Went back into a tree study from a month or so ago... it might be done. I'll look again tomorrow in daylight.



Also reworked two recently posted pieces (added glazes, more color) and updated photos, here, and here.

It was such a pleasure to paint today! ~Seem~ to have resolved the aesthetic for this developing body of work. Oh, knock knock knock on wood.

It is easier for me to say things when I've figured out how I want to say them. I've been trying to figure out a look that is going to stay interesting for a year. Visually, I'm driven by novelty, I get infatuated, and fall out of love just as fast.

An artist friend asked me today "don't you get a vision for the piece in your mind, and try to create that?" The answer is no, I personally don't work that way. I don't try to stay with my first notion when more interesting things happen on the canvas. I don't say this is better or worse than when an artist begins with a clear intent and works to realize it. I never could paint anything I liked, working in a planned way.

I learned as a writer that often the weakest part of a work is that which was the writer's original fabulous bit. The writer can hardly even stand to cut it, but it doesn't belong in the final work. It hurts it. That first intent has to be sacrificed for the piece to come into its own. As an editor/1st reader, I've in all innocence slashed other people's first fabulous bits. (I can show you the scars.)

For me, this has been true with painting. Maybe because I like narrative in paintings and I am painting the story as I go along. It is more likely though that I don't know what I know until I paint it. And maybe (usually) not even after that, but anyway there is a painting.

Annie Dillard speaks beautifully about the need to sacrifice work in The Writing Life, and quotes some lines from Henry James I loved so much that once I had them in memory. Fifteen years of breathing paint fumes sent them to sludge but I found her book so here they are again.

The part you must jettison is not only the best-written part; it is also, oddly, that part which was to have been the very point. It is the original key passage, the passage on which the rest was to hang, and from which you yourself drew the courage to begin. Henry James knew it well, and said it best. In his preface to The Spoils of Poynton, he pities the writer, in a comical pair of sentences that rises to a howl: "Which is the work in which he hasn't surrendered, under dire difficulty, the best thing he meant to have kept? In which indeed, before the dreadful done, doesn't he ask himself what has become of the thing all for the sweet sake of which it was to proceed to all that extremity?"

Tags: angiereedgarner, ebsq

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a colloquium @ Monmouth College given by Ian Moschenross, concerning the romantic style traits of composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856). What I learned applied fairly directly to painting (and many other things, no doubt!) so I'm sharing. (This is if I can get my fingers warm enough to type. It is really, really cold in my part of Illinois today.)

R. Schumann's problem was a familiar one. He was working in the shadow of a giant, Beethoven.

( The problem of Beethoven... )
Beethoven's suffocating dominance meant that everyone unfortunate enough to be working after he did was born into one primary and overwhelming problem-- how not to be derivative.

So. I identify, and not because I'm wilting in the shade of some modernist painter. (I was born into a complex art world late enough to be free of that.)

( About my giant... )
Anyway, back to R. Schumann and how he coped/worked in the shadow. This is what R. Schumann did.

1) He used quotes. R. Schumann directly acknowledged Beethoven by quoting him. He imported brief motifs from Beethoven that would have been instantly recognized by the audience, and developed larger works around them.

2) Made use of literary references. R. Schumann read deeply and created musical works based on literature of the time that impacted him. He found ways to express literary characters and structures in music.

3) Multiple personalities. As was not unheard of at the time, R. Schumann recognized and named different aspects of himself. He allowed these different aspects to compose (and signed the movements with their names). He wrote movements that served primarily to introduce these alternate personalities, and titled the movements with their names. He kept a journal in which the differing personalities made individual entries.

4) Deployed the Esoteric. R. Schumann used secret codes in his work, assigning particular notes to reference meaningful things/people/places. These secret coded references, inaudible to an audience, are noted in the musical scores for the performers and the scholars. He used these codes to drive compositions. The esoteric elements created distance between the artist and the audience. (The distance creates room for an enthusiast to be active, to grow in appreciation via learning.)

5) Technical innovation. Schumann was quick to make use of technological improvements and aggressively explored the limits and quirks of musical instruments (eg. the generation of harmonics with pianos). The limits and quirks of the available materials revealed opportunities.

6) Rhythmic ambiguity and obsessiveness. Schumann liked to put his audience off-center with rhythms that first present as deeply familiar and then morph or uncloak. He also liked to work a simple rhythm for pages and pages and pages, allowing it to provide coherence through the piece across time.

7) Self-quotation. R. Schumann quoted himself within and across his own works. These self-quotes were inside jokes or rewards for his inner circle. Fragmentary reminiscences of his own work within his own work create richness and layers, as the audience listens and is simultaneously reminded of previous listening.

It isn't hard to look around and find people in all kinds of mediums and disciplines who use one or some of these strategies. Most of these strategies weren't entirely new to me, and some few of them I've worked and worked and worked. I'd like a couple more!

It's good to learn how people in the past working in different mediums strategized similarly, yet with such diverse creative outcomes. We are all across time rowing by ourselves in the same boat. Or something. :)

Tags: angiereedgarner, art, art pedagogy, ebsq, schumann, theory

Oh woe is me. I'm in my studio. The heat is on, coffee is made, lights are on, fresh palette paper down, brushes organized. I have a big bag of baby carrots so I don't even have to leave to find food. But I'm doing my goldfish-on-coffee routine-- circling wall to wall, trying to get started. On something. So. Now I'm blogging instead of painting.

I WANT to start a new painting. I don't have a suitable canvas-- not at my studio, not at home. I checked, and got overwhelmed by all the old sad paintings waiting for me to work on them.

It's an hour and a half in the car to get another canvas, and it means shutting down my studio and losing a half day of painting time.

Meanwhile, I have two works in progress already on my easel (!) and maybe six thick, thick, thick stacks of paintings that need some work. Starting a new painting makes zero sense.

I have maybe 20 assorted very small works I'd be happy to be rid of for $40 including shipping. And the gifty season approaches. But hauling them out, touching them up, shooting them and getting them on the web? There goes my week. And it is Thanksgiving week so it is a short week anyway.

And I'm sure there are shows I need to apply for, and I need to pull together this one series so I can try to find shows for it. And and and!

Not asking for advice. Usually when I describe the problem well enough, some solutions become obvious. Yes, in fact, it is quite clear. I need a studio assistant. ;)

Tags: angiereedgarner, art, ebsq

donkeybaby
24 x 18"
oil on canvas

( Large details. )

Tags: angiereedgarner, ebsq

Someone came into my open studio last week, worked the walls with care, and then turned and asked me "which one is YOUR favorite?"

I blurted out something and thought, wow! that sounded pretty good. I should write that down.

What I said was some version of this.

I tend to value my work based on what I paid to create the piece-- what it cost me, personally, to bring forward that content and make it manifest. And I'm deeply suspicious of this. I don't think that my personal cost has anything to do with the value of the work for the viewer. Just because I suffered doesn't mean the piece is better. It just cost me more and so I value it accordingly. And I also devalue the work that comes to me easily and I am pretty sure that is wrong.

Then I walked my visitor over to the most "expensive" piece in my studio, and said "this one." ***

Later on I asked my partner S. what he thought of this. He said that while short story writers tend to have clear favorites from their own oeuvre, novelists usually say their favorite book is the latest one. The price they paid to write it is still fresh.

It is misleading to use the language of commerce to describe creative effort. Money language is handy, most readers will know it, but it suggests that I have this bank account of dollarish life energy that I can spend however I want and I just happen to choose to paint. Maybe this is true on some level but it is not how life has seemed to me as I've lived it! I don't feel that I get to spend my "money" any way I want. My funds seem to be earmarked for a particular purpose. I can refuse to "spend" but the energy isn't available to go spend on something else.

Also, my experience tells me that however "expensive" it is to paint a difficult piece, the "price" of not painting is higher. Nothing costs me more than maintaining a creative block. (I've got at least a couple of blocks that I'm aware of. They are like bookbags half-filled with sand! I'm trying to put them down.)



***None of this, btw, has anything to do with how I price my work for sale. I use pricing criteria involving very boring things like size, materials, process, and whether or not a given piece is part of a series I'm still trying to exhibit.

Tags: angiereedgarner

Today a new painter friend stopped by my studio and handed me an invite to an open studio event he is hosting in his new studio next month. The card had an image of his work, which I hadn't before seen. It was lovely, painterly realism. The quality was obvious even from the quite small image. With regards to what follows, please know this-- he is a really kind person. Genuinely so.

Anyway, next came The Goofy.

He carefully walked around the studio and looked at all the work I'd recently hung, and said really nice things about that work and also the monster in progress. He tried to look at the Dorothy painting (below) temporarily propped against the wall on the floor. I probably pointed it out to him in the first place because I was talking about which work was new.



I said, "Oh, you can't really see that painting down there on the floor!" and I scooped it up. He nodded, kindly. But did I hold it up for him to see? Oh, no.

This is where The Goofy kicked in. With the painting under one arm I bounced from wall to wall like a caffeinated goldfish in a too-small bowl. Ostensibly I was looking for a blank spot to hang the piece at eye level. And there was no such place, because I've got the studio walls totally full.

But I keep circling like I'm somehow gonna spot the perfect place to put down this painting so my artist friend can see it. If I just circle hard enough.

Before I topple over from dizziness, the Small Still Voice that fills me in on what I'm really doing with my life issues a bulletin. you. are. hiding. your. painting.

Me? Hide a painting? What? WHAT? So I put the painting down someplace and resolve to figure it out later.

It's later now. OK, I hid the painting. I don't doubt my Small Still Voice, it is much smarter than I am. But this is the same painting I happily showed to the Elvis people, and have blogged several times, and I think I posted it in the EBSQ forum... I don't know if I would want it to be the one painting that represents my work for all time to all people, but I have felt pretty good about it.

So, now, it is not hard for me to see what happened. I saw his card invite with his grown-up, elegant, lovely work and flipped. I thought there is no way my Dorothy painting is ok for someone who does... grown-up elegant lovely work. (Did I mention his sophisticated, controlled palette? And yummy brushwork? Oh dear.)

So, The Goofy kicked in and I hid a painting and who knows what I said. I was in ambulatory panic mode. Protecting my Dorothy. But she didn't need protection, especially not from this nice person.

I (maybe) (definitely) needed a Time Out. I coulda made coffee or something while I reminded myself of artist-colleague basic principles, like "we all do different work and that is a good thing" and "we can love work that is very different from our own and most of us do" and "with art there is no right answer".

Note to self: make coffee next time.

I want, need, and value my artist colleagues so, SO MUCH! Screw that true-artist-works-in-heroic-solitude noise. I can't DO this alone. But from time to time one of my artist colleagues, usually unwittingly, takes me by the hand and leads me directly to My Personal Pile of Goofy. Which I then get to pick through and sort.

Eventually The Goofy morphs into art supplies or life wisdom or blog entries. :)

Tags: angiereedgarner, ebsq

[ Hi, I'm a painter and artist correspondent for EBSQ. You can read my resume here for a sense of my professional activity. If you didn't already know, EBSQ is the best!

Last summer I moved to the tiny town of Monmouth IL, rented a storefront, and began painting in full view of the public. I didn't imagine that I would develop a local art market-- I did it to connect with other people and get some local eyes on my work.

With that background, maybe this entry will make some kind of sense. This is a follow-up from my last post, here.]

To recap the Friday night open studio and Al Hull concert at the Rivoli...

Gosh, am I going to have to resort to bullet points? Maybe so!

+ In general this was an older entirely white working class crowd looking to have a good time. A few kids, but just a few. No teenagers. I heard one woman, I'd guess well in her 60s, ask the bouncer how she could get in the dressing room and flash her tits at Elvis. The bouncer responded by carding her before allowing her to enter the bar. She promptly declared him "a keeper". :)

+ An older fellow spotted my burbling coffee pot and complained 3x loudly about the lack of coffee cups. "Too bad there aren't any coffee cups here!" "Too bad you don't have any coffee cups!"

I told him "Hey, I'm not a restaurant!" He said "oh, ok!"

(I do serve individual gallery guests coffee, but my 4-cup coffeemaker would require a loaves and fishes miracle to deal with a real crowd.)

+ His wife told me I was "pretty" and "nice" and petted my hair and said she liked my hair very much, and then kissed my head. She then said she was going to bring me some of her art. And wanted to know if she could paint in my studio. :) Let me just say that this couple is in no way typical for the area and leave it at that. I would call the pair Monmouth Illinois local color.

+ Al Hull's brother, Billy Hull, was working as a bouncer and was set up right outside my studio back door making sure nobody snuck into the concert from the bar area. He shilled for me, and was a real hoot. He said he worked in radio in the past, which explained his easy energetic patter with guests. He had also done a lot of bouncing. He was well over six feet/275#, with a shaved/bald head. He worked security for mafia in Chicago and knows where Hoffa is buried. He told me but if I told you I'd have to kill you. He asked if I would paint him in his boxer shorts. I said drop your britches, you have no idea how tough it is to get male models.

Anyway, I learned from him how to talk to people around here! You have to start the conversation if you want there to be any, and make your greeting loud and cheery and informal. I've been doing it exactly wrong-- trying for nonintrusive and polite.

+ At some point since I opened the studio I decided ~not~ to hang just the easy more accessible work. I started out hanging mostly landscapes. Now I have scary paintings with nudes all over the place and I put Cain and fallen in the window, visible from the street.

I decided it was patronizing and cowardly to hide the difficult work from the public and also I realized that education and affluence don't really prepare a person to do the work of engaging with a difficult piece. The college staff and faculty feel the most comfortable actually coming in to my studio. It has been hard to get other locals to cross the threshold. But the college folk in my experience do not necessarily do better with the tougher work. It basically can't be predicted on any obvious basis.

+ People really slowed down and worked through the walls painting by painting. Wow! I was wondering how you get people around here to look at the art! Ordinarily, folks who stop by the studio seem so busy, they rip through 30 paintings like they are nothing. Rarely do they come to a full stop and rock back on their heels for a good looky-think. But since the concert folks had 20 min. or more to burn before the music began, they went slow and had a chance to take in what they were seeing. So what I need is a captive audience. ;)

People spent the longest time with this painting, and made no comments to me or each other.




eyes closed, oil on canvas, three panels, each 28 x 22"
dimensions installed variable

When I say they spent the longest on the triptych above-- many went to it first, made an ouchy/confused face, rocked back, stood in silence, moved on to other pieces, then came back for another round. I was SO honored.

And this painting was the crowd-pleaser.


Dorothy makes for Dante's wood, oil on canvas, 16 x 22"

People didn't necessarily spend all that long on this painting, but made happy comments to me and each other.

+ One guy tried to get me to say prices in order to tease me about them. "How about five bucks? Fifty cents?!" I don't play on that one. I jutted my jaw and went back to painting (I painted pretty much the entire time). He apologized and I nodded and smiled.

+ But what about Elvis? I photographed him but it looks more like a ghost sighting. Appropriate huh?



Al looked EXACTLY like the photos on his website gallery. He had a big voice and was a charmer. I did not know about half the music.

+ Al Hull's brother Billy who bounced and told me where Hoffa was buried also told me that he and Al started out as signpainters. And Al did pinstriping. Oh, the shame of my awful sign!

I did get the sign done but am not going to post a photo. There is another concert next Friday, and I will work on the sign between now and then. I do not think I will humiliate myself by putting my bad sign on the internet. Just know it said "art" and there was an awful arrow. I got all inspired by subway maps and it just did not work. I love subway maps.

+ Then Al/Elvis's mother(?) marched into my studio and told me "Al is an artist TOO!" I did not know what exactly to say, so I just smiled, but then she spun on her heel and left so it was ok. There are dynamics in show business families.

+ If I had stayed open late enough after the concert, I am sure I would have met Al/Elvis and not just his brother and mother. And maybe even gotten the prized photo of him standing next to my art. But he would have been out of his costume and wig by then, and I got really tired. It was a 14-hour day by the time I put the studio to bed and went home.

Next Friday night at the Rivoli a couple of metal bands are playing a Halloween concert.

Tags: al hull, angiereedgarner, ebsq, elvis, rivoli

[Hi, I'm a painter-- I self-rep and also work through the gallery system. Now I am an artist blogger for EBSQ. You can read my resume here for a sense of my professional activity. But what keeps me going is the ability to communicate and share work with other artists online.

Last summer I moved to the tiny town of Monmouth IL, rented a storefront, and began painting in full view of the public. I didn't imagine that I would develop an art market-- I did it to connect with other people and get some local eyes on my work.

With that background, maybe this entry will make some kind of sense.

Oh, and EBSQ rocks. :) ]

Al Hull, Elvis impersonator extraordinaire, is coming to the Rivoli Theatre tonight-- right next to my open studio.





I meant to be open for theatre events, ever since I rented the space. Hadn't yet done it. But my landlord stopped by, gave me love for my new goofy landscapes, and pointed out very sweetly that it sure would be great if I was open for the King.

My back studio door opens onto the hallway used by theatre patrons to access the Bijou Bar (on the other side of my storefront from the theatre) and the restrooms.

I bought strings of white lights and put them in the front windows and around the back door to attract people in. I am gonna prop a canvas that says something clever like:


ART ------>

...on a barstool out in the hall.



Unfortunately painting signage completely freaks me out. So the sign, as you see, is blank. I have maybe three more hours left to paint the sign or else the wet acrylic will get on people if they brush against the sign. Instead of painting the sign, I am blogging.



Stringing up lights so they look good is harder than I thought.As you see I ended up kinda puddling the lights along the bottom of the windows. I think I need about six more strings of lights. Must sell painting.

Decided the dotty water tower was my MOST Elvis painting, and so hung it back in the window. See above.

Oh Elvis. How I want to be worthy!

Tags: al hull, angiereedgarner, ebsq, elvis, rivoli

We're pleased to be adding Angie Reed Garner, artist extraordinaire, to our list of bloggers for EBSQ: Art Meets Blog. She'll be blogging about life as a self-representing artist, interesting tidbits, and hopefully sharing some of her amazing art. Welcome to the conversation, Angie!

About Angie:
"I'm a second-generation self-taught artist. The study of ancient Greek history and culture has been a way for me to gain perspective on contemporary situations. There are at least minor classical references in most of my work." (read more)

Tags: angiereedgarner, blogging, ebsq