Detail
#StudioPractice
I often chase an unintended outcome, rather than follow through with the original game-plan.
#StudioPractice
Don’t judge your work’s worth
It’s not whether your work is new or unique – it probably isn’t. It’s that you took the time to do it. There are billions of people who for numerous valid reasons don’t take that time.
You did.
Studio Time
Studio Practice is a fascinating aspect of Making Art and its legitimacy. If legitimacy is indeed the measure, I’m the cousin who looks like your twin brother, if you catch my drift.
The more I just take the time to look at WIPs every time I can, the better. Constant evaluation is certainly part of good Studio Practice.
No Sketchbook!
Haven’t had one in a long while and don’t know why.
One problem this creates, especially if you like to stay away from the phone every so often, is: where do you take notes when ideas occur to you while painting?
With HIGHLY SELECTIVE screening of what really needs to be written, I grab a Sharpie or big, dark pencil, and write on the work table.
Recently:
“Always push the materials 2 do the work”
I consider my materials to be my employees I guess. They get free room, board, and health-care, at least!
Humans
sometimes the work you do on a painting makes you angry
Revolution
Not that type.
My process of painting has been rigorously controlled chaos, but always, entirely additive. Any error or miscalculation was balance-corrected, or distracted-from, in some fashion.
No more! Tonight, I simply erased a mistake, after agonizing about it for several days.
I knew I could learn from the mistake, and not do it next time, but time is short.
Correct your mistakes however you can.
“Pigeons, Meet Roost”
Here is a new 3D Fractal composition, from the realm of the Mandelbulb, which is the 3D version of the ‘Fractal Art’ posters you ancient 50-year-olds used to see in Mall kiosks. I call this one “Pigeons, Meet Roost” as a way to acknowledge how every decision we make impacts us directly, if not always in a timely fashion. You can buy prints, canvas prints, phone cases and way more, with this image, at this webpage. https://society6.com/kurtdahlkeartdesign
La-la-la Artist Statement
I think Artists with a Capital A lose about 90% of their potential audience with the Artist Statement.
No mistake, it’s a good idea to hash out why you do stuff, but nobody wants to hear it, in part because it sounds like pretentious BS, and it also sounds like every other damn Artist Statement. (There are sub-groups of such statements, of course, so a politically-minded artist is going to say stuff that sounds like other political artists, etc.)
I’ll stick to my most recent Statement that I hope any old person can relate to, which is that I just hope to make art that holds together. Also, I don’t work enough, or hard enough. (Now that’s something I bet a lot of people understand.)
Mandelbulb
I will post some mandelbulb art tomorrow, I’ve been trying it again with the same oldie software, which I use because I know how!
As an ‘artist’ I use the software to create scenarios that I like, but the complex mathematical formulas have ultimate say in the form.
Because of that, you really need sharp structural, emotional, and aesthetic compositional skills, because it’s basically pure composition.
The Secret Language of Artists
Something I heard a lot in Art School, and think of often, is the idea of artists creating their own language (visual) with which to communicate their ideas.
I’ve been working on my current dialect about 15 years. It’s tough!
The other thing I think about is how hand-in-hand ‘working on a personal language’ and ‘schizophrenia’ are, together.
Yes, my way of communicating is through shapes and colors and the idea of using those things to communicate a movement through time and our interior lives in a way that only I will ever really understand.
I thank you for your patronage.
Manifesto
Ain’t nothing wrong with being an aesthete.
