I meant to write this earlier this weekend but have been so busy with painting and SEO Work, and life (I suppose) that I really did not have the time or energy – but I think I can write it down now.

Yesterday, when I worked on the painting / oil pastel sketch below – a couple of thoughts were on my mind.

One thought – how much different is what I’d doing now than what I painted 30 years ago?   For one thing, I don’t overwork nearly as much, work a lot faster and more focused – but for all that – I feel limited – that I haven’t really challenged myself enough – to go past the edges of what I know how to do visually.

And yet, the painting / sketch above seemed to have caught something I noticed several years ago about my Homage to Manet painting (see below)

There’s a “twist”, slanting that somehow works for me.  Yesterday, the same thing sorta happened, a slanting of the post is the left part of the picture that somehow made it more interesting.   In both cases i did not plan it – but I’m aware of it now.

That reminds me – Brice Marden mentioned in his talk today that he spends the majority of his time thinking about his work and deciding about it vs. actually producing it (he might have said it a little differently – but I think that’s what he meant).  When he was younger – he worked more than he does now - and he thinks about it more  – maybe, then he did earlier in his life.

Now, getting back to my paintings – when I detect things that work – even though there’s a lot I need to work on…..that still don’t work for me ….. I can use that information again – I can be more aware of choices I have before me.

Well, I have to say that I’m happy about this …. take a look

When you click on the first “leafspace” (icon on the left) you come to a link with ….my blog, www.WebMetricsGuru.com on it.

And here’s what the page where my blog feed actually appears (I did list ArtNewYorkCity.com – but IBM picked by WebMetricsGuru.com – which is totally OK with me …. many people are reading WebMetricsGuru.com – and the foundations of my insights come from Art, and you can read about that here).

Of course, since WebMetricsGuru.com starts with a “W” and my last name starts with an “S” I am not much closer to the bottom of the page than the top – so I’m not sure I’ll get much traffic from the link …. still, it’s an honor – and as WebMetricsGuru likes to say…..I’m grinning!

By the way ….don’t you love the paintbrushes!  I’m loving it!

I write for Smartmobs.com as does Mike Love, but we’ve never met, or even exchanged emails.  However, I am very impressed with Mike Love’s post on the Genealogy of Influence in Smartmobs.com the other day. 

Using Wikipedia and XML programming, Mike Love has managed to map the Genealogy of important people – I just happened to pick artists because this is an art blog and I’m an artist.    I think there’s the begining of much bigger idea – just imagine if you could search on persons or firm name and come up with a chart of the relationships of people that person knows or that firm is connected to. 

When you hover over an Artist’s name, a short biography of the artist is displayed.  Right now, the idea is basic, but it’s the right direction and much different than what Kartoo is doing (see below).

I see the future of Search as visual (at least in the sense of organizing information) and while Kartoo’s relationship of URL with a keyword (via location in a map) is interesting to look at, it’s really not very useful at the end of the day, at least, not for me.

What Mike Love has done, using Wikipedia, is a lot more useful – you need to be able to put anything into a search and get the kind of map he’s producing for well known people who influenced each other (or the order of it).

Now it’s time to sign off….I hear the last day of Wired NextFest is today (Sunday, October 1st, 2006) and I may want to take my son to it (if he does not put up too much of a fight or my back is in too much pain).  We’ll see – maybe sleep will help a little.

Signing off.

Did another painting at Brooklyn Artists Gym this afternoon – it balances out my life as a Web Analyst at IBM and puts me back in touch with what I feel I am, at the foundation of all of this, an artist. 

My path is synthesis and seems to have come to me, or I realised it, only recently – but I was doing it all along.  I feel empthy when I look at work I can identify with, mostly paintings – it’s as if I can feel an artist’s feelings in paint – I probably had it all along did not know what to do with it, or what it was.

I did a drawing first, to warm up, as well as decide how I was going to approach the model; decided on the pyramidal theme, which sorta suggested it self, based on the composition and lighting.

Occured to me, as I painted (I see myself a channel, both in Web Analytics, Search Engine work and painting – I see no difference in the creative enegry or guidence I get based on intuition – I’m just learning to listen to it and not murder it, as I used to do). 

This is what came into my mind, it was the memory of a saying from Paul Cezanne, my favorite artist (but my sensability is much different than his - it took me many years to sort that out).  I can’t find the actual quote but it goes something like this: “art is a way of organizing sensations“.  

In that sense, I feel that’s what I’m doing and I hope my work, while I was thinking of Matisse and Bonnard, does not look like anyone else.  In fact, that’s what the model of this painting said to me as she photographed it - “does not look like anyone else’s work she could think of“. 

Why would it?…it’s my own way of organizing sensation, and that’s what painting has become for me.  I don’t stop it, I don’t murder it, I let it be, and go as far with my sensiblility as I can – and then I stop and walk away.  I spent between 2-3 hours on this nude model study.

One other thought, my own, has been in my mind a lot lately, as I do my work in one sitting these days (I can change back but right now, it suits me): “if you can’t improve something by working on it more – it’s better to leave it alone”.   What I mean – I used to over paint my first impressions, over and over, trying to be something I was not, Cezanne, for example.  I did not trust that what I put down was good enough.  I murdered it, over and over, and after maybe 10 sittings, I had what I accomplish in one sitting today – except the work is much fresher.

 

 I don’t see a point in working and working on something – if that work does not improve the end result.  I’d rather get it right the first time than go over it 10 times, blending this, blending that.   I gave up on that – I ended up with less, in many cases, than I started with….but just being in tune the first time.   Because I trust myself now…and did not then.

I did this Oil Pastel last night, during the Collective Becomings show that I reviewed, with a glass of red wine next to me.   I feel really good about just trusting myself, and letting work happen.  It’s a struggle to “organize my sensations” and I’m just following my own intuition now.  I’m not following, or looking up to anyone else…been there, done that.