2008 - getting back in the swing of things.

At last I am back at painting everyday. And now to get my blogging up to a schedule.

I am about 3/4 finished on a new painting with fourteen figures - do I call it a group or a crowd? It is based upon some images I captured in Mexico a couple of years or more ago. I always liked the photos and now have got around to painting them. The painting consists of a group of musicians entertaining some people at a beach side bar.

It has a sunset sky (I seem to be hung up on these skies), the ocean, and the sandy beach with lots of shadows. There a lot of tiny details which I enjoy painting with my smallest brushes (000), but it is slow work. Still have not got a name for the painting. Will have to work on that one.

Otherwise, I am putting a lot of time into helping my non-profit Santa Barbara Visual Arts. It is membership renewal time and I have been arranging for the solicitations and answering the many questions that arise. Plus, I have to build the emailing lists for 2008 as people pay.

To make things easier, last year we tried using the PayPal method of allowing people the option of paying online with a credit card. It gets the money in faster, and requires less handling and bookwork. This year we expanded the approach by adding several different fee rates and using the online payment method for each.

On the whole things have gone very well. Of course, some of the larger organizations still require invoices, but I have been submitting them by email, which seems to be accepted and makes thing easier (and cheaper for us).

More catching up on what has been happening.

Yesterday I wrote about my art activities on Monday and Tuesday. Below are some things that occurred later in the week.


Wednesday:

For some time, after painting many portraits and groups, the urge is upon me to paint once again a landscape. It has been several years since I last went down that path - long before I began painting in oils. As always, I began by searching for starting images in my large reference file.

My inspiration for this change in direction is an upcoming open show at Gallery 113 during November supporting "Heal The Ocean," a local charity. Though open on topic, ocean and beach scenes are favored. Yesterday and today I looked through my file (now about 10,000 images) and chose about ten candidate images for further review.

Surprisingly, I have very few suitable images. I want something strong, eye catching, and salable. The show is juried and the painting must pass scrutiny within a show dominated by plein-air images. After some thought, I chose an image of a diagonal shore scene, curving into a distant bay, with a silhouetted ridge against a sunset sky.

Certainly it is strong with bright sky colors and bold warm darkness over nearly a third of the surface. There are walkers on the beach, also as silhouettes. To put them is a question still to be decided. I have chosen a 12 x 24 inch canvas. Another decision yet to be made, should this be my usual painted edge unframed format, or will it be better accepted by the juror when framed.

Thursday:

Santa Barbara Visual Arts Alliance, of which I have written earlier, is a non-profit which long ago I helped co-found. I am still active on their Steering Committee. Today we had a Steering Committee meeting at my house.

This is also an opportunity for me to show off my art as the committee members, including several local gallery owner/managers, have to walk to the meeting (in my dining room) through areas of the house where I have my private gallery with my paintings hanging. I deliberately kept back from being rephotographed my "Story Teller" painting, to have it available for today.

Thursday evening is the First Thursday, the Santa Barbara monthly art walk run by the Santa Barbara Downtown Organization, to promote their local merchants. It is a fun time. This month it seemed extra crowded.

To be different, we started our exploration at the south end of the gallery area. At each place there are refreshments available for the grazing, often demonstrations, and nearly always music. Our first stop was the new downtown gallery developed by our locally based world famous Brooks Institute of Photography. The Brooks show was dozens of blown up head and shoulder naked portrait images of male actors and models. My wife particularly enjoyed this exhibit!

From there we stopped by the Dan Merkel Gallery of surfing photographs. Then on to Studio 3 East with a way out show consiting of pieces of net and various found objects. This was followed by the Patty Look Lewis Gallery with large minimalist bright colored paintings. And then on to the brand new gallery of Frameworks and Caruso-Woods - for another collection of minimalist abstract art.

From there, around the block was the offices of Casa Magazine with a show of rather weird Latino style large paintings on long wide strips of silk. Finally our last stop before dinner was Santa Barbara Frame Shop and Gallery with half a dozen artists on show with a wide spectrum of more conventional styles of variable quality.

Friday:

After lunch with some friends, I finally dropped off my new painting "The Story Teller" with Scott, my photographer. We then went on to the Art Fund Gallery to view the upcoming silant auction, which includes my painting "Sophia." It looks like it will be a great exhibit.

Once again I had been asked to donate a painting to a silent auction. This time it is for a hospis organization known as Sara House. They are having an Artists Ball in December. I chose a nice 20 x 16 inch gauche on clayboard painting titled "Dress Up Day." It has been i a lot of shows and has drawn many favorable remarks, including an award some years ago, but has never sold. Our last stop today was to drop it off.

Santa Barbara Visual Arts Alliance

As many local residents and knowledgeable visitors have found, Santa Barbara County, California, is an art lover’s paradise. It is thriving with painters, sculptors, printmakers, and assemblage artists – some world-renowned and others are just emerging. In addition, many galleries, studios, museums, and art events feature the work of both past and present local artists.

I am a co-founder and Steering Committee Member of a local non-profit organization known as Santa Barbara Visual Arts Alliance (SBVAA). It has been around since 2001, and has a mission to promote, locally, nationally, and internationally, the rich local visual arts resources.

Funded in part by Membership fees, it is supported also by a small grant from the Santa Barbara Community Events & Festivals Program, from funds provided by the City of Santa Barbara in partnership with the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission.

Today, its principle contribution is a website with a database recording much of the visual arts activities in the County of Santa Barbara. There are recorded most local visual arts related events, galleries, museums, art venues of all kinds, organization, and many individual artists, many with their own studios. Thousands of visitors to the area, as well locals, use the listings to plan their explorations of the local art scene.

The organization has until now been run by volunteers. For a long time I have acted as manager and moderator for the website, supported by outside contractors who do the actual online posting of the hundreds of emailed art stories that arrive each month.

For the last few days I have been taken away from my painting to write a grant solicitation to obtain funds to bring on board our very first employee, an Executive Director.