Blog

Experiments in Watercolor: Diversity in Luminosity

Exhibit

Experiments in Watercolor: Diversity in Luminosity

Experiments in Watercolor: Diversity in Luminosity, is a seven-artist exhibit that I have both curated and am in as an artist. The show runs at the UMVA Gallery at 516 Congress Street in Portland, Maine for the month of May, 2022. The artists, including me, are: Alan Crichton, Arthur Nichols, Liz Prescott, Rabee Kiwan, Ed Nadeau, and Jack Silverio. I created this exhibit as an attempt to show how watercolor has many varieties of work. I believe most people think of watercolor as great washes of landscapes and portraits. But I have often worked in the abstract, and many

April 25, 2022

Behind the Artwork

Cityscape Series: Behind the Paintings

These cityscape paintings are some of the first that I did as an artist. It is not a coincidence that I created them when I first moved to Brazil. There’s a huge difference between small-town Maine and big-city Brazil, and it’s not the type of difference you get between small towns and big cities anywhere. I had lived in several cities before moving to Brazil, but the level of caution that I needed to exercise with regards to violence was vastly different in Brazil than those other cities. I went from a sense confidence in being calm to always on

April 6, 2022

Art Project

Artist Talk: Galway, Ireland

Below is the artist talk I gave at Watershed Studios in Galway, Ireland. The Maine Arts Commission sponsored this residency – an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. Personally, I think the talk was good and I explained myself well, but I was really disappointed with the turnout. I promoted this a lot, and I hope the residency did, too. As it was, however, no one from the Galway arts community participated beyond the residency. I found this to be a consistent theme in Galway, that the residency did nothing to help promote my being there

March 28, 2022

Walking on Both Sides Part 3 is a mixed media collage using newspaper headlines to contrast reality.

Criticism

Manipulation of the Art Market

The manipulation of the art market is the stuff of legends and actually pretty transparent. It’s run “in secrecy” by the super wealthy in a way to make them more wealthy. It’s about intimidation, and that game works for them. This is why I always tell people to buy what they like. Don’t buy art to match the décor (the art will outlast the décor) and don’t buy art to compete as an investor either (the game is rigged before you even enter it). Artists suffer the worst consequences, but there is a way to solve this: buy local artists

March 28, 2022

Manipulation #11 - House on Newcastle is an abstract photo of Galway, Ireland using oil pastel and acylic paint with red, green, and blue coloring.

Criticism

The NFT Market is a Massive Ponzi Scheme

Seriously, if you’re considering getting into the NFT market, seller beware. It is not really buyer beware if you can convince people to jump into the game. Simply put, the more people in the game the easier it is to sell and make a profit. I can’t say it as well as Canadian Artist Kimberly Parker puts it, so you should read her article posted below. In short, she did a massive data scrape of those markets that sell NFTs, and the results show that the average artist actually loses money, and that data are skewed by the very few

March 28, 2022

Essen Coal #1 is an abstract photo of the Welterbe Zollverein mine in Essen, Germany.

Art

Reception Theory as a Visual Art

A Definition of Reception Theory Reception Theory judges an audience’s response to a particular communication method. In particular, it began as an analysis of how readers interpret literary texts. Interpretation is inherently built into Reception Theory. This means there is a gap, a difference of opinion, between what the communicator meant and what the audience understood. Reception Theory academics often tackle the two sides of the theory: what is communicated and what is interpreted. How I Interpret Reception Theory I work specifically with that space in between what is communicated and what is interpreted. To me, that space is fundamentally emotional.

March 19, 2022

Greg Mason Burns

Experiments in Watercolor: Diversity in Luminosity

Cityscape Series: Behind the Paintings

Artist Talk: Galway, Ireland

Manipulation of the Art Market

The NFT Market is a Massive Ponzi Scheme

Reception Theory as a Visual Art

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