How NOT to Exhibit Art in a Show

I'm sure that I am not the only artist that gets a little warm fuzzy feeling upon seeing their work hung in a gallery with other inspiring works of art. After all, not only can you and your friends and family make a night out of going to the opening reception and a yummy restaurant, but you know you will not be showing said friends and family embarrassingly crappy artwork, because someone else has already validated it by choosing it for this exhibit. (Insecure, moi?) For me that process has been on the back burner for a number of years as I dealt with other issues, but earlier this year I started to peruse the call for art listings and chose two local shows I wanted to submit to. One in Dallas and one in my own town of Fort Worth.


So I did the difficult selection process, and the almost as difficult titling and pricing. Only paintings that were already adequately photographed were in the running. Dimensions were recorded, files were renamed, and the submissions with their artful (one hopes) images were sent off into the world of web. (And for those of us who were artists back in the day, isn't that a wonderful step up from having to get slides made and physically mailing them out?)

Then I planned for my trip to visit my friend in California for her birthday, all the while imagining how excited I would be if my paintings were accepted. I may have even mentally composed a FB post announcing my inclusion in the show.

Well.... after a lovely visit, during which, I assure you, I did check my emails and other essential media via my cell phone, I thought, Hmm, let's just check on those art submissions.

Joy! Two of my recent paintings were selected for the FWCAC show. Great news, especially as this is a place Edward and I make a point to visit when we are available for their monthly gallery openings. They have several usually themed rooms, and always have some cool and interesting art. 
Sorrow! Because the intake of the art happened while I was in California, and I totally missed it.

This cringe-causing statement was in the Congratulations! acceptance message, If you do not respond with the information above in a timely fashion, we will assume you will not be able to participate. Sigh.

So, here are the two pieces that would have been in the exhibit.

Swan Lake Haiku   acrylic on canvas


Can you see the swan?

The Drawing of the Moon  acrylic and pen and pencil on canvas

Both of these paintings have as their base a really interesting painting technique that I have been experimenting with for a while, fluid acrylic pour painting. So many marvelous results can be created with this technique, both as final products and as incredible backgrounds for further work.

So, to avoid this kind of disappointment, (because, given the post title, there must be a moral to this story) always read the details carefully, be aware of when the gallery or institution will be making its decision, and aware of when the intake of art will happen.

{In addendum: I want to acknowledge that I did, early this year, have some paintings in an absolutely lovely local gallery, The Grackle, accepted in a less formal way than I have talked about here. More about that later.}

Little Paintings and the Art Piano

Before I get to the paintings, I want to share this picture. I was so excited yesterday when I saw this hanging from the arbor. It doesn't look like much now, but these little fuzzy buds are the promise for a huge overgrown arbor full of fragrant purple clusters.


I painted small yesterday. Three 6x6x1.5 inch canvases. They went pretty well, and I hardly stressed over the painting at all. That might have something to do with the small size, but I think that staying in the art mode and having painted just a few days ago helps quite a bit.

That size canvas is just so cute.

Orientation?

Here they are inside after Edward and R had their way with them. I agree that they work fine this way too, but I had to insist that the last one stay with the blue on top. (Okay, I admit it, it looks not horribly wrong with the blue on the right edge as well.)

The art piano

I just had to take a pic of my piano covered in some recent paintings. And with a relaxed Edmund Hillary the crowning touch on top.

Mom and Daughter Painting Time on the Deck

Last week I spent a warm day out on the deck painting. This canvas is 28x20. I haven't been able to come up with a title yet.

After school R had no homework and spent some time with me, painting these 3 canvas boards. The one on the left is a conservatory with telescope looking out into space, inspired by the lecture we attended a week ago by astrophysicist, Neil Tyson. It was fun, interesting, thought-provoking. During the walk to school the next morning, R was planning the colonization of Mars.

Painting Angst: Process of a Work in Progress

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to decide I would chronicle the progress of 2 paintings I was starting simultaneously Friday. Maybe it made me a little self-conscious and stilted, maybe a little bit more critical as I was painting.

Friday was an absolutely gorgeous day to be outside painting. It was 80 degrees, and I was on the deck barefoot and in a tank top, having shed my oversize paint shirt. (As a follow-up to my last post about Texas winter weather, I want to add that Saturday was a windy 31.)

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to track the stages of the two canvases. Here's what I got:

Making early color choices, starting to define areas with blocks of color

This is the beginning of the "Ahgg, I don't know if this is working" stage.

My little helper in right top corner, usually a skittish, fairly wary cat, was fascinated by the movement of the paint brush. Later she came up onto the canvas to play.

Well into the "I think I hate this painting, what can I do to fix it" stage.

I can see now that by this time, things had started to get better, forms had taken shape, I'd made some good changes, but I think at the time I felt like the painting, as Edward put it, "was kicking your butt."
You can see that between this photo and the previous one, the kitten had been replaced by a glass of wine.

I had to walk away for a couple of hours, then I finally decided that this one is finished.

This one is close, but the amount of yellow at the very top near the left still bugs me and will probably be messed with some more. When I get out the paintbrush, who knows what else I may tweak...

It's almost 4 am (still kind of Saturday to me, since I only slept a few hours), and Edward leaves noon Sunday for a week in Iowa, so I am going to try to sleep some more now and be awake for his last few hours at home.

First Painting of 2009

R says it goes the other way, horizontal. Of course she had a whole story about a house by the beach, or maybe on an island, with lots of detail about what all the elements are. I always enjoy her interpretations of art and her great imagination. My own thoughts on the different bits in the paintings and usually of the meaning or subject of the painting itself are almost always a lot more vague, more open ended.

The Most Beautiful Thing

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” (Albert Einstein, What I Believe)



I love this Einstein quotation.

I put it on a coffee mug for my oldest son, that I designed on Zazzle. (The mug, not my son.)

It's hard to see on these little images of the mug that I captured on the Zazzle site, but here is the painting that I used:

Divination, acrylic on canvas

Horizontal worked best for the mug of course, but this is one of those pieces that I can see being hung different ways, even more so because it is a diptych. I show it three different ways on my Etsy site.

I like being able to give art or things based on my art as gifts. It seems more personal, but I don't want to overdo it.

New Abstract Painting: Which Way Is Up?

Have you ever looked at an abstract piece of art and not been sure which side was supposed to be the top?

I painted this painting that I finished today with a definite opinion about what the top was, but when I looked at it finished, I thought, Hmmm, that could work another way.

I thought this way looked ok too. And then...

I asked my oldest son which side he thought was the top, and he turned it around this last way. When my 11 year old daughter came home from school, I asked her, and she said that it definitely was supposed to go the way I had painted it in the first place.

What do you think??

By the way, we discovered that a painting by Matisse was hung upside down in the Museum of Modern art in New York, for 47 days...or about 116,000 views. !

Art Prints and the Business of Art

Over the last two days I have been selecting and loading digital images of a few of my paintings, collages and photographs to the website Imagekind. I have been noticing a number of artists with their own sites and with gallery representation directing possible customers to this site to purchase art prints.

From the site: Imagekind (www.imagekind.com) is the world's fastest-growing art site offering over 750,000 high-quality fine art images for sale. Imagekind gives consumers limitless options to purchase museum-quality framed and poster art from over 50,000 domestic and international emerging and established artists.

Serving as a community for professional artists to create and sell their work, Imagekind's goal is to develop a new online art experience that provides both consumers and artists with a new outlet for sharing, creating and buying art from digital files.

Night Flow
acrylic on canvas
virtually matted and framed

One thing that is fun with Imagekind is the ability to see all your work as matted and framed prints in different sizes and with a huge variety of different framing options. Images are also available printed on canvas, as a nice quality card (if the artist approves that option) or just as a simple print with no framing. It has been interesting for me to play around with all the options for my images in my Imagekind gallery.

This seems like a valuable service for artists who may not have large format printers and archival inks and do not have to spend the time away from their art to print and ship, and for buyers who would like a piece of an artist's work, but are not ready to invest in an original.

There are a number of online resources these days to help artists negotiate the business end of their field, prompt them to promote their art and instruct them that they must be business people as well as artists. I am not much of a business person and am definitely a little allergic to financial concerns and anything too much like math. (I also often feel like promoting feels a little bit pushy and full of myself.) But I do read a couple of blogs like Alyson Stanfield's Art Biz Blog. She also has a book about artists self-promoting with a great title, I'd Rather Be in the Studio.

One small piece of advice I picked up from her is to use your name for your art business, and I used that advice a few weeks ago when I opened up my etsy shop for fine art. Yesterday I decided to set up a business email. So, with Edward's help...um, okay, Edward did it all, I just decided on the address name...I now have AnitaBarnard@13moonsgrove.com, just for art matters.

Happy Halloween, Samhain and Storybook Parade

Today's work of art:

Watch out or you'll get hexed.
R as Bellatrix LaStrange
at the school Storybook Parade

I don't have anything new ready to post, but I do have this small collage from a year or so ago in seasonal colors - much more orange than I usually use.

Fabric and paper collage with
acrylic painted papers 5x7

Also, check out my Etsy site for views of Divination, an acrylic on canvas diptych I painted a few weeks ago. (One of the ones I was struggling to photography well the other day.)

May you all get all the candy corn and chocolate you wish for!

Photographing Paintings, Diagnosing Mono and Posting Collages

Natura
acrylic on canvas 20x16

I spent a good deal of time yesterday with the tripod set up in the living room taking pictures of a number of paintings...or at least attempting to. I have learned that adjusted white balance and a smidgen of sharpening in an image program (thanks Michelle!) can really help to get the photo to look like the work of art.



This morning I took my daughter to the doctor with a very sore throat and neck and headache and found out she has mono. Now, she's only just turned 11, so I doubt she's been kissing anyone. The pediatrician said it's like the worst sore throat in your life, and that it would probably get worse before it gets better, but she is in good spirits, if a little bored. She was asking this afternoon if certain friends could be asked over to play....uh, I'm not too sure that their moms would be too crazy about that idea!

Needless to say, I didn't get much art or photographing of art done today, but I did post these 2 collages on my Etsy shop this afternoon. Completely without titles! If anyone can come up with some suggestions for me, just let me know...my brain is without ideas right now.

Handmade art collage composed of paper, fabric, highly textured handmade paper, acrylic painted papers, found and repurposed images. 10x8

More Paintings and Mutant Peppers

I haven't yet titled this painting I did a couple of weeks ago, but I'm thinking about giving it the name of an imaginary city from a series of books. I wonder if that would be okay?

The painting is 8x10, small enough that I could lay it on the scanner and not have to deal with the issues of lighting, digital photography settings and learning the new camera. Unfortunately, I can't do that with every painting, and I think I am going be experimenting with taking pictures of a larger diptych later today.



Two posts ago, there was a picture of my jalapeno plant with little red and green peppers. The little peppers are shorter, smaller, more rounded than the usual jalapeno. That's because the plant is one of the hybrids developed by Texas A&M University that is supposed to have the same taste but half the heat of the traditional jalapeno. I planted one of these and one regular jalapeno, in large pots about 8 feet apart. Which was evidently too close. Both plants have little rounded hot peppers. The other day I came in from the yard and put these 2 peppers in Edward's hand. He came down the hall a few hours later with watering eyes to report on the heat of the "mild" pepper he had just taken a bite out of.

In the garden on Friday, I planted a row of mixed "Gourmet blend" beets, the picture on the seed packet is very pretty, and some more arugula. I noticed that several almost thread thin fennel seedlings had cropped up. I'm hoping the cats don't stroll across them until they are a bit sturdier.

What I learned

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?" ~Howard Ikemoto


Today I learned how to use the layers dialog in GIMP (kinda like Photoshop) and apply a watermark to images of artwork or photos. I felt intimidated at first, but it wasn't too difficult, and easy as pie the second time. I learned from the tutorial at eHow.

The image of this painting was then posted at my new esty shop for fine art.

Trade Winds

I painted this one last week...evidently while I was time traveling. Think anyone will notice?

Works In Progress - Mosaic and Painting

This mosaic is what I have been working on lately, taking up space on my kitchen table. The inspiration and focal point is this lovely quartz stone that we found at a little rock shop in Glen Rose after we hiked around the bed of the Paluxy River in Dinosaur State Park.

Unfortunately, I realized that the unglazed ceramic tiles I had planned to use on most of the background just would not work. The tone was all wrong...yuck. Then, I found out that my local big tile supply store had closed, so I went searching on the internet, and now I am waiting for some more tiles, that may or may not work in this piece. I won't know 'til I see them.


So, this will continue to sit on the table a while longer. Happily, with the cooler weather we can eat outside on the deck, which I love best anyway. Hurray for approaching Fall.




I've been dreaming up paintings lately when I'm lying awake at night and my brain won't turn off.
So, yesterday I scrawled some lines in Caran d'Arche on 2 canvases and then coved them with acrylic medium and crumpled or folded tissue paper for texture and another layer of medium.

This is a real experiment for me, but I like how the textures came out.

In fact, I like how the larger panel looks right now with the texture lines running vertically, but I doubt any of the drawn/painted lines will be visible later as I have this envisioned (yes, from in bed at 4am) as an almost all deep red.

It's kind of fun to be thinking about painting again, I haven't done it in a long time.