Live Painting in Allston, MA.

It's Friday morning and I am still feeling a bit off schedule and tired.  This is most definitely because I traveled to Massachusetts on Tuesday night to participate in a live painting event with fellow artist Monkey Chow at the Treat Yo Self - Holiday Edition hosted by The Great Scott.  It was a pleasant trip.  I rode the bus to and from Boston.  On the trip down I laid out the drawings for two pieces to complete at the event.  Drawing on the bus in the dark proves to still be one of the more peaceful activities that I have experienced.

Painting in public is a strange experience.  I was grateful to be painting with Aaron (Monkey Chow) as well as being able to spend the majority of one of my greatest arts inspirations, my friend Billy Griffin.  Billy ambled about talking about art, San Francisco and his new foray into being a New Englander again, all while delivering adult beverages and grabbing me water for my paints.  It was truly excellent to see him.  However, people watching you paint is a strange case.  At first I found my motions to be a little tentative.  Then I found myself saying, "This is what you do, so lets just do it."  The interesting thing about that was that I started to feel almost arrogant in my motions.  As the night wore on, I realized that it was just another space to paint in though.  I became pretty involved in my two paintings and just worked. 

My interactions with people were varied.  When young people like my work and get excited, talking about drawing and loving art, I inevitably give them something.  I can't help it.  I love that raw excitement about what folks think is cool.  It's better than selling a million pieces.  Having enough money to live is awesome, don't get me wrong, but someone showing you how genuinely excited they are with your work gives it validity small green pieces of paper, which ignore their own lack of financial backing, can never provide.

Here are a couple images from the night.  Please pardon the photo quality from my flip phone.

 I really liked these two pieces.  It was a good experience to feel how involved I could be with something while surrounded by a distracting situation.  You will notice in the last picture my friend Aaron painting.  His work came out awesome.  As was fitting, people really loved his stuff.

Wednesday morning Aaron dropped me at 1369 Coffee House on Mass Ave, where I sat and pondered the hipster crowd I had just observed, what to give my little sister for Christmas, and made plans to meet with my friend Eric at the ICA in Boston.  After jumping off the T, I exited the street right next to this mural that Os Gemeos put up.  The joy that I felt upon seeing this piece made me as positive as ever that art is what I live.  I guess the ICA was cool too.  I'm only kidding.  I think I will follow up with some thoughts on what I saw at the museum in another Holiday weekend post.

Enjoy your weekend folks.  Sometimes the enjoyment of our holidays is all about the capacity to remain in a quality mood in the preparation stages.  Should y'all be in Portland and need a last minute something, give me a buzz.  I've got a pretty good inventory still even after the holiday sales.

Until next time.
Peace
-Mike