend, Janice, who said it was no big deal and the placement didn’t bother her.

But I feel pretty strongly about the right placement for my work. Otherwise, it was a good evening.

Earlier today, I had to run into Manhattan – I left my credit card at a restaurant I had dinner at last night (I never do that kind of stuff – well, almost never) – that worked out OK. Also, it rained cats and dogs and Park Slope streets were swarming with water – but that soon passed.

And I didn’t get that much done today – was in half a daze, had a pretty hard week – maybe it’s just part of my life.

I should say a BAG Gallery review with my work that’s hung in a way I don’t like – but that’s nothing new, I don’t get along with the curator – and besides that, it really looks like she didn’t know what to do with half the work she had to hang. This is the last show I’ll have submit to BAG – but I’m also thinking it’s very hard to be taken seriously, strange as it seems, in that environment.

Or it could be my own work, but I doubt it.

I’m almost, of the opinion, that for art to be seen and taken seriously, it takes a community around the artist (that they need to build up) in order to get that work seen and shown seriously by curators.

That is, unless the curator is someone of vision, which the BAG people, aren’t.

Maybe it’s time to leave them, or, at least, take a pause of a few months – I’m hardly using the space, anyway – maybe that’s part of it, too – but I doubt it (since many of the artists aren’t in this studio).

Here’s some other recent drawings that I haven’t put up yet or that I retouched a little.

The first one is of Liz Camps, a friend who is going through a pretty rough time – I think I captured that in the drawing, but who, I hope, will rise above it all (but not to high). I touched up this drawing which I posted earlier this week, just before leaving for Toronto – but my changes, and a re-scan, probably ought to be seen as a new instance of the drawing – even though it’s technically, the same drawing.

If you look at my work – and keep looking at it – it changes. Evolves.

I suppose, I really don’t need anyone to approve – I can go directly to the browsing public with my blogs, and to the Art World, directly via ArtNewYorkCity, just as I reach Web Analysts and thought leaders with Webmetricsguru and TheAnalyticsGuru blogs.

I didn’t really finish this drawing (above) but maybe it doesn’t matter – had I “finished” it – it would have ended up being a lot darker – and I’m not sure that’s always what I need.

And my last drawing is a scribbled idea that i’m not sure how to yet represent, or even, if i’m the right person to represent it – the idea is of measuring true influence in the world, today.

It all stemmed from the Social Media RoundTable I attended in Toronto earlier this week – but it was probably in my mind much longer than that – influence can’t really be measured just by online factors, alone, it needs to also account for off line factors (such as conferences attended, magazines and books published, etc) and it doesn’t.

I know, from my own experience, that influence is really “who I know” and “what I can ask of whom I know” – and while influence can be wider than that – I envision, artistically, a rotating sphere with a vector in the center that rotates (faster and faster) as the result of more “influence” – the influencers are really those who’s rotation is the fastest for a particular topic or sphere.

And I tried to paint that, but was in a bad mood last night (can’t you tell?) and this is what I came up with – and if I didn’t do better work, or surpass myself, occasionally, I don’t know why I even continue to paint – but I do – somehow, continue.

Did a number of sketches this week but can’t seem to get them scanned, it’ll have to wait till I figure out what’s wrong with the scanner at home (or find another way). Last night, however, I went to an opening titled “Market Forces / Part II: consumer confidence” at Carriage Trade – it sounded more interesting that what I actually saw.

Too often, the idea of a show, and what’s actually present to look at, don’t really sync up – to me, tying a bunch of photos, paintings and constructions to an economic construct – Consumer Confidence, for example, is very thin, even if you can add images of things that one consumes – it’s almost as if the connection is the curator – the idea a curator has.

But the point is – not what the curator thinks, it’s what we think – what people get out of the show – and does the elements of the show actually support, in an artistic way, the theme of the show… and it didn’t, at least, not for me.

But the wine was good! And I needed a drink, it was long, long week – some of it spent in Toronto, at the Social Media RoundTable and Third Tuesday …. and actually, I made a movie I posted up on YouTube about my Toronto trip – see below: