You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Create

My brain is open.  It is open to all sorts of information and ideas, but it is far more evident that it is open; as in it is open spilling out of my ears and pooling on the floor.  There is just too much to keep track of all of the time.  I am combating it like a champ though.  I am drawing and taking it slow.  I am keeping up, but keeping myself at a good pace.  I've been making my coffee with a pour over.  I made myself lunch.  I did the laundry and picked up the house.  I have been more efficient with my lessons and grading, more prolific in my tiny doodles, and much more apt to have my nose in a book.  I have been working on watercolor studies and final pieces and every morning I create a watercolor bug.

 My phone is the devil.  I need to put it down.  It is just oh so easy to pick it up and check Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and repeat though.  Chasing a toddler around makes your brain feel like soup.  The release of the phone feels like a nice crusty bread to mop up the last of the broth.

It makes sense.  It is a fight to be able to create.  

In order to help myself both calm down and keep up the momentum of creating I've started to catalog all of the quiet moments I have with my son.  I've drawn just about everything that he has brought me or given me as a present, and also some of the moments that we share.  It has been a major help in attempting to be slow.  The world operates very quickly.  It is a fight to be slow and meticulous just as it is a fight to be creative.

I am not always winning this fight (see thoughts on smartphone above.) but I am feeling better about the it.  I am slowly trying to implement changes in my life to return myself to the creative entity that I once felt myself to be.  I am also realizing that for all of the time that I spent telling myself that I was working, I think I produce almost as much work now.  It is quite possible that it has more to do with the type of time you spend rather than the amount of time.  I've had several ex's try to express that to me before.

I've been fascinate about this idea of time, however.  There are periods of time where all I do is produce artwork and other times where in the past I have spent with my girlfriends or wife.  It does seem like this is one of the better instances of balance that I have ever mustered.  I feel as though I am making but not impeding progress.  Now all I need to do is line up a couple more shows for 2017.  Although, that might just break my balance that I've been trying to cultivate.

Peace

Mike

Failure is the Journey

A Man and his Beer Van is almost ten years old.  My general person has seen so much evolution over the course of the making of this blog.  The past two years have been filled with, "I'm backs," "I'm going to get around to its," and, "I've accepted its."  Ten years is a significant amount of time.  This blog has changed immensely and it is obviously reflective of me.

I am currently going through some of the most fierce emotions that I have ever felt.  After three years of marriage, my wife has determined that this is the wrong path.  We've been split up, but living in the same apartment, for roughly three months now.  I've received advice from a number of people, friends who have emerged from the woodwork from high school and graduate school, to my ex-fiance.  It is comforting to know that these people care about me.  It is more comforting, however, to feel as confident as I have in my own person.  I've still managed to create every day.  I have continued to create my fishing fly watercolors everyday, worked more in more in tiny sketchbooks, and even started to clean up studio a bit, working on larger pieces again and gearing up to create a miniature gallery space in the corner.  I have not been idle.  I am proud of this.

I have been worried about what will happen to my son.  He is the single most important person and priority that I have on this Earth.  I have changed, my artwork has changed, my goals have changed, and my expectations have changed, and it is all for the better.  

When I started this blog, I started with a poem written while driving a beer van.  I moved on to sketches and ideas and my thought process.  I then became obsessed with the idea that each move that I made needed to be commercial.  I needed a style.  The blog was a good way to make people aware of my various attempts at pitching products.

Now I am teaching art, however.  I have been to graduate school and spend my days with a 2 year old.  To say that I think the perspectives of 26 year old me are limited is perhaps an overstatement, but I would say that my perspectives have expanded.  I am more interested in a broader range of mediums, ideas, and styles.  I do not think that this has hindered me as an artist.  What I do think, is that often times, we become so focused on being a thing, that we lose sight of enjoying the journey.  I talk about this a lot, but I wonder how much I actually allow myself to live it.  

My journey has been immensely fruitful.  I am content with how I live my life, the people that I have met and choose to keep, and with being a father.  I am content with making art in whatever manner I can.  Sometimes I feel restrained by my responsibilities, tied to a lifestyle that doesn't seem to fit the goals that I thought I had.  But as I sit writing this, I can see that I am now making sketches, drawings, and thoughts bridging the parallels between the quietude that I experience in living with my son, the mercurial waves of urban development and destruction, and nature.  I am finally finding what my work is about.  I cannot see the future, but I bet that I will continue to feel more pleased with my work as time passes.  

As to this blog, I've determined that I would like to return to my roots a bit more.  I am tired of showing pieces in progress as my process has changed.  I am more interested in the ideas and thoughts that are crossing my dome.  That is what I'd like to do here.  Here are a few recent images from one of my tiny sketchbooks that I've been working in from Albertine Press.  They are wonderful books with some good paper.  You should check them out if you like working small but with mixed media.

In conclusion, I'm feeling more comfortable in being what I am, making what I make, and working how I work.  I am sure that the manner in which I work will change more as I grow older, but now, at 36 and working through a divorce, I feel like I am the most pleased with the work that I make that I have ever been.  I think that it is reflexive of my life.  Both are full of failures and that is wonderful. Failure leads to new opportunities.  Failure is another chance.  Failure is the journey.

A Two Year Old's Impressions of the PMA's Women Modernists

As my son and I were sitting in the Pidgy Park, Congress Square Park in Portland, ME, last night, I glanced across the square to the Portland Museum of Art, where they were hosting Free Friday.  I scooped up my boy with relatively little resistance and we scampered across Congress and Free Streets and into the museum.  After stowing our bag in a locker I set my boy on my hip and we proceeded to read the curators statement on the exhibit, "Women Modernists."

As we walked into a a colorful wall of Torr and O'Keefe paintings, I was taken by the naturalistic shapes.  My boy, however, cried out, "green bite," at the top of his lungs.  We were standing in front of a rather dark Torr image, with strong geometric shapes surrounding a single and exquisite green leaf.  My son would apparently eat this painting, but only if everyone else had a bite at the same time. We turned the corner to a wall of Georgia O'keefe.  Her works were splendid; more grand and colorful than I've ever been able to imagine from color reproductions.  Austin was also quite taken with her work.  While many, I'm sure, were thinking about the seductive nature of the pieces, Austin was more taken with their edible characteristics once again.  "Ice cream," he cried, in front of each O'keefe painting in the first room.  After 6 years of academia I was having a little trouble at first seeing what my son saw, but after a bit I realized that her Jack in the Pulpits did indeed bear a strong resemblance to a sugar cone, the flowers, white and pink and rich browns.  They were lavish and smooth and looked immensely tasty if you blurred your eyes a bit.

On to the third wall we strode to a wall of Florine Stettheimer, a painter who I had never heard of before.  As we stood in front of her busy scenes I was taken by her textures and warm color schemes, but my son was mostly taken with an object in a painting at Asbury Park that looked an awful lot like a boat.  "Boat," he screamed to the disdain of the gentlemanly dressed "art viewer" next to us.  You know the kind, my friend Melissa would describe them by very demurely removing her glasses and resting the bow on her bottom lip, wagging her finger up and down, side to side, while offering a slight head shake.  This was the moment that I realized that I was in a museum with a two year old and all bets were off.  You do what the two year old wants if you want to escape Vesuvius in the Galleria.

We passed to another wall.  This one had rocky looking landscapes, interesting in their abstraction perhaps for an adult, but reason for getting off of Dadoo's hip for a two year old.  Austin bolted into the next room.  We stood in front of a portrait of a woman on a very teal background.  His mother loves teal.  "Mama," he cried, and made a quick escape to another wall with more architectural and industrial looking pieces on it, and it was here that I realized that two years of graduate school had taught me nothing that living day to day listening to a two year old would not have.

"Chicken," he screamed, crawling out of his own skin, "Bok, bok, bok, bok, bok. Dadoo, CHICK-EN."   I looked at painting of a corrugated tin roofing taking up the lower two thirds of the picture plane.  Two pieces of industrial scaffolding were in the background just poking over either side of the roofing.  Upon closer inspection, the roofing looked like a large chicken wing structure and the red scaffolding looked like the very top of the chicken's head.  My son had trumped me.  I feel humbled and excited.  We rambled around the rest of the museum, mostly looking for paintings with boats, and I felt happier looking at art than I had in a long time.  My son had reminded me of Rene Magritte, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe."  It is all illusion.  The metaphors and allegories there for the taking or the leaving.  We were looking at art and it was fun.  We broke my masters degree in a forty minute trip to the museum and that is just fine with me.

Peace
-Mike

Introversion, Reading, Podcasting, and Making Peace

Everything seems different right now.  Life is not going as planned and so I find myself fighting the urge to delve further and further into self.  I've started reading more as a way to ground myself. Social media and personal interaction seems to exacerbate my feelings of indecisiveness. With this lack of stability in my daily life comes a more clear idea of what it is that I want for my work and my work goals, however.  More specifically, I've been thinking about the way that I work and the way that I prioritize.  These are two things that I have had issues with for a little over a decade.

I have, for as long as I can remember, been of the mindset that more to do is better than less to do.  In order to be successful, I thought, you must always be producing.  I see now that this isn't really the case.  It is hard to be "on" all the time and that isn't even accounting for all of the time that a person needs to spend marketing, promoting and building relationships with clients.  There is too much other work to do to realistically work on your artwork all of the time, and yet, that is what I've often tried to do.  It isn't terribly successful from a business perspective.  I have, however, my craft has gotten a lot better than it was when I first started working.

Lately, with problems stemming from what I think I would sum up as maturation issues, I've been thinking about the steps that I've skipped.  I can't go back and make myself not skip those steps.  I can try to build a new foundation, working my way from the bottom again.  This seems hard.  Everything can seem hard.  I've found, however, that there are several things that I've wanted to do in my life, that I haven't.  There is no reason for this other than fear of failure and rejection.  And so I have to ask myself if fear of failure and rejection is worth the price of never trying at all?  I don't think that it is.

One of the things I've wanted to create is a podcast.  I always wanted to start one, but never felt like I had anything to offer that wasn't already out there and if I did, then it wasn't really worth people listening to.  My daily watercolors have given me a bit more confidence, as I realize that I've put in work that maybe other people haven't.  I know a thing or two, even if it isn't, at times, the expected knowledge.  Now I am beginning to think that maybe this different sort of knowledge may actually be a strength and not a weakness.  Isn't that what individuality and creativity is all about anyway?

And so, I've started a podcast where I vocalize the thoughts in my head while I am creating my daily fish bug watercolor.  It began as a way to try to get myself out there in a different way and now I am realizing that it helps me see the value in what I do, the methods that I am capable of, and that I am actually able to vocalize what it is that I know how to do.  These three things seem to me like the root of the ability to sell oneself.  So as my confidence grows in podcasting, I suspect my confidence will grow in speaking about my work.  You can check out my podcast on itunes, under The Mighty Lark or on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/mighty_lark.

Here are some of the more recent bug illustrations that I have created after I started the podcast.  I had to start a second book to house the second half of the year.  These milestones feel so good right now.  

I mentioned that I also had started to read a bit more again.  Yesterday, I took an hour to myself, and went to the park to read a book.  I intend to take some similar time today.  I felt surprisingly more at peace just by allowing myself that time.  I think that going forward the biggest key to being successful in my artwork is to allow myself to be successful in daily life, with my wife, my son, and myself.

Peace

Mike

A Wisp and a Flourish

Watercolor is really trendy. At least that's what my wife tells me. She says its in. I think that it is probably always kind of in. There is something to it, much like old Eastern brushwork pieces, that truly transcends an "other" from the individual painting. 

This week I got a new watercolor kit, thanks to my mom, still my biggest artist patron.  The set came with a number 6 brush which felt awfully large to me, but as I started to use it, I realized what a fine point it would hold and that by varying my pressures and angles I could start to get some of those "watercolor" strokes people talk about.   I mean those strokes that look completely like an accident, like you gave into the world in some sort of Buddhist awareness and just let your actions be. The strokes are surprisingly satisfying even if there is a certain level of awareness to making them. 

Here are my last two bugs which I was really able to let "be."

I also started a podcast where I begin to discuss the method behind making one of these bugs every week. It's really just giving voice to some of the inner monologue while you paint. You can catch that on my soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/mighty_lark/the-mighty-lark-episode-1-the-golden-drak

Let me know what you think. 

Have a good Sunday, y'all. 

Peace

Mike

New Projects in the Mix

My world has become so full.  I am doing more design work and illustration than I've ever had before.  I have had at least three shows and a couple extra projects each year to work on and I now have a family to take care of and a son to raise.  I'm finally starting to feel okay with it.  This is it.  I'm living now.  Whatever that now is, I've got to live it.

I've been working on a watercolor of a bug every day this year.  Until about a week ago they were straight forward watercolors.  I've never used watercolor very much.  It was too unforgiving and I used a heavy hand.  I really just didn't have the patience.  Enter toddler.  I suddenly have so much more patience than I ever thought myself capable.  The watercolors have advanced though, and I knew that sooner or later I would find myself adding myself back into the project.  This past week I started adding some geometric elements into the pieces.  I really like them.  Here are a few of the best ones.

I have also started another small side project.  I've always collected a number of sketchbooks.  One of my favorit types is called Dept. de Poche.  I have a small square book that I've started making simple graphics of whatever imagery I'm into on a daily basis.  I've started thinking of them as Squares of Vitality.  I hope to fill the whole book with foundation pieces of my vitality.  Here's one of Mingus and some lettuce that is growing in my garden.

I hope this blogpost finds you well.  I'm wrestling with myself to get back into this space.  It used to be so good for me and I think that now more than ever it could be that outlet that I am not finding in other ways.

Peace
Mike

The Process Has Changed

It is easy to fall behind.  It is easy to feel as though you are not doing the things that you are supposed to be doing.  As creatives we have our studio practices, our own marketing through social media and snail media, pricing and selling, applications to shows, events, and jobs, and most of the time we also have a day job, families, and friends.  It is easy to fall behind.

I work a lot.  I work on lot on my brand and my work and I work especially hard to try to be the father and husband that I have hoped I could be for years.  This space has become next to dormant. There are several reasons; instagram, the lack of what seems a valid thing to say, and a shift in my daily necessities.  Before I had a family I could aimlessly work through my day, facing one challenge after another rather fluidly.  Now I live a more rigid life on a sometimes unforgiving schedule.  The fact remains that I still make the work.  I have just started posting it to instagram and I feel like I have less time to talk about it.  Then I think back to my older posts and realize that I never said much until graduate school came along and I determined that I couldn't write.  I determined that I couldn't write and then I started to try to write like everyone that I was forced to read in order to tread academic waters.

I teach now.  I would say that I do not speak this idiom, still.  One of the major reasons I have trouble posting here is that I expect too much out of what I write.  But don't people just want to see my paintings and sketches anyway?  I'm going to try to get myself back here with less expectation.  We'll see what happens.

Peace
Mike