This is a guest post by Nivea Bona. It is the first in a series of posts by people who are champions of my art. In this post, Bona makes a link between how we care for and see trees and art in our lives. It is based on a trip to Italy where the above painting, A Tree in Tenno, was first imagined. A painted tree is not only a tree. Nor is it art. It is a whole moment. A tree. Have you ever thought of how many trees you see every day? Do you pay attention to…
These are the murals I created for Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield, ME (KVCC) via the Percent for Art Program run by the Maine Arts Commission. They are of a stained-glass style and represent the tools, trades, workers, and landmarks of the area and the school’s academic program. My murals in Brunswick, ME received a lot of great feedback due to their color and stained-glass concept. I decided to expand on this concept and apply for several other projects. This KVCC project was actually my first competitive commission where I won the contract. In August of 2022, I was…
Before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith pontificated something extreme with regards to charity. He roughly stated that we don’t know the difference between making ourselves feel good and “doing it for God” when being charitable towards other humans. This got him into some trouble with the church. It was only a little trouble because he had sprinkled in enough references to “God” to keep him safe. Smith had learned from his friend David Hume’s failures. Hume didn’t lie, and society severely punished him both academically and socially. Adam Smith…
Want to get a free piece of art? Read this blog post to learn how, and you’ll be adding or even starting your very own art collection before you know it.
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…
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…
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…
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…
Introduction of Reception Theory as a Visual Art Reception Theory as a visual art can be described as thus: Imagine a town, or a village, that does not exist in our reality but we know it is there nonetheless. We cannot visit it or touch the buildings or talk In order for this town to exist, this town must have been created before. And it was, by two entities. Actually, it was not created by two entities, but by the void that exists between the two entities instead. The town exists in the void. One entity (the communicator) provides the information of…
Redirecting the Message: A Definition Redirecting the Message is an art project that revolves around misinformation and communication bias. I take images, words, and objects and re-purpose them into other forms so that a new message is created from the old one. This is a part of my Reception Theory project, which relates to communication and interpretation. Therefore, the purpose is to show how one message can easily be changed to mean something different. In other words, information is easily re-purposed to fit the communicator’s agenda. As a result, the audience must decide what is real or not. What to Look For…
This is a guest post by Nivea Bona. It is the first in a series of posts by people who are champions of my art. In this post, Bona makes a link between how we care for and see trees and art in our lives. It is based on a trip to Italy where the above painting, A Tree in Tenno, was first imagined. A painted tree is not only a tree. Nor is it art. It is a whole moment. A tree. Have you ever thought of how many trees you see every day? Do you pay attention to…
These are the murals I created for Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield, ME (KVCC) via the Percent for Art Program run by the Maine Arts Commission. They are of a stained-glass style and represent the tools, trades, workers, and landmarks of the area and the school’s academic program. My murals in Brunswick, ME received a lot of great feedback due to their color and stained-glass concept. I decided to expand on this concept and apply for several other projects. This KVCC project was actually my first competitive commission where I won the contract. In August of 2022, I was…
Before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith pontificated something extreme with regards to charity. He roughly stated that we don’t know the difference between making ourselves feel good and “doing it for God” when being charitable towards other humans. This got him into some trouble with the church. It was only a little trouble because he had sprinkled in enough references to “God” to keep him safe. Smith had learned from his friend David Hume’s failures. Hume didn’t lie, and society severely punished him both academically and socially. Adam Smith…
Want to get a free piece of art? Read this blog post to learn how, and you’ll be adding or even starting your very own art collection before you know it.
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…
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…
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…
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…
Introduction of Reception Theory as a Visual Art Reception Theory as a visual art can be described as thus: Imagine a town, or a village, that does not exist in our reality but we know it is there nonetheless. We cannot visit it or touch the buildings or talk In order for this town to exist, this town must have been created before. And it was, by two entities. Actually, it was not created by two entities, but by the void that exists between the two entities instead. The town exists in the void. One entity (the communicator) provides the information of…
Redirecting the Message: A Definition Redirecting the Message is an art project that revolves around misinformation and communication bias. I take images, words, and objects and re-purpose them into other forms so that a new message is created from the old one. This is a part of my Reception Theory project, which relates to communication and interpretation. Therefore, the purpose is to show how one message can easily be changed to mean something different. In other words, information is easily re-purposed to fit the communicator’s agenda. As a result, the audience must decide what is real or not. What to Look For…