When Things Are Moving

In an attempt to give insight into different perspectives of art, each one of my entries has varied in subject and somewhat in style. Some express ideas about art appreciation in hope to shine a light onto different ways of art expression so that the laymen, or an artist stuck in their style, may look with new eyes onto art that didn’t previously match their taste, to reignite a passion for art, or to inspire interest into the field in general with awesome art history facts. This month however I find my mind not settling on a certain theme, style or historical era of art to discuss, because in my own art world I have so many various ongoing projects. So instead of ‘a glimpse at fabric in art’ this entry will be a sort of glimpse into my mind: specifically all of my art projects from website design, murals, t-shirt design and oil paintings.

This being my fine art website you may not know I do murals, in chalk or paint, and signs such as menu boards and logos. Recently I decided to push this business more, because most every painter needs a side job in the early years of their career and what better one than something art related. This push has led me to not only redesigning my previous website for it but taking the time to understand why websites are laid out the way they are. So if you are in need of a quick insight on successful websites, I recommend you start off by looking into ‘Google Trends’. This free tool helps you figure out what people are searching for the most in your area. I used this to help decide on my mural company’s name (MuralArtCo). You want your website to be successful and found on Google, yet there are so many websites out there that Google doesn’t always find them all. So decide on what key words you think sum up your business or purpose and use them in order of importance on your home page, this will help your chances of Google directing interested people to you.

One of my most recent mural quotes was in the colonial style. Wanting to do the thing properly I started my research and dove into the world of colonial murals. Not just wanting to understand the visual elements that create the style, I wanted to know if there were certain characteristics that were common to the New England (or more specially New Hampshire) region, being where the mural is commissioned. This is how I discovered Rufus Porter, an American man who painted over 100 colonial murals in the New Hampshire and New England area in the late 1800s. If you haven’t seen any colonial murals and are having trouble envisioning these, they are simplified landscape murals that contain colonial style buildings, rolling hills, trees, animals, orchards and so on. Rufus porter used a lot of time saving devices to create these murals such as stencils and sponge shaped leaves. You may be wondering why a painter would want to skim on his techniques and use these tools. So here’s an great insight into not only his mind, but I believe it also gives a better view into the simplified style as a whole:

“Porter was a painter of democracy. His pictures were utilitarian pieces, produced quickly and in large numbers to improve daily life for as many common folk as he could reach.” -Sam Hooper Samuels

So not only was Rufus Porter a forerunner into mass-producing art but he helped bring green landscapes into the homes of many New Englanders whom endure a seemingly never ending winter. Another technique of his was to have the light source in the painting match up to wherever the light source/windows were in the room.

Another current project of mine is for a one day art festival, where I will have a booth at this July. It’s a fine art show with an exception to t-shirts as long as they are one of a kind and aren’t sold in any stores. So along with the oil painting I am getting ready to hang, I’ve decided to give printing t-shirts a go. For this I am designing a graffitied van image, with my own graffiti on it to have printed on white t-shirts. Which leads us to screen-printing. It’s a tricky thing wanting an illustration of an image to go with/match my style of oil paintings, which tend to lean pretty realistic. To summarize screen-printing, it is essentially like a stencil, so you block off the areas you don’t want any ink to be and when you pull the paint across the screen, paint goes through the unblocked areas onto the paper or fabric you are printing on. The more complicated the image or the more colors used the trickier it is to screen-print. You would need multiple screens with various parts of the the image “stenciled out” or to design it so that you can overlap colors. Once the colors of overlapped of course they are “pure” and they would appear mixed. For example if you printed yellow over a red areas it would look more orange. It’s a different process than oil painting so it definitely gets my design brain going in new ways. So stay tuned if you interested in seeing my final design and t-shirts will go up in the store section of this site when they are available!

Yes, lots of things are moving here but even with the projects mentioned above, none can top my first love and priority, and that is oil painting. To keep this section short I’ll just say I have about 10 paintings in progress, and am finally getting close to completing a few of them. With traditional style oil painting, I find an outcome I most like is if I let the oil dry between layers. Accepting this process has not only made me more patient but makes me appreciate my art, ability, and time even more. I think with the fast-age of the internet one can feel a pressure to constantly produce new work and images. Personally I have found I develop imposter syndrome if I succumb to quickly pumping out art, because I am not creating to the standards of the art I love. It’s pretty liberating taking the time to slow down and not worry about “making it” career-wise and to only worrying about making art to the best of my ability. It has also prompted new thoughts about the age-old question “what is art”. When should quick mass-produced images be labeled as home decor rather than art? Perhaps there are just not enough words in the English dictionary to get to the bottom of “art” so thats why the question lives on. I’m sure my opinion of this will change, but I do think though that whatever gives one’s life a sense of purpose does not need ranking.

Every Friday I receive an email from Tim Ferris, it’s a chain email anyone can sign up to receive called “5 Bullet Friday”. Today this quote was one of those bullets and it felt not only alarmingly appropriate for my busy life at the moment, but one I think anyone could find worthwhile. The quote triggers a reminder that not only do we need to find something that gives our life value but to protect that value as well. So I’ll leave you until next month with this:

“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence…(and that is) activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The Frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.” - Thomas Merton 1915-1968

References:

*In the Steps of Rufus Porter, Yankee Original - The New York Times, article by Sam Hooper Samuels

Examples of a one color screen printing process looks like from Wikimedia:

Red paint before it is pulled across screen:

What the print looks like: