Narrative Art

(I jotted this down a couple weeks ago on some scrap paper while painting):

"I am and always will be, unapologetically, a narrative artist. Life itself is an unfolding narrative event. Those who think story telling is beneath the dignity of visual art have lost touch with it’s original purpose."

Some art critics are dismissive of narrative art, presumably because they are intellectually stuck in the pretentious post-modern mid-twentieth century. Or they think that the effort to imply a story through art is some kind of a cop-out of artistic intention. I should think that at least one of the primary goals of any verbal story teller is to create images in the mind of the listener or reader. Just so, one of my goals as an image maker is to create stories in the mind of the viewer. Nothing is more vital than story-telling. Stories are how we derive meaning.

Bill Watterson Dinosaurs!

The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently published a short email interview with artist Bill Watterson. You know, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes! It got me thinking about what Mr. Watterson may or may not be doing with his artistic spare time these days. I assume (or at least fervently hope) that he continues to paint for himself. Since he no longer needs to earn a living he can enact the motto of recluse pianist Glenn Gould who said the best artist to audience ratio is 1 to 0.
I thought about his painting of dinosaurs that graced the back cover of his "Lazy Sunday Book" collection, but was unable to find an example posted on the internet. Shame on you Bill Watterson fans! So here it is.
(click on the image to view it larger)

The light

All those fires in my paintings have gone away. Recently what I've noticed is that I'm creating that same weird warm limited light source but as if it were emanating directly from the point of view, as if I or the viewer were illuminating the scene simply by looking at it. Like my imagination is itself a light, and to prove it I only have to paint it. It's a little weird but I like it. I think I'll see where it takes me. Or what it shows me.

New slides

So I finally got some more slides done. I'm having some color issues which is weird since I'm supposed to be the color control guy at my day job (which I don't want to get into, because it is lame). When I post them they seem garish all of a sudden.
Anyway the titles here are mostly tentative.
You can click on the images to view them a little bit larger.
Enjoy. Or don't. Whatever. I'm feeling ambivalent myself.























Studio at Night
(In which I pretend that the end of the world is imminent while I'm absorbed in making my little pictures)























"Linden Tree"
(one of the trees in the park near our house after which my daughter is named)

















"Muddy Road"
(My wife and the guy who takes my slides don't like this one but I thought it came out pretty good. But then I'm rarely the best judge of my own work)

















"The Fox"
I had this one re-shot because the previous slide had some glare on the left.














"Three Blind Mice"
(More of a joke than a work of art. Maybe a nice illustration for children's rhymes)

Aaargh...

[A rant written during my last painting session back in mid-December]

The truth is I have no idea if I'm any good. I paint scenes that look good to me and then think to myself, "I have no idea what that would really look like". I use photo references when I can but mostly I'm just painting completely out of my head. If I pay special attention and try to copy the details out of a photo I think the painting usually comes out better, but I always want to make it all up anyway. What the hell am I doing?

[and now... back to work. painting tonight. wish me luck cybervoid.]

The Experiment

Here's another short animation from my college days. This one is very similar to the previous "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hatrack"
the walking at the beginning is pretty awful but the rest came out ok I think.

Facebook test

I'm trying to figure out how to get my blog posts to automatically show up on my Facebook page.
Here goes.