Gawker Artists

What a great start to the day...this morning I discovered that I am a featured artist on Gawker Artists. I'm very flattered, as there is a lot of great work selected for this site.
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Eric Fischl interview with A.M. Homes

Bedroom Scene #6 (Surviving the Fall Meant Using You for Handholds) by Eric Fischl

I've had many discussions with painters about the act of painting. Some tell me they escape into another world and time just flies by because painting is such a joy, but I am from the other camp. Painting for me is certainly rewarding and I am addicted to expression and the journey that I fall into when I am 'in the zone', but it is also an incredible battle. I get excited to continue and loath to start all at once. I have to be calm enough to see direction, but energetic enough to give the work real emotion. On more moments than I care to admit I sweat, rant and swear like a trucker, but this is the way the process is with me... pushing and pulling to get through it all. I like to know that other artists have similar struggles and revelations, especially artists that I greatly admire, like Eric Fischl. Here is an excerpt from an interview with the wonderfully controversial author A.M. Holmes.

A.M. Homes: In writing, in order to pull a story out you go so far into your mind that when you come out you feel you’ve traveled through time and that either you’ve been somewhere incredibly different or that the world has changed. And that’s a good day’s work, but it’s not necessarily a pleasant experience. In painting, where do you go?

Eric Fischl: You go into the painting. I mean it’s the same thing, I would imagine.

AH Does it hurt?

EF Well, every day there’s the technical side of the discipline and there are good days and then bad days where the painting is giving me resistance and I don’t know how to paint anymore. But there’s also the emotional side of the work, the psychological side where you go in and explore feelings and relationships and memories. Often times you find things you’re not ready for and you can’t bear that this is in front of you. I assume that’s the vulnerability you’re talking about. I certainly have times where I walk around in my studio thinking: “I can’t paint, I’m not as good as I think I am, I’m certainly not as good as everyone else thinks I am.” And I’m freaked. The other side is when you’ve opened a door and you feel the weight of the responsibility. There’s something sacred about paint. You make a pact with the painting, you will be responsible for whatever you’re putting on it, what you find out.

AH I make a pact with myself that despite how I might frighten myself, I’ll keep trying. I’m not going to compromise the work because I’m scared. I think your paintings are scary.

EF What paintings? My paintings?

AH Yeah.

EF If you think things and hear voices, that enters you, it touches you but the image can evaporate in some way that when you actually see it in front of you it becomes terrifying. Your imagination can invent and conflate and interpret. Some of it is from what you’ve experienced, but a lot of it is from things you’ve heard, things you’re imagining could happen. When I went to more realistic representations . . .

AH How and why did that happen?

EF I wasn’t good as an abstract artist. It wasn’t fun to paint. A good abstract artist doesn’t feel the limitations I felt. Also, I went to representation because I wanted a broader audience. I didn’t like the pedantic language the formalist painters used. I wanted people to know what they were looking at whether they liked it or not. And then of course, in moving to representation came the question, What are you going to represent? I never felt confident talking about anything I didn’t know much about. I didn’t see my source as being greater than myself, my experience.

Eric Fischl interviewed by A.M. Homes for BOMB magazine.

Samsung Packaging Promo

If you have an interest in tech gadgets you know how important packaging and marketing is in their popularity. There are loads of videos online showing keener geek types opening the box of their desired gadget to give you the full effect of what to expect when you get your new (monitor, iwhatever, gaming console, media player, camera) home. Usually I am not very impressed when companies try to throw a piece of viral marketing out there in you tube land for exposure, but I really loved this one...

Underpainting

The underpainting wash for my new piece is finished and I'm now ready to get going on the rest. I took this photo just before finishing it off. For me doing an underpainting is a warm up exercise, it gets rid of the white canvas and allows me to really be free with the brushstrokes and familiarize myself more with the composition. I also like to leave a little bit of the background exposed in the final painting, how much depends on the concept and composition. Its especially important for me take advantage of the bright undertones in the more monochromatic palettes, which is the case with this painting.
Below is a sample of two of my works where the underpainting is prominently exposed.

Australia implements artist royalties.

I was told that the droit de suite was one of the reasons the art market in Paris lagged behind cities like London. However with the UK now having its own royalty program firmly in place what impact will this have on the market? Today I read that Australia has also now followed suit having put in place its own royalties program. Its a great debate, and I actually fall on the side of the argument that living artists should not collect royalties on sales. For living artists high resale prices increase the value of new work, so as long as the artist keeps producing they will benefit. If an artist is deceased I believe the artist's estate/family should benefit from the resale of the work. To get the details of the laws and read the pros and cons you can visit the following links:
Artnet article on Art Royalties
Public discussion on art news blog
Australia's Artist to be paid for every sale. From Sydney Morning Herald

Sketchbook

This week I made some sketches for my new painting. Its going to be a bit different from the last two I completed as the composition has a relatively short depth of field, so I will have to explore tonal values a bit more to add interest to the background. I've started to draw on the canvas today and I should complete that and continue on with the underpainting in the next few days.

Know the Art Market

Wanting to get ahead as an artist means doing a lot of research and knowing the market. You have to assess where you/your work fits in. I do a lot of reading online with sites like London Times Online, artnet.com news section, artkrush, artforum etc. Its important to find where you want to be placed in the market and find resources that give you the information you need. One tip for researching galleries is to find artists that have similar styles and look at their exhibition history. They had to start somewhere, so while internationally recognized artist may now be represented by galleries that are impenetrable for emerging artist their cv's reveal which galleries took them on early in their career. Its also worth visiting different art fairs to get an overview of galleries. While it can be challenging to approach the galleries during the fairs, as they are quite focused on selling, you can easily get business cards. A card gives you not only the gallery details, it gives you the ever important name for a personal contact.

Watching Olympics Online

Don't want to miss your favourite olympic event or want to catch tv coverage from other countries? Wired.com has a great wiki on how to watch the olympics online.
Also for those living in Europe eurovisionsports.tv offers live streams in many languages from many countries with quality channels like Rai Due Italy and France 2, 3, 4.

California Academy of Sciences

The countdown is on...in 53 days the new California Academy of Sciences will open. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano the new space in Golden Gate Park is poised to become the most innovative new museum in America. To read more on this progressive green space visit the following links:
Cal Academy site
Wired.com multimedia feature
Vanity Fair article

Photographing Artwork

The best way to reproduce your artwork for your portfolio is to hire a professional photographer, but for artists on a budget or on a deadline that is not always possible. I have finally found a way that I can reproduce my work myself to a level that can be printed in catalogues or used for promotional purposes. I use a digital camera that can shoot RAW images and a software like photoshop that enables me to open and edit these images. A lens effect filter is also helpful to remove any distortion. It is also important to find a good area with diffuse light, and I found that photographing my paintings in a local courtyard between 7 and 8 am gives me the perfect light I need. I always leave a small border around the painting to reduce the distortion as its much easier to photograph it a bit farther back then use the crop tool to edit out the background.


For printing the final images I use l'instant in Monaco. The print quality is exceptional and Jean Baptiste has a large selection of fine art papers which gives a fair representation of the original. Photographing artwork is a necessity of being an artist, and even though I find it depressing to see my large works scaled down and reproduced when its done properly it can be the best way to present work to galleries or clients when showing the original is not an option.