An Interesting Day

All set for project mayhem. The first installation is set for February 14th, 2010!

I have spent the last couple of days in the company of my wife's filmmaker friends. As we are ramping up for my PR campaign, my wife is also reimmersing into the world of film after a 18 month break from the industry. She was set to produce a feature film called Justify and was in pre-production when she discovered she was pregnant with our son Julian. She is diving back into her documentary on filmmakers, revolving centrally about Amy Holden Jones, writer of Mystic Pizza. She and the original team are applying for the Women In Film Foundation's Film Finishing Fund Grant, next month. I am very proud!

And, having all these filmmaker's around has really got me thinking about video content and the contemporary artist. Not only video content for the web but, also, video installation. Which is so hot right now. I think that I am giong to venture into that a bit and see what happens. Art is all about experimentation!

Oh, and did I mention that Heidi form James Gray Gallery called today!!! I was so pleased that she took the time to look at this blog and my website. Thanks again. Also, she has asked us to bring my Native series up to her gallery for her to look at. They are all really wet right now but, as soon as they are dry enough, we are on our way!

Also, I spoke to my friend Ana Burkhart who is in PR and she had SO many great ideas. She is going to do an article for examiner.com. She writes a column on women in business, so the article will be about how my wife, Aimee, is a filmmaker who has turned the cameras on her husband in order to create active income in a time of economic recession, or something like that!

Looks like Andi Hamamoto will be doing an article for aol.com, as well. She writes a column on love, so her story will be about the husband and wife team on how love can cause synergy when two partners get on the same page with their business. Go team love!

I will keep you posted on the articles and will add links as soon as I have them.

Also, I found an editor for our video content. Thank you Michelle! Michelle Opitz who is an aspiring film director, who ended up as the producer of Justify, will freelance as our editor. Yeah, I am so pleased.

First Things First & Evolution Explained

I would like to acknowledge that I may, at times have mispellings and or grammatical incorrectness, I will not apologize for this. Instead I ask that you bare with me. I will do my best and I will try to keep you stimulated with my ideas and hope that you can look past my imperfections. That being said...

I would like to discuss the evolution of my current series of paintings called Native. This idea came from a figure drawing class I attended at the home of artist Arthur Johnson in Kalapana, Hawaii. I am not much of an art class guy but, I was vacationing with my family and met up with the local artists on the beach and ended up as the guest artist. Anyway, we discussed the most simple ideas of human proportion, as illustrated by DaVinci's Vitruvian Man. Although, as I went home and pondered about the distillation and or simplification of human form I was left with three numbers 1-4-9. I began sketching, it started with one simple figure. Then I really could not stop I kept drawing these simple little figures in groupings of 1, 4and 9. They just poured out of me for a couple of days until I had covered every piece of paper in our little vacation rental. I really felt like I was on to something. Upon my return to my art studio, I experimented with how I would put these little figures on to canvas. I tried watercolor, I tried ink, I began very simply, dark figures on a white or tea stained canvas.

They were missing something. I paint in oils, I needed to try them in oils, into my style and to see what would happen. Out of this, the landscapes, which started out very eleborate, began to distill . I was coming into a beautiful simplicity. A symphony of light, shadow, form, color and spacial plane, all playing together to form a balance.

As I create these images now, they feel RIGHT to me. I believe that they are now correct and whole and that I am doing the idea justice. I am inspired, hopeful and grateful to these images for coming to ME.

I am still working in my studio, on canvas, but I promise to get out there and get this out into the world very soon. Unfortunately, it is raining, again. I think I'm going to have to get creative with this public art project. Any ideas?

Evolution 1

Bergamot Station

Today we had a family field trip to Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, CA. We saw some great work. It's nice to see people working in art and making a living as full time artists. We saw some limited edition Mark Ryden, crazy cool, this guy came out of Juxtapose Magazine, he is part of an art movement called "fantastic realism", he has MADE it in the art world. Check out his stuff http://www.markryden.com ! His original paintings are so sought after that you can't even get them, in fact you can barely get a hold of his limited prints. Heidi Seidner of the James Gray Gallery said there were 10,000 people on his wait list for a specific print and that he only made 50. Wow, I am now beginning to see how the contemporary art world works. Thanks for your time today Heidi we enjoyed speaking with you.

When we spoke of what artists can do to promote themselves she showed us her website http://www.artla.com. She said we need a website, check, got it! She said Facebook, also, check! She also said that I should make a video. Funny you say that Heidi, because my wife is a documentary film maker AND she has already started!!!

It was a great and inspiring day. I am so jazzed I'm going back into the studio to start Native 146. Thanks for reading, thanks for meeting up with us Lisa, Anne & Bennett good to see you all, signing off...

On My Way!

I am at this moment about to submit my application to The Festival of Arts. I have this giddy feeling...it's not so much about whether I am accepted on not. really it's more about the conscious choice I have made to be a visual artist. Also, having this deadline has forced two of my best works so far, and they are BIG. Check it out I painted this one last night! It's called Native-149.

So, as`I am on my way to drop off this application, I am also on my way to my appointment with destiny. I am asking the universe to allow me the privledge to create art and provide for my family at the`same time. I guess I haven't mentioned yet that I am the proud father of the cutest almost-eight-month-old on planet Earth! It would be nice to know that I can give him a good life and be around to see him grow up. That's one of the perks of being an artist, really, working from home! I approach today with a renewed sense of optimisum, that perhaps everything IS going to be alright, afterall. It is truly a gift to live at one's highest creative potential. To my two followers, thanks for coming along on this crazy journey with me. Signing off!

Art v Fashion

Hmmm... my wife has me thinking again, this time about color. Now, the fashion industry spends millions determining what colors and shades are going to be THE color. They do their research, actually they hire it out, they pick the colors then go about spending millions more marketing and telling the public what they want. So, she says if I want to paint art that THEY might want, I may as well use the colors they have been told that they want. So here we go...I went up on Pottery Barn.com and found the colors that they have chosen for 2010. What is interesting is that most of the colors that I've been using are already found in my work for 2010. But, I did get the confidence to go ahead and add some gold metalic and it really looks great.

I finished another piece this morning. It's BIG and all shades of orange, what I like to call "Enlightenment Orange", I think it works. My wife, aka my biggest fan, really loved this one and begged me to do another one very similar but in shades of bright blue.

By the way, the series I'm working on right now is called "Native" all paintings in this series will be numbered based on the work I have done in my sketch book. I finished 149 sketches for this series while I was in Hawaii for the month of October. I was very inspired by the wild undeveloped land on the big island south of Hilo. We met great people. And we can't wait to go back.

In summary, fashion dictates color, artists reinterpret and give color context. That's all for now folks! Thanks for reading (Blair!).

A Man Painting in the Rain

As I have been painting like a mad man for the last several days it has been raining cats and dogs. I wiork in oils so this means nothing will dry, ah, c'est la vie. At least my studio wasn't hit by a tornado yesterday...now that would have put a damper on things. I think it may be a tiny bit cruel of the national weather service when issuing a tornado warning in California to tell people to go into their basements. What basements? This is California!... Anyway, I am working away in the studio 15 hrs a day right now. To any new readers, Welcome by the way!

I am submitting my application to The Festival of Arts tomorrow. So I am hustling to put everything together. Perhaps another update later today! Bye for now.

A Man in a Foreign World/ Project Mayhem

I am writing this blog as I embark on quite possibly the biggest adventure of my life. I am a 34 year old artist living in Laguna Beach, CA. A very long way from my place of birth Warsaw, Poland, which was, by the way Communist at that time! I stand on a precipice. I am for the first time taking my art out of the studio and into the public arena. This very week I will be applying to The Festival of the Arts in Laguna Beach. Not that that's all that amazing. What is going to be more public is the crazy PR and unpermitted arts campaign my wife has come up with. She is a documentary filmmaker/art historian who believes that the only artists who get recognized in the public been the artist who weren't afraid to get up in the public's face. The shy artist is a fucking relic!

It is our intention to place my art into public spaces, commando style, film it and see what happens. Our first piece will be a large painting on a wall near my art studio, which is on Pacific Coast Highway. Now keep in mind this is Laguna Beach. A conservative retirement refuge for the old and nosy posing as a hippie artist colony. In 1960, if someone put a piece of art on their own property, no biggie, heck even in the 80's it was cool. Laguna was by artist for artists back then. Now you go into the galleries down town and they are full of the same crappy lithographs you can buy in the mall. What the heck? Let's find out what happens when an artist does art...in an "art colony" in 2010. And, try to remember this isn't Communist Poland.

Unfortunately, it has just started raining and they say this is the big one, so Project Mayhem will be delayed due to weather. Though, weather permitting, it will be in full effect by Jan 22nd. In the mean time I will put in my application to the Festival.