Tag Archives: Connecticut

UGLY

September 7, 2021 roxannebaldwin 2 Comments

I’ve spent years coming up with ideas to interpret beauty. Thing is, I’m running out of ideas.

Which brings me back to something that happened years and years ago. No, actually decades. but we won’t talk about that.

I was staying with an artist, who I considered to be a mentor. Considered? She actually was a mentor, although she kept telling me not to refer to her as that….she wanted to be considered a friend.

It was sort of a communal living situation. Other creative adults also stayed there. One young woman, who seemed even-tempered started discussing her work. Suddenly, she took on a manic eyed expression on her face and said “I prefer to find beauty in ugliness”.

So, I went back to my aim of finding beauty in beauty, and that was that.

But now, after years and years….actually decades, but we won’t talk about that….I’m rethinking things.

The only thing that appealed to me in the last couple of months, was ugly. So, I decided to go for it.

I struggled. It was like the old days when I would do a drawing over and over again, not getting it right, and go over it again. I tried adding an empty billboard to this. Empty didn’t seem right so, I decided to add a billboard with fading letters to it. I’m ashamed to say, but I will say, that the faded words I was going to put were “I’d like to teach the world to sing”. Yup, bad. So, try again I did.

It was a scene at the railroad station, and ugly as hell. I don’t know what drew me to it, but it was ugly. So, I decided to find beauty in it.

After all my struggle, I’m not sure if I was successful or not. So, here it is:

Another milestone for this year….summer is almost over. It always reminds me of a sad time, and as I look at my old work from this time…..

A parade of finding beauty in ugliness.

I Can’t Get Over A Guy Like You

July 6, 2021 roxannebaldwin Leave a comment

Well, my “Crow in Summer ” bombed. Sometimes that happens. No, actually that often happens. Sometimes, I can fix it. Sometimes, I can redo it. Sometimes, though, I don’t care of enough to do either. Like now.

So, that left me with the task of finding a new idea. Nothing came at me in a rush as sometimes, drawings do.

Like this one:

And this:

But not now, no. So my strategy is to go to my picture file, conveniently stored on my phone.

I used to store pictures on paper in an actual file. What a mess! Thank God for technology! At least, sometimes.

So, back to ideas, and the search for an idea…give you a glimpse of what I do when I’m really stuck.

I thought this was pretty, then I realized it was too sweet. Too Hallmark. It’s a pass.

What a great photo! Great subject, great composition. Too cute though, pass.

What I can’t see to get past is the drawing I showed you recently. This guy:

I just don’t want to do a New York city drawing anymore.

So maybe I can find a different background. Like, walking along this path?

Nah, been there, done that

Downtown Danbury?

Somehow, I can’t relate him to that either.

So, I hope soon to find a place for this man with something to walk towards.

Until then…

FAIR DANBURY FAIR

June 15, 2021 roxannebaldwin Leave a comment

One of the more fond memories of Danbury, is the state fair that came around every fall. That is, until 1981. Now the fairgrounds is a shopping mall. Still, there is still, a lot of good subject matter here.

Why this fuss about Danbury?

I’m part of a pop-up that just popped up on Friday nights in downtown Danbury. My first night was very slow, knowledge of the event wasn’t widespread.

Obviously, I need to work a bit more on the presentation.

HOWEVER………

It’s exposure.

I’m taking the advice of someone I’ve mentioned before. More or less, is that if you want to make a splash at a show, you should have one big statement piece, and the rest small accent pieces. I have the accent pieces…..but the statement?

I thought of it many times. I think what is best is to do an enlarged version of one of my more successful works.

My first thought was Floral Overload…

But I’ll be damned if I do all that work again. I was about rip the hair from my scalp, by the end of doing this.

So, I kept considering pieces, and considering pieces until I became utterly confused.

I called on a couple of a couple of friends. I’d like to say we had a viewing of my work with cocktails and hors d’oevres. Alas, I thought of that too late. It’s a nice thought, though.

All of us decided views of Danbury would be more inviting to come into the Pop-Up and Party Space. So, we considered a few.

My only request was no cats. I didn’t think it would be as interesting to people. Naturally, when you eliminate cats, that disqualifies about three quarters of my portfolio.

Oh yes, and no N:YC pictures.

We settled on this:

So, those of you in Connecticut and nearby New York State, the show is Danbury, on Main Street in an empty storefront, I think it’s spelled Mereiki. It’s on Friday evenings, going through August.

Oh, yes, ……the featured image of my last post was so big that it was impossible to see. So, shrunk down to size:

Definitely a New York City picture.

MORE GREEN, PLEASe

June 10, 2021 roxannebaldwin Leave a comment

What, might you ask, has the above man strolling down an urban street, have to do with green? Nothing, except, while I was drawing him, my day’s priorities took the sudden turn around. Sometimes, when that happens, that’s a bad sign. This time it is good.

How about this?

So, why, may you ask, and ask you may….what have these got to do with anything? I was contemplating doing a large drawing of the man in the street…..or one of this tree, cloud, jet trail composition. That’s when I got an email.

I had applied to be in a Pop Up show this month. Never heard back about it. I had pretty much given up on it, and was moving on.

The email was an invitation to join the pop-up next Friday, as in tomorrow. So, I set about quickly getting things together. I’m to be selling notecards and holiday cards.

I realized that almost all of the cards are winter themed. Damn! It’s June. I was figuring on selling them in coming winter. But this pop-up is too exciting.

So, quickly, I tried to get together as many sunny cards as possible. In fact, I redid the cloud, jet trail, tree composition as a notecard:

Then in taking the tape off of it, I managed to tear the paper on the card. Drat!

So, I did this:

And then……

And if I sell anything, that means a little more green in my life.

Well, It !!!WAS!!! SUnny earlier

June 2, 2021 roxannebaldwin Leave a comment

Right now, this is the view from my living room window.

As the title says “It WAS Sunny Earlier.

And earlier, I decided to do a drawing of a rhododendron. No, not precisely.

I signed up to do a pop-up show in downtown Danbury, and doing a mad dash to make as many notecards for it as possible. So, doodled out a notecard.

Then I had flash of an idea…well, more of an end of a slide show of my old work. Reminiscent of the work I was doing back in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Such as this…..

So, this is how it came out…….

Doing it was fun! Doing a lot of these little drawings for notecards is fun!

But as I look outside, I can see it’s beginning to rain. It’s supposed to rain through Friday. There may not be a pop-up. Oh, well, what the hell.

But back on the subject of rhododendrons:

Damn, there are a lot of rhododendrons in this condo complex.

Not complaining. Just sayin’.

It’S eCLECTIC!

February 1, 2021 roxannebaldwin Leave a comment

Can’t get rid of this damn chair, can I?

Did I tell you about my first day as a DJ assistant? I got the name of “The Electric Slide”, wrong, and shouted out, “It’s Eclectic!”.

No, that’s not true. Makes for a good story, though,

I do have a true story about the word eclectic, though.

Back, (way, way back), I lived and worked in Greenwich, Connecticut. I worked in a small discount department store, where the close knit employees all felt like family.

The owner of the store was like a second father to me. One day he asked me about my taste in music. I said something like, ‘My taste in music is eclectic”. The boss looked at me, and said, “Don’t use that word here”.

I didn’t understand what he meant…..could there be an obscene, second meaning to eclectic that I didn’t know? I was really puzzled and upset.

Finally, I got it. My poor SAT mind was oriented to using big words. Then I realized not everyone has that broad a vocabulary. Some people wouldn’t understand, and the rest would think I sounded like a snob.

In short, don’t use a $20 word, when a $5 word will do just fine.

Can’t Complain

February 27, 2020 roxannebaldwin Leave a comment

Wouldn’t help anything if I did…

So, as I pointed out, I’ve come to a milestone 10 years….I’m not running out of ideas for the blog, but no so much artwork.

Here’s a recap of the blog so far:
I’ve complained about how dreary winter is:

I’ve complained about Autumn being the entry to the cold, bleak winter:

I’ve complained about summer foliage being repetitive and boring to draw:

I’ve complained about missing the country while living in the city:

I’ve complained about missing the city while I live in the country

I’ve even had the nerve to complain about flowers and rainbows:

So, as you can tell, I’ve run out of things to complain about. Therefore, I can’t complain.

I’m going to concentrate of my artwork, until the desire to complain comes back….which could be next week, for all I know.

Until then, meow for now.

There’s No Business, like well you know…

June 5, 2019 roxannebaldwin Leave a comment

Last Saturday was the Danbury Street Fair! In which I participated in as an artist. I was able to do this on the cheap, without investing hundreds of dollars on equipment. I was breathlessly waiting to take the tent from its case. I only paid $65 and a trip to Queens, NY, so there would not have been a big monetary loss if it was unusable. But then, I’d be without a tent. Low and behold, we set it up and it stood as high and as proudly as the American flag on July 4.

I would have had better display racks if I could, but money was certainly an object.

As for sales, I only sold three small drawings (one of which was to my sister in law).

It always surprises me what people decide to buy. A young woman, a cat lover, bought two drawings

And a small version of this one. I did put out this large, full-sized picture, which got a lot of attention. Cat pictures were the order of the day, including my brother’s cat.

Lots of lookers though. I’ve done enough of this kind of show not to expect to get rich off the sales. The main thing was to get my art in front of the public, and have fun. Yes, some people go on cruises, I do art shows.

It would have been a lot more fun if I hadn’t been fighting the flu with a fever. That’s another story.

So, now making plans for the next one. It will probably be in the fall, getting close to the holidays. With better racks. I’ll keep you posted.

And Poof, it was gone

June 2, 2018 roxannebaldwin Leave a comment

I’m talking about the post I just wrote, and lost.

Ah, well. Facebook keeps reminding me that I haven’t posted in a while. I apologize for my absence. The truth is, I’ve run straight into a brick wall of an artist’s block. I’m as stuck as a car in a muddy ditch.

This has happened before. I’d lose the excitement of my work, and come up with some horrid pieces. That’s exactly what has happened now.

I thought the change in seasons would revive me, but no. It’s time to take a break and play around with other creative outlets. But I’ll be back. Ready to start fresh again.

So, in the meantime, I’m leaving you with a drawing I did many years ago, of a season like this….spring easing into summer. It was a fruitful time artistically for me, going back many years to when I lived in Greenwich. Goodbye, but only for a while.

Roxanne Baldwin's Artsy Blog