Inaugural Post: An Introduction

Salutations.

As the official launch post of my blog, I thought it would be best to take the time to introduce myself and what I'm doing right now, for those of you who don't already know me.  Not that anyone is reading this blog right now, but I'm hoping that will change at some point, lol.

I don't want to turn this into a boring biography, so I'll make the history quick.

I received a Bachelor of Arts from Texas A&M in Corpus Christi in 2005.  I then spent 10 years failing to find direction.  It's crazy how quickly time passes, it went by in a blink.  After considering my options, I decided to pursue the life of a painter.  So, that being decided, I have begun painting again.  It didn't take long to realize that I have two issues I'll need to overcome:

1) First, I'm a painter, and our painting program focused solely on personal development.  The technical aspects of oil painting weren't taught.  And so now, as I begin painting again, and studying, I'm realizing how little I know.  There are so many different possibilities within the materials to explore, and so much depth in regards to technical and compositional process that I still don't know.

2) And second, our program as a whole focused on the creation of art.  The business of art wasn't something that was taught.  Of course, we all (us students) understood that you sell your art by getting into galleries and having shows, but I never learned how you go about doing that, or if there were any alternative options.  We also could have used some instruction on self marketing, legal issues, taxes, and any other technical business aspects of being an artist that I'm probably still unaware of.

I've spent a fair bit of time studying and exploring materials over the last year.  I've spent the last three months studying and listening to topics on the business aspects of art, and setting up this website.  But there's still a lot more to learn.

I think that's a pretty solid summary of my current status.  So, what am I working on now?  I have three pieces that are currently in progress, and each one illustrates a direction of thought my mind has taken recently.

I haven't really touched anything the last few months, while I was doing the research and setting up the website.  This piece in blue in the first three slides had been put aside and sitting for a number of months now.  This one has some thought behind the content, and is a good example of where my thought process has been most of the last year.  This one started as an exploration of three different blues and how they'd react with one another, with the content being symbolic of my current thought process.  I've begun working on it again.

The sculpture in the next slide is a plaster on board piece I did while in college.  I've always liked it quite a bit, and feel I didn't get to explore sculpture as much as I would have liked.  Not just plaster, I also enjoyed working with cement quite a bit.  So, a few months ago I spent some money on materials and started another plaster piece similar to this one.  The work in progress is the next two images.  It's still very rough, only a single layer of plaster on it atm.  I haven't started working on it again quite yet, but I will at some point.

In the course of my business of art research, I listened to quite a few interviews with successful artists from around the country.  Quang Ho was one of those.  I was impressed with his apparent technical knowledge of oil painting.  It turns out he has an instructional dvd that he made several years ago, where he gives an overview of everything he knows about painting in regards to structure and compositional process.  I picked it up, and am enjoying it quite a bit.  The last image is a piece I just started, experimenting with some of the things I am learning from Quang Ho's dvd.  There are a number of concepts I had never really thought about before being demonstrated and discussed in the video.  For an artist wanting to learn, it's an exciting discovery.  Only the base layer of paint is down on this piece currently, so it probably isn't terribly interesting to look at at the moment.

I imagine this is probably already way too long of a post, so I'll end it here.  I'm going to try to stick to a schedule of at least one post per week, so stay in touch.

Thanks for reading!