It's Official!
It is official, I am a full time artist.
The summer is gone, and so is my role at the University of Texas at Austin. I had 8 great years being a Longhorn. But now, I am excited to start a new adventure in full time art making!
I am renting a small studio-share on Bolm Road in east ATX. No AC, no heat, but perfect location for EAST Studio Tour, enough space to begin painting “BIG” and close to Sa Ten coffee shop at Canopy Studios. Thanks to Cindy Debold for pointing me to connections with my current studio mate. I am collecting supplies, ordered large canvas’ and gathering lots of containers to mix scads of paint. It will be interesting to see how quickly the acrylic dries!
My current art project, of a sort, is called “Looking Up.” I have asked any and all to send along pictures of images that they snap while looking up. So far, I have received a handful of images. One balloon, a tree swing, one set of boat sails, the moon, a flag made from a Hawaiian patterned shirt -all are interesting and will be great to figure out how to best represent them. My goal is to create a body of work that I can use to submit for a residency application and/or gallery display.
This summer I discovered digital art (thank you Jodie Hale!) It is a fascinating medium, with lots of potential for many practical and artistic applications. Using my own acrylic paintings, I transform the image using iColorama, then transfer the new image to Art Rage. In Art Rage, I cover the image with three to five strong colors, which I then wipe away to reveal the transformed iColorama image underneath.
The results have been quite colorful, fun and very different from the original painting. My plan is to create a body of work and submit to a gallery for display. I think it could be interesting to have the original painting viewed side-by-side with the digital image. An example is below.
My next restaurant show will be Sept 21 at Hyde Park Cafe in Westgate. It will run through November 1st. I hope to have some of these digital works on display, in addition to a newer series of geometric paintings completed this spring. In addition, there will be three pieces displayed that I completed this summer in Cape Cod.
A lot is going! And I am reminded that Art is Work.
Frogger, 30X40 Acrylic on wood panel
Frogger Under Glass
Archival Digital Print Version