Friday Faves - 6/13/14

One of these days I will get around to posting some real blog posts again, but it's summer and I'm slammed with work, and it seems like it might be a while. In the meantime, here are some of my favorites!

Favorite Painting:

"Sentinel Bluffs" - 36x43" - George Carlson - 2013

I know I've been featuring historical paintings up until this point, but this one is the one that jumped out at me today, so contemporary it is! Besides, Carlson will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the great artists of this generation, so it's like watching history happen, right?

I should confess that I pretty much love everything George Carlson paints. For those of you who read this blog who aren't artists and not familiar, Carlson is an extremely successful sculptor. The fact that he can switch so seamlessly from sculpting to painting masterpieces like this is amazing to me.

This painting, which is fairly large, is powerful. It's the perfect example of how you can keep the color and detail minimal in a painting, and still make an extremely powerful statement. The composition and values here work together to create a sense of drama that pulls you in. And the unexpected and varied use of color in the shadows adds interest that holds you. I haven't had the pleasure of seeing this painting in person, but I can almost guarantee that if I did I would be able to stare at it forever, finding subtleties that aren't visible in a photo.

Favorite Quote:

Love this quote about imperfection. I needed to remember this last week.

The entire reason that I keep this blog going is because I hope that in some way, keeping it real about the process of being an artist will help someone, somewhere, who is just starting out and feeling frustrated. I meet the occasional person who thinks I'm a little nuts for putting the tough stuff out there - like it's bad marketing to post a photo of my rejections or admit that I'm feeling uninspired - but it's really important to me to be honest, so I keep at it.

I had one of my blog posts re-published on FineArtViews last week, and it just happened to be a post where I was being real about some struggles I had in the studio. So all the sudden I was baring my soul to thousands of people, rather than the few hundred I might get here, and I thought, "Self, was this a good idea??"

I get a lot of emails when posts go live on FAV, and in the case of this one, I got a ton of kind, encouraging emails - people writing me to say, "Me too!! I'm so glad I'm not the only one who feels this way sometimes!" But there are always a couple of negative ones when you put yourself out there, and I got a couple of nasties from this blog post. And I'm admittedly thin-skinned so I stewed over those two negative emails, and told myself that I was done putting myself out there, and done with being real on the blog. Or at the very least, I was done publishing my posts on a very public blog that thousands of people read. And as I was stewing and feeling sort of bad, I saw this quote and immediately felt better. Because that's what it's about for me. Keeping it real so people who are starting out know what it's like to live this life.

Favorite Music:

I love this band. Sorry that there's not a cool video to go with this song, but it's a favorite of mine, so I'm sharing it anyhow. So give it a listen, and if you like it, go buy their EP - the whole thing is awesome and it's only $4, so you can't go wrong!