Green Paint

I've been trying to figure out how to paint in the most eco-friendly way possible.  I use acrylic paint, which is water soluble but is made up of polymers, which are not good for the environment.  Because the paint is water soluble, the worst thing to do with it is to dump it down the drain.  Dry waste is much less harmful than wet waste, as I think is true in most cases.

I try to not use more paint than I need, for financial reasons as well as environmental.  If I'm finished with something and still have a bunch of paint on my palette, I try and find something else to do with it.  Then I wipe my palette with the paper towel I've been using for my brushes, and throw it away.  (People suggest using rags instead, but then you're presented with the problem of how to clean the rag- again, all that paint getting into the water.  So a paper towel seems like the lesser of the evils.)

I've been putting my dirty water into a little metal container to let the water evaporate and leave the dry excess paint to be chipped out and thrown away later.  At first this container would go on the radiator, to evaporate faster, but then I realized it was evaporating entirely TOO fast and taking the paint with it, so for a couple days we were all breathing in air that had gaseous polymers floating around in it- probably not so good for you.  The window sill seems to be a better place.

The last of the problems is cleaning my palette and brush.  These things need to be cleaned well, obviously, and with water.  I don't know what else to do other than just clean them in the sink.  I try and get as much excess paint off beforehand, but this seems to be as far as my capabilities go.  I don't have a large enough sink or apartment to come up with any elaborate water-saving brush-cleaning devices.  One possibility is to stop the sink before cleaning and let the water dry out there too, but we kind of need the sink.

I'm going to buy some of this paint:

Eco Green Crafts Acrylic Paint.

I'll let you know how it works.  I'm kind of confused about the names of the paint: they don't have like, burnt sienna and burnt umber, which is strange for paint.

I have some new paintings:

Eden
Acrylic on Canvas

Finally, the Forbidden Fruit
Acrylic and Ink on Canvas

Steampunk Cockatiel
Acrylic and Ink on Canvas

Giraffe
acrylic on canvas

Skull and Jewel
Acrylic on Canvas

Meh

I'm super sad because I've come to the realization that I can't eat like a normal person.  I have to say goodbye to all dairy, including cheese, which is my all-time favorite food.  Goodbye red meat, goodbye  lots of fruit and uncooked vegetables.  So sad.  I am basically a bread-atarian.  For now.  Let's see how long it takes me to die from malnourishment.

Aside from that everything is going in the right direction.  I sold an old piece, "Brain", which was part of the "Systems" set, to a guy as a gift for his girlfriend who is a brain surgeon or something.

Selling the old stuff makes me happy, although now it might be harder to find a home for his buddy.

I have a few new pieces:

Tree Deer
Acrylic and Collage on Canvas
12" x 12"

This was kind of meant to be a festive, holiday piece.  It started out being way more Christmas-y, but I'm not about to start making Christmas-specific art, so it underwent some changes.  I love deer.

Cheap Thrills/Land Octopus Returns
Acrylic and Ink on Canvas
12" x 9"

This is the same octopus from an earlier painting.  I've decided he is a character , and en evil one at that.  My aunt thinks I should start illustrating books.  This guy would be in one if I did.

On December 6th Pottery Barn is hosting a fundraiser auction for a children's hospital at Fortunate Discoveries, where my paintings are.  They gave us these really boring, empty frames from a furniture sale or something, and the artists were supposed to do something with it to be donated to the auction.  This is what I came up with:

Empty Landscape
Scuply Clay, Rice Paper and Acrylic on Paper and Wood
14" x 18"

I had a lot of fun doing this.  It was nice to work with different materials for a change.  I think I might do some more of these.  The only problem is I have to figure out how to photograph 3-D material better.  I might have to bite the bullet and invest in Photoshop.

Pleistocene Pop

I finally caved and put up an album of my paintings on Facebook.  Why I waited so long, I don't know, because people responded.  My friend Malaika entitled my work "Pleistocene Pop," which I love and makes me happy.  Even though a lot of my work has nothing to do content-wise with prehistory, I've been drawing on this plethora of knowledge that we don't have about the past, which makes imagination easy.  Imagine what it was like when saber-tooth tigers ruled the planet! When homo erectus interacted with the environment!  It's so exciting.

I've also been looking at a lot of LowBrow artists recently.  I don't consider myself or my work LowBrow, but I don't know under what other genre my work would fall.  What other poppy art movements are happening right now?  I'm also severely uneducated, the art-school-dropout.  I don't want to fall into this trap of labeling myself though, because that's always been way uncool.  You can't label yourself, you need other people to do it for you, hence my newly coined style of Pleistocene Pop.  I also just read this blog entry about why the LowBrow movement is not fine art: http://weirdodeluxe.wordpress.com/.  In my opinion, this guy and his opinions are also a bunch of crap, but I also unfortunately agree with some of the things he says.  I just can't stand people on their high horses in the art world.  I'm talking to you, my former professors.

(Side note: There was this one woman I had twice in art school, whose name I can't remember, but she was the most condescending, snobby bitch I've ever come across, and she made me feel so terrible about my work, even though I actually made some good stuff for her classes.  I wish I could remember her name so I could slander her in my blog.)

This is the painting that prompted "Pleistocene Pop":

Woolly Mammoths Meet the Future
Acrylic on Canvas
9" x 9" x 2"

This picture was taken with my iphone because my camera stopped working, thus the shadow across it and the poor quality.  I will invest in a new camera and take a better picture of it.

Halloween

It's Halloween! It's also a Wednesday and I've had a cold since Friday.  Everyone is sick.  So instead of going out with my friends in my ventriloquist dummy costume, I made the responsible decision to stay inside and watch Frankenstein on TV.

Speaking of Halloween oriented things, you must watch H.H.Holmes: America's First Serial Killer.  It is about a serial killer doctor who plucked his victims out of the chaos of the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893.  He had a house designed as an elaborate castle with torture chambers, and he defleshed his victims and donated their skeletons to hospitals and universities.  It is the most macabre, gruesome piece of Chicago history.  I've been into these things lately.

I set up my wall at Fortunate Discoveries today.  I'm excited about that place.  It's really cute inside and I like all the other art.  I think my paintings will call attention to themselves and people will walk right over to them once my little piece of wall comes into view.  I jammed as many of my little, newer pieces on as I could, so hopefully the initial appearance doesn't come across as too busy.  I sold two pieces at The Common Cup: The Great Plains and Flies.  One of the barristas bought The Great Plains and the owner bought Flies.  Even if I don't make a lot of money selling my paintings, it is very validating to sell them at all- to have people who actually have my art in their homes.

I think there is a point where my work changed.  I think it was with The Heart of Captain Kurtz and Shiny Things Three.  My paintings became more upbeat, and I think I've gotten the hang of some problems with I was having with creating distance before.  I looked at all of my older paintings at once when I brought them home from the Common Cup today, and they are darker and flatter.  I'm sick of looking at them, they feel kind of stifling.  They went into the closet.  One thing that assures me of this is that I keep selling my new pieces.  It would be great if someone would buy the first Shiny Things painting, or The Factory.  I think someone should buy The Death of the American Landscape already.  It is really cute and well done, and everyone loves buffalo skulls.  My sister wants that one, I should just give it to her.  Christmas is coming up!

Here are my new pieces:

Got Yer Goose
Acrylic on Canvas
10" x 10"

The Queen
Acrylic on Canvas
9" x 9" 

The Eruption of Mount Bubblegum
Acrylic and Gossamer Paper on Canvas
14" x 11"

The Migration
Acrylic on Canvas
14" x 11"

Bear Hunting
Acrylic on Canvas
6" x 8"

This is my wall at Fortunate Discoveries.  As you see, the only old piece up is Landscape.   Very colorful!

End of the Month Drama

TI haven't updated this in about a month.  I've been really busy with lots of different things- I just got back from visiting my niece for the first time, I've been doing some managing shifts at my restaurant job, which is new, and the classes at the retirement home in Wilmette take a lot of planning and energy on my part, even though they're only once a week.  And I still don't have my first paycheck yet...dun dun dun (flashbacks of my last job at the Chicago Art and Design Center that I never got paid for).  Next week it will be two months that I'm working there, spending my own money on supplies, and haven't gotten paid.  What-do-I-do/Why-does-this-always-happen-to-me?!?!?!  I must have one of those really sweet, angelic, "Oh you don't have to pay me, I love to work for free!" faces.

I sold three pieces in September: Deer, Land Octopus, and The Family Tree.  I was really happy about that, especially The Family Tree, because I didn't like that painting and didn't think I was ever going to sell it.  It's pretty exciting that people might actually want to buy my stuff!  I have five paintings up at the group show in the West Loop, (Petroff Studio, and the show is put on by Lucid Artist Co-op).  I went to the gallery opening on October 5th and it was pretty interesting.  Imagine that- artists being weird and interesting.  Mostly in a good way.  Then the rest of my paintings are at the Common Cup, which is a cafe around the corner from my house, and so far I know I've sold The Great Plains, but nothing else that I know of.

I have a new, semi-permanent place for my paintings starting in November: Fortunate Discoveries on Armitage.  Its a gallery where you lease out a wall space, and its in a really upscale neighborhood with lots of pricey little boutiques and people with money.  That bodes well for selling art usually.  The other artists represented there are really good, so I feel kind of honored to have a place there.

I'm always so busy at the end of the month- thus the title of this post- because I have to get everything back from its current locations and get ready for the next month's show.  I just finished up a couple pieces, and I know I'm being ambitious but I want to have two more done by November 1st.  We'll see.

This is what I have completed and photographed for this month:

Quail Skull
Acrylic on Canvas
9" x 9" x 2"

Face Off
Acrylic on Canvas
18" x 9" x 2"


The woman who owns Fortunate Discoveries said she likes my sense of humor and the irony in my paintings.  The one above, get it? The two skulls are having a face-off in the desert, and since they are skulls the have their FACE OFF??? Haha.  I think that may be the direction that my work is evolving.

Fall

The weather has changed rather abruptly from hot, sticky summer to fall.  It's chilly and gray now, which I love, but will be totally sick of by spring.  I've had a lot going on in the past few weeks; my sister had her baby, a little girl named Fern, and I'm so stoked to be an aunt.  I got what seems may actually be a permanent job at a retirement home in Wilmette teaching arts and crafts classes once a week, which is going well so far.  I got into my first group gallery show at Petroff Studio Gallery through the Lucid Artist Co-op.  The show starts October 5th.  I'm really excited about that because the Co-op has their own PR person, they put out ads and send out emails all over Chicago, and one of my paintings will even be on a postcard! I'm going to put about four or five pieces in the show but I don't know which ones I want yet.  The problem is that almost all of my paintings are in cafes right now through the end of September, and I don't know if I'm going to sell any there, so I don't want to commit any of those paintings to the Petroff show.

I know for sure I'll put this one in.  I just finished it recently and because I have it on hand this one will go on the postcard:

Tarsier Skull
Acrylic on Canvas
9"x9"

This painting is on a gallery profile canvas, 2" wide.  The edges are painted green and the purple gears continue onto the sides.  Tarsiers have some of the most primitive traits (as opposed to adaptive traits, as we have) found in primates, making them a good candidate for what our very early ancestors may have looked like.  A lot of their features, such as the big bulging eyes with an open socket behind them, have been selected against, for the obvious reason that it would be really easy to poke their eyes out.

The Great Plains
Acrylic on Canvas
6" x 8"

Flies
Acrylic on Canvas
12" x 16"

I feel like my work is slowly evolving.  I don't know if it is maturing necessarily, or if I'm just getting kind of tired of my old subject matter and moving on to new things.  I was doing a lot of birds, jewels, deserts and hearts, all of which I'm still interested in, but I'm mixing in new environments and new characters to my repertoire.  I get kind of obsessed with a certain environment- such as the southwest, and have to paint it.  I have a certain way I paint the southwest.  But I'm also into the north- like the Yukon territory in Canada.  And the Great Plains (see my little buffalo).  Also, I'm trying to break away sometimes from doing landscapes, per the Tarsier Skull.  It's good to have some variety.

Some New Stuff

Since selling some work at the Art Festival, I have felt the need to make some more pieces, especially because I have two shows going on simultaneously.  I have a smaller one at the Kitchen Sink on Berwyn, only about seven paintings, then I'm setting up an exhibit tonight at Dolce Casa Cafe on Damen, which will be a much bigger show.  I'm really excited about Dolce Casa; the owner is very organized and expects me to promote myself and bring people in, and the employees in turn will also talk to interested customers about my work.

So I've created a handful of new, smaller paintings, because smaller work are the ones that sell quicker:

Elklungs
Acrylic on Canvas
10" x 10"

Mooseheart
Acrylic on Canvas
10" x 10"

Rambrain
Acrylic on Canvas
10" x 10"

This set is part of my "imitation" concentration- human organs or machinery trying to disguise themselves as part of nature (see The Machine, The Factory, The Pump, Fresh Fruit Coup).  I feel they were very successful and fit in with this series, while at the same time I was able to experiment with some different painting techniques and styles.

Deer
Acryic on Canvas
6" x 8"

I think this painting is so sweet!

Land Octopus
Acrylic and Gossamer Paper on Canvas
11" x 14"

I want to start incorporating some different mediums into my work, as I've been so focused on acrylic for so long.   This attempt was perhaps not the best, but it is the first in a while, so we'll see how the next one goes.