Studio Life & Covid-19 Part 5

Art Sales, Covid-19 Art, Events & Announcements, What's the Big Idea?, Working Artist, Youtube Channel
It is almost a month and a half now since Covid-19 was declared a global Pandemic and our lives here in North America went topsy turvy. I think a lot of people are appreciating the warmer weather, but not sure how they are going to enjoy it this summer. All of our plans are under revision now. Amidst a whole raft of summer event cancellations, it was announced this week that the Calgary Exhibition & Stampede is officially cancelled for 2020. I anticipated this, however I know that the organizers, competitors, exhibitors and vendors were all hoping that somehow it could go ahead. The event brings millions of visitors from all over the globe to Calgary, and generates multi-millions of dollars of revenue. There are visual artists in the Artist's…
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Studio Life & Covid-19: Part 4

Events & Announcements, Sketchbooks, Uncategorized, Working Artist, Youtube Channel
While the weather and the news had its ups and downs in the outside world, it was another busy week in the studio. As an artist who is perpetually in isolation, there is never a shortage of things to get done, even while others post about not knowing how to fill the hours suddenly vacated by their jobs. However, it can be difficult to motivate myself to actually get things done as some projects seem to be futile when their fate is currently unknown due to all the uncertainties of the Covid-19 pandemic. Such is the case with my preparations for The Calgary Exhibition and Stampede Art Show. Currently we have no news one way or the other on the fate of the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede this year, so…
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Studio Life During Covid-19 Part 2

100 Rejections, Events & Announcements, Sketchbooks, The Sunflower Project, Uncategorized, Working Artist, Youtube Channel
So it is another interesting week as we see the progress of the Covid-19 crisis on the global stage and I have continued to document it in my Covid 19 series of drawings I uploaded the final instalment of Kathleen and Quinnton's Wedding Painting to Youtube last week, so here together for the first time are all three videos so you can see the process from start to finish! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAvrhEIE4vA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXvYwDDWsyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmUOiHw0x5k Each video represents one day of work on the painting. So why are the lengths so different? I'm recording the time-lapse video's using my iPhone, so I need to press stop periodically to adjust the number of dropped frames per session. In the shorter ones I stopped recording less frequently. So it appears I am a super fast…
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Studio Life During Covid-19

100 Rejections, Commissions, Events & Announcements, Sketchbooks, The Sunflower Project, Youtube Channel
This week has been intense and uncertain for a lot of people. We are all watching the news on a daily basis, and surfing social media for the interaction that we are prohibited from getting in person. In the studio, in addition to the new Covid-19 drawings I am sharing with you in this post, I had a contract cancellation as their offices are shut down for Covid-19. Kathleen & Quinnton, 16 x 20 Acrylic on Canvas I finished Kathleen and Quinton's wedding painting, and edited and uploaded the final video in the series, which will go live on Youtube this Friday (watch for it). I am still planning on doing a sketchbook tour video this week which I should upload to Youtube for next Friday. This almost couldn't happen…
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Time to Plan (your Art Show) for Better Times

Uncategorized, Working Artist, Youtube Channel
As I write this today it seems half of Calgary is shut down to limit the spread of COVID-19 and the shops may as well be for the amount of stock left on their shelves due to panic buying. My daughter's university practicum is cancelled, putting her educational plan in limbo, and I am worried about the safety of my mother and her husband on her upcoming trip to Calgary from out of province. They are in the high risk category for complications if they were to get sick. So although I think my household could handle the illness, I will be following the suggestions for social distancing and hand-washing. I am doing that so my older family members don't get sick, and so I don't have to self-isolate and…
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Art/Life: Monday – Friday

Working Artist, Youtube Channel
I am so close to releasing the video about planning a timeline for an art exhibition. Behind schedule but still on task, and planning to have that uploaded for this Friday, but in case there are further delays, SUBSCRIBE to my Youtube channel so you will not miss it when it finally does come out. In the meantime, I recorded a wee video diary over the week I began the research and script for the above mentioned video project: http://youtu.be/bBs_-hm3KXs You'll see in the video the foreshadowing of future delays on that project. But I really was not thinking of this video as an explainer for my shocking lack of adherence to self-made deadlines. Rather when I recorded it I was thinking about providing a window into my workweek for…
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Thoughts on Over-painting (oil)

Uncategorized, Working Artist, Youtube Channel
I just didn't have a passion for the project anymore. The inspiration did not work out and I was not stubborn enough to invest more time in making it work. So wasteful to abandon high quality* canvases in this time of thoughtful consumption, so I repainted them with fresh inspiration. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImfXs3W7rp4 Of course there are considerations for overpainting canvases: Is the original completely dry? If you're considering immediately repainting a painting you will have to worry about the dry rates of the underlying layers, oil and solvent contents of those layers and how it will effect the new painting. Is the painting fresh enough that you could just scrape the whole thing back? If not I would strongly suggest waiting until the painting is completely dry so at least you…
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Medium of Exchange:Process HUB@302: March/April 2021

Medium of Exchange:Process HUB@302: March/April 2021

Events & Announcements, What's the Big Idea?, Working Artist, Youtube Channel
Its a bit early for a SAVE THE DATE announcement, given we are looking over a year down the road, so I am just putting it out there that the show we have been working on putting together for over a year now, Medium of Exchange: Process (a follow up to Medium of Exchange: Debt (2010)), has been invited by the Alberta Society of Artists to show in their gallery! Jesica Campbell, Penny Chase, Jessica Hauser, myself and Koren Scott, will be mounting the exhibition at HUB@302 in March/April of 2021. I will be documenting the development of this show here and on the One Life Fine Art Studio Channel in a series of videos and posts exploring how to mount a collaborative visual art exhibition like the Medium of…
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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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