A New Website Means Free Art
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....
Artist Talk: Galway, Ireland
The Maine Arts Commission sponsored this residency in 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...
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. This is...
March 19, 2022
Redirecting the Message
Redirecting the Message: A Definition Redirecting the Message is an art project that revolves around misinformation and communication bias. Explicitly, 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 For instance,...
Springboard Artist Grant by the Maine Arts Commission
[caption id="attachment_305" align="alignleft" width="213"] Springboard Artist Grant[/caption] I'm super excited to receive a Maine Arts Commission Springboard Artist Grant in 2021. I will use the funds for my residency at Watershed Studios in Galway, Ireland in November of 2021. While there, I will develop a stronger body of work in my abstract photography series, currently titled "Re-directing the Message". At the same time, I will develop a series of collage-based abstract photography works. This is a bit of a defining moment for me, as it is my first grant. I'm also grateful because I also didn't think I would be getting the...
Color Field Painting
[caption id="attachment_3617" align="alignleft" width="300"] Color Field #4 - Oil on Wood[/caption] What is Color Field Painting? Color Field painting, a derivative of Abstract Expressionism, is essentially the attention to color in abstraction as opposed to form or structure. The early Color Field painters, such as Mark Rothko, Clement Greenberg, and Clyfford Still created large works such that when one was standing up close one was absorbed in the color. Color Field has developed since then with various tendencies moving both further from shape and form and closer to it. What I'm Doing I'm developing color field in a way that combats the color against...
Artist Residency at The Quarry – Contemporary Arts International
[caption id="attachment_2954" align="alignleft" width="224"] Contemporary Arts International presents: Self-Portrait #2 - oil on canvas - 2013[/caption] Great news. I've been accepted to attend a two-month artist residency at The Quarry at Contemporary Arts International in Acton, MA for 2018. My tenure there will be split between one month in the spring (May-June) and another in the fall (Oct-Nov) with the exhibit being in Nov. My plan is to create ten large pieces similar to the one to the left. Except that I won't be doing silhouettes. Instead, I'll be painting colored squares or stripes as a background and putting the minimalist charcoal...
Novo-Surrealism Artist Talk at Zaratan
[caption id="attachment_5102" align="alignright" width="233"] Zaratan Arte Contemporanea: Novo-Surrealism Artist Talk[/caption] This video is of the Novo-Surrealism artist talk I gave in January, 2017 at Zaratan Arte Contemporanea in Lisbon, Portugal. The topic was Novo-Surrealism and the Media's Message versus the Audience's Understanding of Reality. About 10 people attended live and about 200 people attended on the live broadcast on FB Live. The discussion lasted about an hour. It covered the theory, possible avenues the project can take going forward, and how open the idea can become. I was a bit nervous, as I had not given a serious artist talk like this...
Redefining The Surreal (Novo-Surrealism)
[caption id="attachment_3015" align="alignleft" width="282"] Redefining the Surreal: What does the gap look like?[/caption] While some of my work may have a hint of Surrealism in it, I am not a Surrealist by definition. And yet I feel as if I am a Surrealist in spirit and maybe by nature as well. To start, I care nothing of dreams and the contradiction between them and real life. This, shown with great realism, is the definition of Surrealism. However, there is a deeper meaning to Surrealism, and if André Breton was right in that Surrealism was a revolutionary movement then I certainly fit...