Bog Cotton

A commissioned painting. Bog Cotton is a sedge which grows in marshy places in northern temperate climates -- the sort of place where I grew up, making this painting an extra-special undertaking.

Robert Adams on art and words

 

Have just watched the Robert Adams video above and found loads in it to share. I love his "ordinary" photographs, not so much the ones of deforested devastation (but I'm not a photographer). Among other things, what he says about writing about art resonates with today's art scene, where it often seems that artists' statements are as important as the art:

"You get to the point where you find something that's your own ... and if you don't find the audience for it you're going to burst. No publisher wants to touch just pictures. Publishers ... they've gotta have words. People ... it's something very primal. Most people are terrified in front of visual things ... they want to talk. Say something! Just say anything to let the air out. You can't talk about it [your own work?] -- if you could talk about it that's what you'd do. Robert Frost ... somebody came up to him and said, tell me what you said in this poem. He said, you want me to say it worse? [LOL] Hopper was known to spend days to come up with a tiny paragraph because it has such a potential for screwing things up. Every once in a while somebody will help. And that's what John Szarkowski did, he wrote the introduction to 'The New West'. I'm so grateful, even now, all these years later, that he did it. "

Also found the full text of an interview with Art21 which begins as follows:

ART21: What would you say making art is about, for you?
ADAMS: Recently I saw someone—I can’t remember who it was—who said that the essence of the creative act is determining what the question is. Once you have the question, then it’s all pretty much in the can. I believe if your list of questions is long, that shows you’re on top of this.

The link for the rest is
http://www.art21.org/texts/robert-adams/interview-robert-adams-photography-life-and-beauty 

On another note, here's a link to Part 1 of an excellent tutorial on Airbrushing, beginning with what kind of equipment to buy:  http://syntheticskystudios.blogspot.com/2014/01/airbrushing-101.html
It's something I'd like to do but doubt I'd take it on at this stage, I have enough on my hands with printmaking and painting issues to sort out.

A journal page

A page from a type of small journal I've been keeping recently (the page is half letter-size). I did it in 2012 for a few days when doing a short online workshop in Journaling and afterwards put it aside. Looking back at last year's pages, there were ideas which I didn't realize at the time. Now I can see a way of using it that will fit in with the other things I do. The idea is to clip things from the daily paper and make random notes while at the same time thinking about design. It can be a multi-purpose occasional armchair activity in the evenings to keep aware of what's going on in the world.