Curly Lights

In April I'm having a large one person exhibition in a hair salon. But not just any hair salon. Main Street Hair Salon and Dunedin Fine Art Center have for some years been showcasing area artists. The retro funky space is right downtown on Main Street next to the Pinellas Trail.

The show opens on Second Friday, April 8, 5:30-8:30 and businesses, restaurants and galleries will be open late. This will be a great venue for me to exhibit some new girlie paintings. Above is an oil on canvas titled Curly Lights.

Heavenly Shades of Night



"Water Lily Pond"
Claude Monet

 

The past few evenings I’ve had reason to be thankful for the nation’s official time keepers giving back the hour they yanked from us last fall. The extra minutes at day’s end give such a blessed opportunity to be still and wrap myself in twilight, becoming more the observer than observed.

Watching the long slow fade outside makes me wonder about the reality of perception. What looked at first like oak trees and oleander bushes against a cloudless sky gradually became shifting patterns of greens, grays and blues.

I am fascinated trying to pinpoint the exact moment the oleander leaves turn from olive green to forest green to gray black to lamp black. Did I miss it?

It was these fleeting color shapes in which the Impressionists immersed themselves and in so doing changed the course of modern art. Art critics scoffed at them for sacrificing the true nature of things for a chaos of color blobs. After twilights like today, I am certain that Monet and his friends were opening wide the doors of perception.

Dear Artist,We Like You But Your Art Stinks

People who choose to be artists and stick with it long enough come up against a seeming contradiction – on the one hand, the need for an unshakable belief in the importance of one’s art and on the other hand, the ability to disengage from the work long enough to see it in the context of a vast and passive world community.

This play of opposites often becomes a precarious balancing act. Just when the artist becomes certain of the rightness and power of his art, the world out there serves him up a slice of humble pie. Most of us have at one time submitted for review our most profound new work, only to later receive the dreaded “Dear artist, We’re sorry to inform you…..” letter.

Somewhere between our self-assured feeling as we click ‘send’ on the application and our getting back a rejection letter, there ought to be a time-out of our ego; a time of hoping for the best, but prepared for the worst. It helps to realize that one rejection of one piece of art is not a guilty verdict of us as artists. And perhaps there is no real contradiction between feeling strongly about our art and, secure in that feeling, being able to accept rejection of it.

Temple Beth-El Art Festival

I began exhibiting at Art Festival Beth-El in the early 1990's and the Festival has always been one of my favorites. At no other show have I seen a more enthusiastic community effort at showcasing and selling exciting contemporary art.

This year's show marks the 38th Annual Festival put on by Temple Beth-El in St. Petersburg. The Festival runs January 29, 30, 31 and features over 150 national and international artists.

Pictured above is a new oil on canvas piece titled Game Changer. It is one of twelve pieces I will be exhibiting this year. Click here for more information on the Art Festival.

Dali Hatching Surrealism

Round Up The Usual Suspects

At first glance, he looked rather like a pineapple, a bit prickly faced, but with an air of vulnerability, as if sensing what lie ahead at the luau.

Rare James Michaels Drawing Resurfaces

The day after Christmas, Florida art collector Wayne Notsag decided to clean out several years’ worth of accumulated receipts and old papers. Little did he realize that the unwelcome chore would turn up a long lost treasure.

“I had just thrown a bunch of cancelled lottery tickets into the dumpster,” said Notsag. “Then I saw Mickey’s fat little face smiling up at me. It took some doing, but I was able to save the drawing.”

The art work turned out to be a rare James Michaels drawing of Mickey Mouse from Michaels’ late “Rotund Period.” The piece, titled BMI Mickey, had gone missing months earlier, and Notsag feared it had been stolen by international hooligans.

“James has a wonderful habit of handing out on-the-spot drawings to children at art shows,” said Notsag. “A little boy dropped this drawing and I somehow forgot to give it back to him.” When pressed for details, Notsag confided, “Well, it is an original James Michaels.”

Art experts have agreed it may be difficult to place a price on BMI Mickey since it is a unique drawing and Michaels is reported to still be alive. Notsag was recently asked his own estimate of the drawing’s market value, should he choose to sell it.

“Let’s just say I could buy a whole lot of lottery tickets.”

"On Going Back To The Street After Viewing An Art Show," poem by Charles Bukowski

they talk down through

the centuries to us,

and this we need more and more,

the statues and paintings

in midnight age

as we go along

holding dead hands.

and we would say

rather than delude the knowing:

a damn good show,

but hardly enough for a horse to eat,

and out on the sunshine street where

eyes are dabbled in metazoan faces

i decide again

that in theses centuries

they have done very well

considering the nature of their brothers:

it's more than good

that some of them,

(closer really to the field-mouse than falcon)

have been bold enough to try.