Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day, everyone (although I realize for some of you, the day is almost over, depending on where you live)!

I was in college majoring in art when the first Earth Day occurred. I still remember faculty and students attaching black helium-filled balloons to -- I'd guess -- 100-foot/30m heavy-duty string, and both ends of the strings were affixed to building rooftops, forming huge arches of black balloons. These forms were intended to create a visual impression of the dirty smog and particulate matter that existed in the air over Los Angeles.

In those days, "ecology" was the buzz word used in advertising; today, we hear about "going green." Maybe tomorrow, it'll be something else.

I dropped out of college in 1973 but returned in the late 1980's to tie up the loose end that nagged at me for all those years. One of my instructors wanted us to complete a self-portrait as an assignment. I decided to make a drawing with an Earth Day-theme and later created a painting in 1988 from the drawing. That painting is featured here. (For some reason, the slide and subsequent PhotoCD made from the slide exaggerated my lip color!) As you can see, my back is turned to an incredibly filthy oil refinery as smog is beginning to creep into the forest in front of me, reflected in my glasses.

I may re-do the painting someday -- my rendering skills have increased tremendously in 21 years! Next time, I'd be more tempted to use an attractive female rather than my own (ahem!) face. But I probably wouldn't try to sell the work. The painting has an admittedly pessimistic theme, and I'm not sure anyone wants images like that on their walls. But it touches on my surreal past as an artist, and I'd like to squeeze more surreal works into my schedule. One of these days. (Yeah, right!)

Nuages

OK, OK, "nuages" is the fancy-sounding French word for "clouds."

I almost always put clouds in my landscape paintings, even though clouds aren't necessarily common in the Southwest desert skies. But they do add interest, and sometimes clouds can be the best pictorial element in a painting.

I rarely attempt to paint clouds entirely out of my head -- it's harder to do than one might expect. For this reason, I have a vast library of cloud photos that I've taken over the years. I've attached a jpeg of some clouds we had around here just this morning. The top part of a Joshua tree pierces the sky in the lower lefthand corner. As you might imagine, I suspect these clouds will appear in a painting in the future.

I've also been inspired by the cloudscapes of contemporary painter Dale TerBush. He always had a way of making clouds look very soft and feathery. Over time, I've learned how to paint clouds that same way, although maybe not in as fanciful a manner as he. (Also, over the years, Dale evolved into a more dramatic and colorful look, which I haven't). Regardless, Dale's rendering of clouds has been a factor in my own development as an artist, and I would consider him to be one of my modern-day influences.

Infrared Flowers

The fun thing about infrared photos is how unpredictable the images can be.

In San Diego's Balboa Park (where I visited a couple of times over the last few weeks), some of the planters were filled with blue and purple delphiniums. Now -- if you remember your physics and your studies of the electromagnetic spectrum, an object appears blue when it reflects blue light and absorbs green and, especially, red light.

Following this line of thought, one might expect blue flowers to absorb infrared radiation as well, since this part of the spectrum lies next to the red frequencies. Nope!! As the accompanying pictures show, blue flowers DO reflect infrared.

I'm not an expert on insects, but I believe they're sensitive to infrared. Thus, if flowers want to be pollinated, they must do their best to attract the pollinators. In this case, it appears that the flower colors we see may not be that important to the bugs. Reflection of infrared may be all insects care about, as well as the scent flowers give off.

I wonder if the infrared photo is closer to what the insects see than what we see.

Sold!

Note the painting in the previous post.

I dropped that piece off at one of my galleries yesterday in the late morning. It sold about four hours later!

It would be nice if it always happened that way. In fact, I dropped off two more small pieces at the same gallery today. I haven't heard yet that either sold.

Maybe tomorrow!

Springtime in the Desert

Springtime in the desert!

While we haven't gotten as many wildflowers this year since the rainfall was about 1/2 normal, we still got to see SOME color in what can otherwise be a colorless region. The painting I've posted here shows how it looked in a previous year, when the rain was above average and the plants loved it!

I hope to revise my Website soon (in case you forgot, my site is http://www/southwestspaces.com or http://www.desert-paintings.com) when this and other paintings (some of the desert, others not so desert-y) will be added. I hope you'll check back soon.

In San Diego

Well, neither of the paintings I placed in an exhibit in a Balboa Park gallery sold, so I drove down there to retrieve them.

Before I did, I wandered around Balboa Park taking color pictures for paintings, and infrared pictures just because I like infrared pictures!

While I was in an area planted with blue flowers (delphiniums and lavendar), I talked with another artist who was painting en plein aire (or, as I like to say, "in plain air"). His pieces were fun and definitely captured the feel of Balboa Park. His name is Norm Daniels, and he even has a Website you can visit: http://www.normhere.com. I'm always a little amazed that artists can sit outside on a beautiful day and crank out paintings so quickly while I have to labor over them inside in my studio.

Anyway, I've attached a black-and-white infrared photo and a color picture from the delphinium garden (close to where Norm was working) showing the Spanish colonial-style tower of the Museum of Man.

Art In a Relativistic World

"Be original. Innovate. Invent. Following preset rules creates only mediocrity and complacency. Rules are for followers."

"In all things, the greatest progress and improvement comes from ignoring arbitrary settings. If we are to cultivate anything, we should be cultivating invention and originality."

"How can there be creative originality if there are fixed boundaries? … Good thing many creative artists don't believe in boundaries. At least the artistic leaders don't."


The above comments appeared on an art business forum I sometimes contribute to. The person who wrote these pearls never really defines his terms, so I'm not entirely clear on what he means by "rules" and "boundaries."

But he seems to be saying that all of the knowledge developed over the centuries should be utterly ignored. Just do whatever you want. After all, who is in a position to tell another artist what's good or bad art?

This seems to be an ongoing situation among artists who are trying to be completely original in making modern art. Traditional painters like myself are, of course, aghast at advice like this.

After all: what other endeavor but the field of art is ignorance considered desirable?