Little Boxes

It is not necessary to work eight hours a day seven days a week to create a body of art. All that is required is a willingness to somehow get the job done. Painting sixty minutes a day over a year's time will give many hours in the studio.

The writer Elmore Leonard got up at 5:00 am and wrote for two hours before going to work at an ad agency. He did it for ten years and turned out five books and 30 short stories.

My ad agency days are thankfully behind me and I've found arising in the dark unappealing. The best I can muster is staring out the window at daybreak, nursing a cup of darjeeling.

But working here and there over time, I've amassed a sizeable body of new paintings and drawings. Above is a mixed-media painting on masonite called Little Boxes.

Zen Of The Pen

There is a method of making art called automatic drawing in which a mark is placed on the paper and then another and another and with no apparent conscious intent a series of abrupt beginnings and endings continues until something like a finality is reached or perhaps the hand refuses to work anymore.

Mixing Up Some Media

While waiting for new studio space to open, I labor in the confines of a small apartment turned atelier. My dining table doubles as a drawing board, the tea table a framing station. As my focus narrowed, large works got shoved under the bed and I once more made friends with #0 brushes.

For the Cool Art Show in St. Petersburg next month, I will have many five by seven inch drawings. Nine inches by nine inches is now a large work and that is the size of Bell-Hop at the Sands Hotel (above) - an example of mixing some media on masonite.

From The Image Vault

Rummaging through my image folder the other day, I came across this small sculpture completed a few years back, and now hopefully hanging in someone's home.

It's an example of a blocked painter with time on his hands, a bunch of wooden dowels and a French Savoyard whittling knife.
I'm not keen on the idea of Art Therapy, but here was a project perfectly suited for my predicament.

I worked straight through on the piece, finished it with some satisfaction and retired the whittling knife, never to sculpt another. I did, however, begin painting again with renewed vigor.