Paintings, Prints, and Drawings

I don’t seem to have the energy to create much art these days. I’m not sure why. Sometimes it feels like the fire has just burned out, but I suspect there is still a smoldering ember there somewhere, waiting to be nurtured back aflame. Maybe its just wishful thinking. Here’s a disjunctive smattering of stuff. I’ll add more over time. Maybe.

Printmaking

Art of the Museum

People go to museums to look at art and material culture, but for artists, they sometimes become opportunities for creating art itself, for artists can’t help but feel the “itch”, the flame rekindled within, in the presence of such abundant creativity.

Once upon a time when I had weekends free and wasn’t so exhausted at the end of my work days, I visited museums often to sketch the sculptures (free figure models that never move!) and people within the museum spaces. Here’s some old stuff from a decade ago. They’ve been stuffed in loose piles or folders largely forgotten for years. I figure they deserve their light of day, for those fleeting moments of happiness and concentration making them will never be lived again. They were largely drawing with non-archival ballpoint pens and low-budget color pencils on cheap copier paper, perhaps symbolizing the impermanent, inconsequential, and ephemeral nature of my own life and my creative output.

Paintings

I’m not much of a painter, even though it seems to be the traditional medium necessary for attaining artistic legitimacy (not necessarily the case any more). I very much enjoy looking at and studying the medium. I just don’t seem to have the patience for it. Especially oil painting. It’s messy, smelly, irritating, slow to dry, and I suffer from worries about cracking, yellowing, cheap brushes, etc. Then again, printmaking is a slow and deliberative creative process requiring expensive materials and set up, and I like that. Oh well. Whatever. Here’s some old stuff. I’ll add more.