While I was home it came to pass that I learned my brothers didn't know I had a dual major in college. This came as quite a shock to me as I thought that I managed to wearily throw out a mention of my art school background in a pretentious way in EVERY conversation, as a way of establishing my boho street cred and my obvious superiority in every way to those of you who fail to live only to serve m'lady AHHHHT. Whoops. Won't let yalls down ever again- promise. So...I'm talking about this because while I was vacationing I was filled with an aggressive longing for paints. Also my brothers and I had a rather deep conversation about how following your passion is something you have to learn to take for yourself- because there's a thousand reasons out there to NOT to get up and write or practice guitar or paint for 5 hours.
Anyway, in school you learn to take crit. Although my school was just a dinky liberal arts school so we weren't encouraged to rend people's work like hyenas on a wildebeast the way that kids who go to something like SCAD or RISD would, so generally everyone had to start with something nice. But don't worry! I'm starting out the art portions of my blog with a piece I feel only slightly proud of for this reason, because I know it might be super bad and I might need someone to really rip me. Go annoymous if you need to to tell it like it is.
Blah blah. This is getting long. Okay so, coming home I saw some seriously incredible mountains from the plane window. I love the views when you are flying, its like immersing yourself in the biggest most gorgeous orthos you've ever seen, like leaning over the most elaborate diorama. I find it reassuring when I get that high up and suddenly pollution and wars and all that stuff vanishes and people get put in their place by how big the world is.
So i took some inadequate photos of some clouds chilling with a mountain. Here's the one I liked the most, but it still didn't satisfy my longing to capture it.
So...tonight I painted. And I don't really paint. It was never my medium of choice back when I was a practicioner of the arts. I tend to like flat colors (paper cuts) or black and white (ink and charcoal) or sculpture. I always recalled this deep feeling of rage against paints- they can be so ornery, and unpredictable. If you make a mistake there's no erasing, its a matter of coping or waiting and painting over. But this was oddly satisfying. I felt the whole time like I was really effin up and not getting things right, but it felt so theraputic at the same time.
So as usual, I can't see it anymore. You get deep enough into your work and you stop seeing what it looks like. I realized when I was done that the window frame of the plane may totally suck. The painting itself probably looks like something you'll find in a garage sale next to 13 ashtrays, 27 mismatched golf clubs and a broken stroller, but I'd appreciate any crit anyone has to say on it. Should I eliminate the window curve and make the whole thing landscape alone or spend on the details to make it more recognizable? Should I make the sky a brighter blue or does the subdued thing work?
