Finding Your Subject: Just Keep Making Stuff

The Story Behind the Painting, What's the Big Idea?, Working Artist
Butter Tart Finding your style, your subject, as an artist is something artists are encouraged to do, but most are resistant to, though many hope to arrive at something naturally. Why is that? Branding mainly I suppose. It is easier to be known for something, and to build a market for something, if that something has a consistent look to it. As creative types who are trained to push boundaries and break norms, settling in to one style or subject is like choosing to encase yourself in a plastic suit that looks like you but can't move, or grow, or express all the interesting weird parts of yourself. I was once told that based on the range of my work (I had brought three paintings to a critique), I came…
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Back to 2018: New/Old Video

The Sunflower Project, Working Artist, Youtube Channel
https://youtu.be/o5TfWAPOfOM 2020 Revisits 2018 I discovered that I still had some footage from a 30 day vlog project I was recording in 2018, testing if I wanted to do this video thing. It turned out that I had way too much going on at that time to juggle a regular vlog, and so I shelved the footage. In between then and now two thirds of the footage went missing, but what remained was still an interesting look back for me as I reflected on what happened to those projects and involvements, and how they affected 2019. Now that I have decided to work on my Youtube Channel for 2020, I thought it might be fun to do a rewind and update video based on that test project. One thing I…
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10 Places To Look For Arts Opportunities in Calgary.

100 Rejections, Working Artist
This piece was commissioned for one Call I responded to, and was also used for another later unrelated Call I responded to! I was talking to another artist at a gallery opening one day (ironically an artist who has gallery representation, something I have yet to find) about the 100 Rejections project, its inspiration, and how it has helped me to not take rejection so personally, make my rejections constructive, and look at my response rate analytically. If you want to learn about the original project you can read about it on my blog by clicking here. So this other artist, whom I presume relies on her dealer to direct opportunities her way (oh in a perfect world), asked me where I find the opportunities to apply for. None of…
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One Life Fine Art Studio Channel UP NOW:

100 Rejections, Events & Announcements, The Story Behind the Painting, The Sunflower Project, What's the Big Idea?, Working Artist, Youtube Channel
https://youtu.be/g0RPwdQIA2o My Youtube Channel is up and I have a favour to ask: I have polls on each of my first 3 video's to ask what you would like to see in future videos? Please go to the channel, watch a video and answer the poll when it pops up. If you don't have a youtube account that's Ok, you can leave your comments here for me instead. Thanks a bunch for helping! Here is a "time lapse" from the Sunflower Project:
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The One Life Fine Art Studio Youtube Channel is Finally a Thing!

Events & Announcements, Introduction, What's the Big Idea?, Working Artist, Youtube Channel
So January 17th I will be going live with my first public video uploads on the all new One Life Fine Art Studio Channel. Why do I say finally? Well I actually created the channel several years ago to share videos for another project. That project never went anywhere (after much work and investment) so I let the channel lapse while I focused on new projects. However I have wanted to create and share videos about my work and the work of being an artist for a while now. I just haven't had time to plan, schedule, record, edit and upload videos on a regular basis; or so I thought. Turns out I already have a fair bit of footage recorded that I would like to get out there. After…
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Happy New Year! Looking Back and Forward:

100 Rejections, Introduction, The Sunflower Project, Working Artist
I have been setting up my shiny new bullet journal for the new year. Taking time to reflect on the last year and what one would like to do more of in the new year is something everyone should do, regardless of their stance on resolutions. So before setting up calendars and collections pages for the new journal I flipped through the pages of last year's journal looking at what worked and didn't, what I would like to do more of or do differently. Below is a summary of my progress and my art goals for 2020. Transitioning journals for the new year is a perfect time to revisit my art goals. 100 rejections: 2018 was such a busy year that I just needed a bit of a slowdown in…
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