daily-ish notes…

  • are coffee powered.

    I’m sitting here drinking a coffee and waiting for inspiration.

    We were watching a show last night before bed and one of the characters turned out to be an artist. It was depicted in three ways. He splurted some paint onto a palette. He got a really intense look on his face. And he poured himself a cup of black coffee from a cheap plastic automatic coffee maker.

    I realize that I too tend to do some of my work while caffeinated.

    This is only really a shame because coffee tends to keep me awake, so I don’t drink it in the evenings. So, I wonder what inspiration I’m missing after 5pm.

  • see purple mountains.

    I live on the prairies, but I’m driving distance to the mountains.

    When I go to the mountains I like to sketch and paint them, and every time I do I tend to learn a little bit more about mountains, colours, and nature.

    Mountains, it turns out, are purple.

    And red. And orange. And green. And brown. And sometimes there is a little bit of blue.

    I’ve never painted a grey mountain.

    It’s the light and the rocks and the distance and the feeling evoked by standing at the base of something a bajillion times bigger than you and looking up at it to try and represent it with a few brush strokes.

    But it’s also a lesson in painting what you see and feel and not the image that you brought with you from the prairies that doesn’t actually exist.

  • of human perspective.

    Your point of view is more important than your equipment.

    When I spent more time doing photography than painting, I had lots of friends who were more interested in the technical specs of my camera than the photos I took. Those cameras are long gone, but the best of the photos are still cherished pieces.

    Anyone with enough money can buy equipment, supplies, paper, paint, lenses, megapixels, whatever.

    But it’s really your human perspective that has the most actual value.

  • of personal style.

    Style can be defined many ways, but I think to me it denotes the notion of a personal or distinctive collection of choices that make you… you, and determine how you present yourself to the world.

    The fashion your choose. Manners you convey. Your attitude to others. The words you say and write. The music you listen to. The food you eat. The drink you choose from a menu. All these things add up to you.

    For an artist, I think style is similarly granular. The medium in which you do your work. The subject you depict. The colours you pick. The shape and size and texture you employ. The message you convey.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about my personal style as an artist this week, not because I think I have a well-formed style but rather because I think I can sense it starting to form. That’s a good thing.

  • on burnout.

    Lately, I click on nearly every article I see that mentions burnout.

    If I’m being honest with myself, and having a moment of clarity, I am either (optimistically) recovering from burnout or (pessimistically) in a waning-phase of burnout. I hope it’s the former.

    I read yet another personal account article about burnout this morning, and in it the author talks about change resulting from burnout, and how burnout seems to literally burn out a piece of who you were.

    Recovery, like a forest after a fire, seems then like a process of new growth, new trees and plants, new life filling in the spaces that burnt out and turned to ash and char.

    For me that new growth has been art, something that may have grown there anyways if there had been a space for it and enough light to shine though. Now a fresh space exists and I’ve filled it with creativity and expression through paint.

    It’s still young and tender and delicate, but someday it will be a mighty forest.