Inspiration and aspirations
You want to see my new favorite contemporary artist? Check out torn paper collage by Sara Longworth at WetCanvas! Also, here is Sara’s blog. And a gallery has some of her work here.
Oh, my God! They are gorgeous!! This is the kind of work I hope to be able to do.
I’ve been thinking about my favorite artists, and have come up with a short list of the “usual suspects” (that is, artists so famous almost everyone knows their names):
- Salvador Dalí – Surrealist
- Vincent Van Gogh – Post-Impressionist
- Pablo Picasso – Cubist/Modernist
- Joan Miró – Expressionist
- Hans Holbein the Younger – Realist
Contemporary artists:
- Edward Gorey
- Dawn Ackerman
- Aimee Trayser
- Nita Leland
- Frank Bergmann
- Don Li-Leger
- David Robinson
- Andy Goldsworthy
- Phillip Craig
I’ve been working on trying to set myself up a price list, but it’s kind of hard. I’m trying to set up a guideline based on the type of work (collage, painting, etc.) and the substrate (paper, board, panel, object, etc.) as well as the size. Cost of materials is really hard to calculate, since a lot of collage is done with found materials (i.e., free), but I can’t just factor in “free”. What happens if I do a collage with all purchased items, but it’s the same size and support as one with found items?
Anyway. Another problem I’m having is with all this deep, what-does-your-art-mean stuff. I have ideas for a few pieces that actually have meaning, but a lot of the stuff I’ve already done is just because I wanted to play with a color, texture, or technique, just to have fun. I hope that’s okay for “serious” art! 
I wonder how ambitious I should be? I’ve been messing around with an idea for an image of depression, based on something i wrote in 2004:
I think futility has got to be the worst feeling ever. Hopelessness. It’s like you’ve hit bottom and there’s nowhere to go but up, but there’s no way to get there. Like being at the bottom of a well, and you can see light and people walking around up there, but they can’t see or hear you, and you don’t have the energy to call out anyway, so you just stand there, looking up at the mouth of the well and wait to die.
I suddenly decided I should use an odd-sized support, long and narrow, to emphasize the emotional distance between the top and the bottom of the well. I guess art is just what it is, as the support, colors, materials, etc. will be whatever the subject matter demands in order to be fully expressed.
On one level, art just “happens.” It unfurls from the artist’s brain and fingers, spontaneous as well as meticulously planned, and it turns out to be exactly whatever it is supposed to be, even if that surprises the artist.
On another level, art takes a great deal of hard freakin’ work!!
