The art world is filled with bad ideas that are repeated like scripture, and accepted as truisms. Most of them presume to make sweeping statements about all art, and establish a hierarchy with their chosen art at the pinnacle. I’ve dismantled a bunch of the worst of these ideas in lengthy articles, but here I’ll…
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[Usually I call these impromptu writings “runaway rants”, but that implies a certain combativeness or railing against something, which is sometimes true. “Reflections” is probably more fair, at least when I’m not objecting to something offensively stupid.] Sometimes something is so goddamned obvious we don’t see it, and I would not think this about myself…
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It’s been more than a year since I’ve updated my New Art page, and it didn’t even include my Selfies From Alternate Universes series. It’s now revised to include all the recent work, with added thumbnail galleries and slideshows. I’ve reproduced it below. And just a quick note. I find it odd and a little…
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The art world is filled with bad ideas that are repeated like scripture, and accepted as truisms. Most of them presume to make sweeping statements about all art, and establish a hierarchy with their chosen art at the pinnacle. I’ve dismantled a bunch of the worst of these ideas in lengthy articles, but here I’ll…
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If you are new to this series all the images are based on recent photos of me after basically being fed through a neural network (which can change age, gender, etc.), then edited and painted using various programs. None of the people actually exist, and thus they are like self portraits from alternate universes. This…
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The third in the series, and I sat on this one for a long time. There were some technical difficulties towards the end, such as in making the monster’s appendages persuasively symmetrical (working anatomically and compositionally). If I share an earlier version, you’ll understand why. Below you can see I’d drawn in a couple appendages…
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The art world is filled with bad ideas that are repeated like scripture, and accepted as truisms. Most of them presume to make sweeping statements about all art, and establish a hierarchy with their chosen art at the pinnacle. I’ve dismantled a bunch of the worst of these ideas in lengthy articles, but here I’ll…
Read More
The art world is filled with bad ideas that are repeated like scripture, and accepted as truisms. Most of them presume to make sweeping statements about all art, and establish a hierarchy with their chosen art at the pinnacle. I’ve dismantled a bunch of the worst of these ideas in lengthy articles, but here I’ll…
Read MoreA few days ago MoMA uploaded a video of their “salon” on the topic of “White Male”. It could have been called “White Male: The Enemy” and the content would not have needed to change. I find this sort of thing in 2019 not to be the more enlightened, open-minded, generous, just, and progressive…
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I just wanted to get out one thought here, folks, which is percolating in my mind over my morning coffee. In general, morality is defined by others, and art makes its own definitions, hence they work at cross purposes. How much are we, as individuals, self-defined, and how much defined by everything outside of ourselves?…
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The art world is filled with bad ideas that are repeated like scripture, and accepted as truisms. Most of them presume to make sweeping statements about all art, and establish a hierarchy with their chosen art at the pinnacle. I’ve dismantled a bunch of the worst of these ideas in lengthy articles, but here I’ll…
Read More
The art world is filled with bad ideas that are repeated like scripture, and accepted as truisms. Most of them presume to make sweeping statements about all art, and establish a hierarchy with their chosen art at the pinnacle. I’ve dismantled a bunch of the worst of these ideas in lengthy articles, but here I’ll…
Read More
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. … Excerpt…
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This kind of piece stands on its own, needs no placard, no description, no interpretation, no translation, no perusing a CV, no background or context, and no assaying the significance of the biology of the artist. The only reason to read any further is if you are curious to know more. Sometimes it seems like…
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It’s just a wee bit odd to propose this as the first in a new series, as this is a core example of the type of art I do going back decades, including the technique (though I used to do this in charcoal). Let me just dredge up one of those real quick. The reason…
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At Eternity’s Gate is to the painter, Vincent Van Gogh, what the paintings in the movie are to his own: an atrocity. I’ve been excited to see this movie for a long time, mostly because it stars Willem Dafoe as Van Gogh. The only actor that might have been more fun to cast in the…
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[Note before I get started. I’m not a tortured artist, and have no mental illnesses or addictions. I’m not even prone to depression. If there are no extenuating circumstances, I’m told I can be annoyingly chipper, especially in the mornings. The way I usually choose to deal with things is with light humor.] I was…
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Some of you may have already seen a short video I shared, on Instagram, showing some of the techniques I used. This is #2 in a just started, ongoing series of everyday observations. They are realistic renderings of photos I take of my environment. The subjects aren’t supposed to be dramatic, but are studies of…
Read MoreHi folks. This is a updated version of the one I made for the first 25 heads, but I added more frames between images so it’s smoother, and this time I did it in strict chronological order (last time I did it in a way that I thought would give better results, but sometimes faces…
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If you are new to this series all the images are based on recent photos of me after basically being fed through a neural network (which can change age, gender, etc.), then edited and painted using various programs. None of the people actually exist, and thus they are like self portraits from alternate universes. I…
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Don’t worry folks, I haven’t thrown in the towel and become a still-life artist. This work, and I intend to do more, are “practice” pieces intended to develop my skills are rendering things like lighting, shading, volumes, shapes, modeling, perspective, textures, and other realistic details. I often try to create such realistic elements in works…
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If you are new to this series all the images are based on recent photos of me after basically being fed through a neural network (which can change age, gender, etc.), then edited and painted using various programs. None of the people actually exist, and thus they are like self portraits from alternate universes. This…
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If you are new to this series all the images are based on recent photos of me after basically being fed through a neural network (which can change age, gender, etc.), then edited and painted using various programs. None of the people actually exist, and thus they are like self portraits from alternate universes. There…
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If you are new to this series all the images are based on recent photos of me after basically being fed through a neural network (which can change age, gender, etc.), then edited and painted using various programs. None of the people actually exist, and thus they are like self portraits from alternate universes. Dear…
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If you are new to this series all the images are based on recent photos of me after basically being fed through a neural network (which can change age, gender, etc.), then edited and painted using various programs. None of the people actually exist, and thus they are like self portraits from alternate universes. It’s…
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I’ve been picking away at this one for a while, abandoned it a couple times, and finally finished it. It was more difficult than my prior piece for this series (below), and the main difference is just that I used a smoother brush. The smoother brush is more technical and demanding in terms of rendering…
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My last article was an attempt (I like to think a successful one) at disentangling the verbose “theory” of Roland Barthes that “The Author is Dead”. I shared my article in a couple Reddit forums, one being “philosophy” and the other “art theory”. There were a lot of responses, most the initial ones fairly reasonable,…
Read MoreI used an old-ish free program to create morphs between images for the 1st 25 pieces in my SFAU series. I have to do it mechanically by creating reference points between images, and so on. I zoomed in and cropped on the faces where necessary, so it’s just the faces and not the whole paintings.…
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