Flickering Flames

The Wiffee and I are fans of the CBS program, Sunday Morning. On today's program, they featured a story about Herb Albert (of Tijuana Brass fame) and his wiffee, singer Lani Hall.

They live on six acres in Malibu, CA, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Herb paints, sculpts, suppports music programs (as in the Harlem School of the Arts, or whatever the exact name is) and pretty much does whatever he wants. Hey -- they can afford it! He and Lani recorded an album together and will soon be touring the country in concert.

In many ways, Herb's life is quite similar to the life I envisioned when I began dreaming of an art career -- originally as a fine-arts photographer, then as a full-time painter. I never figured on achieving the fame or wealth that Herb has, but I thought we'd be able to live on my modest income and to reside wherever we wanted to -- not in Malibu, necessarily, but perhaps in the hi desert of CA or the Sonoran desert of southern AZ. (Well, OK, we do live in the CA hi desert, but this is hardly our dream home!)

That dream has been rapidly fading or, should I say, that flame is flickering madly, in danger of going out.

For years, I attended grad school, doing experients in microbiology that left me little time for anything else. Then I entered the working world where I worked full-time, commuted for hours on California's freeways, and worked on my art as much as possible. In between jobs, I worked full-time on art: days, nights, weekends, holidays. Then, in the last ten years, I considered my full-time job to be: professional artist, with the same hours I worked as the "between-jobs" artist.

And ya know -- I'm tired!

Sales have been mixed, but over the last few years during the recession, sales have been very low. I can't even speculate on when, or if, things will ever go back to "normal" -- whatever that is. Some of the other landscape artists I admire are struggling, too.

Now, mind you -- surviving, or even thriving -- financially as an artist is certainly possible. I know artists in that category, too. But most of their artwork has a noticable contemporary twist: VERY colorful, impressionistic/expressionistic and often not showing the grand views that I love. One rarely finds the type of art I enjoy at art festivals.

Even supposedly traditional art havens like Santa Fe and Scottsdale feature little of this style of painting. I must be part of a dinosaur generation that's becoming extinct.

I do, on occasion, see/hear rumors that the avant garde styles are becoming tiresome with buyers and that realism is making a comeback. Maybe so -- but not in MY part of the world, it ain't!

But we'll see. I haven't given up on the dream just yet. But the flame keeps flickering in the dusty winds of the hi desert.

Herb Albert -- my hat's off to you.

A Little Neoclassical

This is a painting I finished recently. It's based on a piece by 18th century French neoclassical painter Hubert Robert, who painted ancient Roman ruins overgrown with vegetation with the people of his time working, dancing and playing among the remains of antiquity.

One of my favorite paintings of all time is entitled "The Bathing Pool." My artwork is based on it, except I made it a moonlight scene.

I've considered painting more scenes like this, but it's one of those areas that I go back and forth about. sort of like doing dinosaur paintings: should I or shouldn't I? To sell, or to do it just for the fun of it?

Honestly, I can't decide. It's really too busy to do much painting right now, but it's something I can certainly think about!

The Desert Under a Moonrise

The latest completed painting (finished before Christmas 2010) is a small (8" x 10"/20cm x 25cm) piece showing a desert scene right after sundown and as the moon was rising.

We had a day like this a few months ago -- I believe it was in September 2010 -- and the experts have a special name for this kind of event, although I've forgotten what it was. One can still see the pink of the upper sky as the sun, now mostly below the horizon, illuminates the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the lower portion of the sky is blue as the earth casts its shadow, the bluish edge rising as it eventually overtakes the sunlit air. And the full moon rises over a magically-colored desert landscape.

I live for special times like these. They make me the artist that I am.

Colors of the Desert Skies

We've had some lightweight weather fronts moving through the hi desert lately. Temperatures went from freezing to springlike in a week's time!

The best part, however, have been the sunsets we've been getting. I've amassed a huge collection of photos with cloud of all kinds and colors, and I refer to them when the appropriate paintings present themselves. cloud pictures like these:

Beginning the New Year

So far: I have a commission to finish, a to-be-donated piece to finish, and THREE classes to prepare for so I can begin teaching them in less than two weeks! I mentioned in previous posts I'll be instructing microbiology and zoology -- both lectures and labs for each -- but I was recently asked to teach the lab for a biology class for non-bio majors. Wow -- I'll be busy, and not with art!

Well, maybe I'll be a little busy with art.

I've been working days, nights and weekends for years, and frankly, I'm tired! I know I'll busy with teaching and squeezing in art; yet, I know I MUST find time for myself -- just to relax, play, do things that are not so much like work. I can't keep up this pace for the rest of my life -- or my life isn't going to last as long as it should.

So -- I'm trying to pace myself and realize I just can't do it all. I'll have to sacrifice some of those responsibilities so that I can be better at the things I WILL be doing.

And you know, after all these years -- that's easier said than done...

New Additions and a Happy New Year

Cute little guys, huh?

They don't have names yet, but we acquired these two from an animal shelter. They met there four months ago and became friends, and we didn't have the heart to take one and not the other. So-o-o-o...

In the meantime, we don't "do" New Years Eve anymore. I'd be painting except that I need to prepare to teach TWO classes beginning in January: microbiology and zoology. So I'll be doing a little less art until I feel I'm caught up enough in those two subjects to squeeze in some painting again.

To make a long story short...

Have a Happy New Year!!! Please keep it safe!

It's Been Strange

Still chuggin' along as I continue to heal from surgery and deal with the loss of Gracie the guinea piggy a week ago today.

It's been strange ever since I was in the hospital. While there, I had some very vivid, colorful dreams. My dreams never really make sense, and that was the case then, too. But for some reason, one of those dreams bothered me, although the dream itself didn't have any nightmarish imagery or anything I could define as bad. In the dream, I missed out on an opportunity. I've had dreams like that before, but this one...well, I don't know why it continues to haunt and bother me, but it does.

In addition, I've had operations before, but this is the first one where a piece of me -- not just a growth -- was removed. And it was a piece of me where a small part was cancer.

This last point is especially significant. It was the first time a part of me had turned into the bad guy, to the extent where if I hadn't caught it, it could have killed me. Maybe that's all part of the mental issues I've been having: the death of our pet plus the fact I narrowly skirted death myself are sobering thoughts. I know I'm not gonna live forever. Of course I know we're all going to die, but OMG! This time it isn't just an academic reflection of our futures. I'm really going to die some day!

My Christian faith is supposed to comfort me during times like this. But it doesn't. Something's changed in me, and I don't know if it'll go away in time or not. I still feel tired a lot, and I know major surgery does that to patients. Maybe when I'm up and around more and I can become involved with life again, I'll feel better about things. Or maybe not.

I guess you'd have to be a surgery patient yourself to appreciate this; otherwise, the previous paragraph could be explained away by the lingering effects of the morphine and, later, the Pergocet I was given for pain.

Think I'd buy that explanation? What do you think?

It's been strange ever since I've been in the hospital.