I seem to not be having much success with my artwork these days. First the dogs, and now this. My Welcome to Spring piece is not up to my somewhat perfectionist standards. Grrr.
So,while I rethink this, I will share with you a spring drawing I made a few years, back when I lived in NYC. Our sky was blank after 9/11. To see the Freedom Tower going up, in the early spring, gave me hope. I forgot what the title to this was..but here it is!
Here I am, being nostalgic again. As we were packing the car with a load of *stuff* to take to the new place, I saw my landlord’s chair, against the stone wall. He’s had it there all the years we lived there, probably many years before, and now….
It got me thinking of how the neighborhood had been good subject matter for my artwork. I didn’t have to go too far for inspiration.
So, for those of you who haven’t seen them, a parting glance of a little street, in a very big city:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/140971951111?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Meant also to say that the 5×7 inch version of Freedom Tower is available on Ebay.
Just to let those of you know who might be interested, the 5×7 sketch of “Freedom Tower”, is now on Ebay:http://www.ebay.com/itm/140966258541?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
I have continued on with the larger version. Here’s where it is now.
I’m having fun with this. There was a time when art wasn’t fun for me.
I probably did my best work in the 1980’s, but, boy, did I sweat bullets doing it. You see, after all my success in high school, I felt sure the art world would welcome me with open arms, only to find thousands of competitors with the same idea. My first experience sending out slides was a failure. So, I decided to try harder.
I sharpened my drawing skills, thanks to the book, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”, a book I wholeheartedly recommend. Then I decided I would do work that was IMPORTANT. It was very detailed, and if the least thing went wrong, I would discard it. Many times I would repeat the same work five or more times.
So the time came to send those slides out, this time to juried shows. Again failure, except for one acceptance. Each time I sent in an entry, too, it cost money. The fees started piling up.
I got discouraged, and eventually the work I was doing suffered. So, in a fit of rage at the art world, I decided to quit art altogether.
Come some years later, I decided to play with acrylics. I decided to concentrate on the process, instead of the subject. The result was the Namaste series. I still don’t know how I feel about the results of that. Here’s an example.
Finally, once again I got involved in colored pencils. Subject matter once again appealed to me. So here I am.
I’ve gotten the foreground of “Freedom Tower” pretty much done. I may go back and look at it with a fresh, but I think that’s it.
While I was doing this, it occurred to me that visual arts are a lot like music. You’ve got compositions, rhythms, and harmonies. I tried, here, to get a lively harmony and rhythm going.
As for healing art, maybe this piece is for me. I was not directly affected by 9/11, except for being a New Yorker. Some people lost loved ones and friends, some people’s health was horribly affected by the smoke at Ground Zero, but all of us in New York felt something. In the morning, I’d wake up thinking I had a nightmare, only to realize that the nightmare was true.
So, it’s very hopeful and healing to see the Freedom Tower rising on the horizon.
Here’s the stage where I am in doing the large version of “Freedom Tower”. As I usually find, when you translate something small into something much larger, you run into difficulties in detail and composition. Here I’m finding I need more trees to fill up the foreground.
In reality, the foreground is actually a cemetery. I may include some headstones, as a tribute to those who died in 9/11. Still thinking about it.
