Artist's Block

I am in the painting doldrums lately - a total lack of creative ideas and inspiration. Sometimes it's good to become a blob for awhile and not try  to force the return of the "muse". Other suggestions I have heard include:


* Pull out all your old resources and review them with a fresh eye.
* Take out some old paintings, that with some judicious cropping and editing may get  you started again.
* Look in the dictionary for inspiration
* Think of what makes you angry, happy, or sad and just start to paint.
* Put on some music, and let it inspire you.
* Think of a favorite poem, novel or film and try to indicate it's appeal for you in paint.
* For fun and mabye a kickstart go online to the abstract art title generator at  http://noemata.net/pa/titlegen/
* Visit a gallery and just soak it in which I recently did at the special exhibition of Abstract Expressionism   from New York at the Art Gallery of Ontario



  See Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and others from May 5 to August 7, 2011


*Of course the best advice is just to pick up a brush and put paint to paper - something usually happens - see below - (no Pollock, me!)



Unblocked


Now that I'm unblocked, I hope to see you at the summer show of the Willowdale Group of artits:




MAGICAL WORLD OF COLOUR



The Paper Mill Gallery – Todmorden Mills


June 29th – July 10th


See WWW. WGA.ca for details


 



Steinbech and Saatchi and Painting

This is the latest in what has become my "old man" series.


Travels with Charley

Why that name, you may ask? As the painting evolved I decided to place the old fellow  and his dog looking longingly at the window of a travel agency. He is shoeless, as if longing for a walk on a sandy beach. He is actually standing on "sand" at the window and looking at sand in the posters. Of course he may simply have lost his shoe.

 I was suddenly reminded of "Travels with Charley" - a travel memoir by John Steinbeck, full of interesting characters, insights into life and searching thoughts on loneliness. When he was sixty years old he set out "in search of America, with the same longing for adventure I tried to represent in the figure. He traveled in a truck named for Don Quixote's horse, Rocinante.

Speaking of literature, I looked forward to reading "My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic". How disappointing! How arrogant! Saatchi is "the most influential art collector of our time" and founded the 70,000 square foot Saatchi Gallery in London. He has refused in the past to be interviewed, but did condescend to respond to journalist's questions which form the basis of the book. When asked his opinion on the "point of art", he said it is "to stop our eyeballs from going into meltdown from all the rubbish TV and films we happily look at the rest of the time."  When asked if elephant dung is as valid as gouach, he said; "Elephant dung is so last season, darling." 

Saatchi is married to Nigella Lawson, who he admits is too good for him, but according to his friends, his real and unwavering crush is on himself. Read the book if you must, but time is better spent at the gallery itself at 

 http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/