Summer's Unspeakable Fury

"You vapors, I think I have risen with you, moved away to distant
          continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
I think I have blown with you you winds;
You waters I have finger'd every shore with you,
I have run through what any river or strait of the globe has run
          through,
I have taken my stand on the bases of peninsulas and on the high
          Embedded rocks, to cry thence:
Salut au monde!"


-Walt Whitman


Maybe I am less apt to guilt, maybe less panicked, or it could be that after so long one just gives up trying to push his or her self to the brink of madness........  Summer leaves me tired, I admit, but in remember past summers were I held down my day job, socialized to often, and then tried to do all my mind had in it, in regards to my art work, this one feels a little better managed.  Could be that that is it "managed" both in time and resources to not feel like I might have a mental melt down by the end of summer.  


The late cool rains, that never seemed to stop this spring, have given way to hot winds and all has turned rusted and over ripe.  The evenings are cool, it is a perfect time to walk with your lover or sit, as I do, on my porch over looking the river.  Time seems to slow down, then, for a bit and I can feel empty and a lone with out regret. We all need a quiet place for a while, all of us.  Your soul has to have time to catch up with your body.


I have been listening to Science Fiction short stories on audio while I work, put together by George R.R. Marten. I so want to write and create my own strange world in words.  One more thing to do.........  So I have started the last series of work that could be the visuals of that "Blurred World".  It is a world were shadows have a life of there own and you can see the air moving and there are always lakes and rivers; monsters and beautiful woman.  In this world what you first see is certainly not what it will turn into.

Now is Our time.

"And take this step with cheerful resolution,

Though it involves the risk of utter dissolution."
                       Goathe's Faust 

"Do you dream in numbers?" one song writer sings, "Do you dream in math?" And I ask, every time I hear this song, does it really matter what you dream at all? No, hang on with me my winter pessimism has dripped away with the summer sunshine! I once read a book called "The Symbols of Man" by Charlie Jung which explored dream psychology.  I loved the book.  Yet I have a family friend who is a prison and child psychologist who, over a bottle of whine, explained to me that though Charles Jung's research into dream psychoanalysts was the reason he became interested in psychology in the first place it was utterly impractical to use in the profession. "Write choices & Wrong choices" he told me was what he focused on in his daily work.  I then asked him if his dreams did ever bother him, if they in some way didn't in fact influence his daily choices. "No" he told me "the they don't! I wake up and think what a strange dream and then get on with my life." He likes to golf, spending time on his Montana property, make good business investments and playing at writing conspiracy novels in his spare time.  He once become concerned when I told him I was planning on marketing my art to Art Consultancy Firms world wide. "Don't you think you will be selling out?" he asked.  I laughed and said "You have to be known to Sell Out or become Commercial, besides my work is only going to appeal to a select crowd so I think I am safe." I admit, I might be naive in this but we will see.  Any way we are talking about dreams, about that space in between. And I dream, so do you.  You dream of sand, of horses, of being naked or flying.  You awake from dreams feeling reborn or drained and wishing for a night with peace and rest.  Jung might have something but Jung is lost, wondering the plains of the dead.  His followers are holy men of the new order that should dance with feathers between their shoulders and we are here with Wal-Mart and The U.N.  So what do you dream what are the themes that keep coming back and back?  Does the world fast-forward for you there? Do colors bleed?  Are there colors at all?  Is there God?  I once found my self on a plain of glass in front of a crystal thrown dressed all in rags, does it really matter for it was the past.  And at one point, at another time, there were seven naked woman in a pool, one tried to grab me and hold me close.  I thought many things of this dream but now none match up to any definitive answers to problems today and only seem like a linking between what was future then but know is the past. Sadly I seam to relate with my friend, the psychologist, and have become concerned with every day living.  Yet somethings still strike at me with this feeling like I have been there before or seen this before or in feeling.  My art, what I am drawn to, doesn't let me forget the shifting shapes that fade with waking though my day is made up of "Good choices & Bad".

"She Dreams"

"I wish I new her life story. I wish I could watch her make pasta and buttonholes. I wonder what she dreams."
              Frances Mayes

Inspiring....

I have seen this artist's work before but never put a name to it.  It was her abstract/realism mix that was my primary reason for getting into acrylics.  Everything I had seen until that point didn't interest me, in the medium, but when I saw this ladies work I became a believer.  


Check her out.  And read about her out look on art.  If you aren't inspired and blown away THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU.


BARBARA ROGERS

We Need A Changing Of The Guard

"We observe and appropriate style and ideas from what is peripheral, and to assume that it came from within, would be pretty narcissistic. That idea was rooted in the 1950's and we have since moved beyond it." 
   Hilary Pecis  

   Quote from April 2011 issue of Juxtapoz Magazine.

  O.K., so what Miss Pecis has to say, in the quote above, seems strait forward enough.  In a world that is getting smaller and smaller all we are doing is borrowing ideas from different sources that surround us, reconstructing them and putting them out there for the general, consuming, public to enjoy.  There is no invention, no muse, no higher purpose, no God, no science or discipline in art, just an ability to "observe and appropriate style and ideas".  Everything else is "Narcissism" of an older forgotten age.  Did I mention that Miss Pecis has an M.F.A. and I like her art (even though it is all computer made)?   Yet I have to ask: "What is the point of a M.F.A. in this ideal?" Could it be that to except this ideal one must get that Master Of Fine Arts?  No wonder they defend it with such vigor! They wouldn't have anything to teach if they lost their ideals and it would get expensive to have to start buying art supplies again!!!


I know, I need to get off this "kicking the dead horse of Post Modern Art" or I will be in danger of becoming the Rush Limba (don't have a clue how to spell his last name) of the art world.........  Well, I doubt it but I will quit ragging on this subject I promise :) 


Here are a couple paintings from my last commissioned project. 

Explaining Away Stupidity

"And in the post modern world, even more than the modern world, control and administration (pseudo-mastery, one might say) are all, indeed, seem to have become the be - all and end - all of life"
                                                                                                           Donald Kuspit "The End Of Art"

"Decapitating Beauty"
Digital/Photoshop Print
2005
(c) Abe Samuel Quilling

I would say that one of the most frequent responses that I get after telling people I am an artist or showing them my studio is this: "I have to confess I really know nothing about art."  It is a disclaimer ending the conversation before it begins.  It says: "Look, I am only here to be polite and satisfy my curiosity.  So please don't ask any thing more of me." At my best I will work into the conversation some educational tips on art or the fact that indeed, who ever it happened to be, did know something about art wether they new it or not.  At my worst I just ignore the comment and try to get rid of these Philistines as quickly as possible.


Knowledge 


 The biggest appreciators of my work, thus far, seem to be my uneducated, back woods, rednecked, tobacco chewing, and Bud Light drinking friends who spend most of their time hunting and fishing.  Because of the low gallery or museum numbers in our area most of them have never even set foot in such a place, never mind having any idea about what has taken place in the art world over the last seventy years or so.  They see something they like and they say so.  So we start a diologe that continues into a good conversation were both parties benifit from the exchange.  Then in contrast, and in general, there are my PH. D., M.F.A., ect., ect. friends and acquaintances.  These, in general again, seem to be the ones least interested in my work and least friendly to draw into a conversation about art.  When they make the statement "I know nothing about art." it is not an invitation for dialogue but a barricaded door.  The know nothing and don't want to know anything.  I at first blamed this attitude on the educational system/American culture leaving out or undermining, the important fact, that art has always been one of the most important aspects of showing why we aren't animals and shouldn't act like animals.  But alas, I was wrong........


Non-Art as Art 


Maybe it is time I handed the educational system it's due respect for actually teaching art, in general, and that it isn't the fault of not teaching art but TEACHING it...........  What we are told to except as the "HIGH ART" or "FINE ART" of today (meaning what is being made in your life time) is repulsive. Maybe entertaining for a while, but not something you want to bring home with you.  Not only that but this new "CONTEMPORARY POST MODERNISM" is exclusive to the extreme.  It seems to say that if you aren't in the IN crowd and in the KNOW, then to bad. Oh ya, and you are stupid.  Not only that but most of the past postmodern art that has been displayed or come in contact with the non-artist has been so surrounded by nonsensical dialogue and explanation that one can't help feel that this is just stupidity being explained and rectified.  No wonder so many run when confronted with art or the artist; not only do they not want to feel stupid but who wants to have to put up with stupidity parading itself as intelligence?  As my sculptor friend Garrith Curtis puts it "Most work of this age is more about what is written about it than what it is."  I tend to agree.  The art critics and gallery owners are the true creators at this point, they are creating something out of very little so that they have a job.  They aren't artists though, they are illusionists.


Postmortem  Examination 


I am not saying that I hate all Post Modern, Modern, or Contemporary FINE ART.  Or that it is all stupid or banal.  Some is fitting for our time and place and mirrors Contemporary society quite well.  Yet I don't think any one will argue that it will be marked down in the pages of history with less than a brief mention before moving on.  Something to the effect of "After two devastating world wars, the use of science for mass murder, the deconstruction of religion, and love into function, mankind went mad and started displaying fecal matter as original art work."  The mention will end with a huge sigh of relief and "We sure are glad we moved on from there!" 


Alternatives 


Here is a call for artists to take back the power of being artists.  Take back discipline, restraint, moral belief, hope and joy (not to mention true emotion).  To stop trying to be the Fairest Of Them All and the SPOILED MEDIA CHILD, but the reclusive soul-searching being in love with light and beauty.  Let us be willing to look stupid or uneducated for our faith.  And let us focus on What We Are Doing, not What We Are Getting in return.

Pterodactyl Plains Project

"The chance is the remotest
Of its going much longer unnoticed
That I'm not keeping pace
 With the headlong human race."
                                                   Robert Frost


The weeks have flown by.....   I have to ask why the days seem to go into fast forward yet my work seems to go into slow motion?  What is up with that?  I am currently working at finishing up the album art for the new Pterodactyl Plains  indie album.  This will be the second piece of their work that I have covered with my art.  I am also recording my own album with them under the name of "The Golden Morning", we started recording last week.  So on top of all this I am starting a new side project, which I will be getting up on FB and Myspace before to long.  


So after Pterodactyl Plains I have one more project that is commissioned and then I am home free to explore some much need new territory in my own world.  Not to mention finish some embryos of work that screams for birth....

Sophy Morigeau's Trading Post

Sophie Marigeau was half Shuswap Native American and half French. She is a thing of legend, having eight husbands, being a renown business woman and trader, and founder of one of the first trading posts on the Tobacco Plains north of Eureka Montana.

This painting was commissioned for Tim Mikita's private gallery and collection from the Kootenai region. It is a wet-on-wet water color on handmade paper from Porridge Papers Lincoln, Nebraska. It measures 12.5 in by 25 in. in length. The painting was inspired by one of the few photos known of Sophie's camp. The photo is displayed in the book The Story Of The Tobacco Plains by Olga Weydemeyer.

Watercolor Painting From Old Photographs

I have folks periodically request techniques used on certain pieces of art work I do. I have also found that many people find the PROCESS of making art fascinating even if they are not artist's themselves. This is for the enthusiast on ether side of the spectrum. -A.S.Q.

(Note: the photos showing examples of me working may not correspond to my written instructions. I repent for this and am trying to find a solution with the formatting.)

1. Find a photo you are interested in painting, measure the photo and use the measurements to enlarge the image to the correct dimensions that correspond with your photo. You may want to keep the image the same size, I still recommend measuring the photo to make sure your paper or canvass size is the correct. This will help you in the drawing process.

2. Unless you are a master draftsmen and can sketch picture perfect it will be a huge help for you to take tracing paper and trace your subject. You can then put marks, for points of reference, with your pencil to help keep you from making subjects in the photo to large or to small. It makes the sketching simpler, if you want to be in a hurry though don't do it and get your self frustrated.....

3. After you have cut your paper (I am using handmade rag paper from Porridge Papers in Lincoln, Nebraska) to the dimensions your measurements, ether being multiplied or divided, indicate and after you have attached it to a hard backing then proceed. Make small marks to indicate points of reference on your paper. This is for your drawing and will make your drawing more accurate and easier to execute. Start your light sketch, and I mean LIGHT, with a pencil. You want to just barely be able to see you lines. Use the little points of reference you marked on the side of your paper to keep you subjects in perspective.

4. I wet my paper down with clean water and large 2 inch brush. I then added a very light wash of Raw Sienna to give the over all image a warm mid summer feeling. (The limited palette that I used for the piece, as an example, was chosen for it's rustic look. I wanted the painting to have a sense of antiquity that the photo represented. I also wanted to give the painting a feeling of mid to late summer. This palette works great for that!)

5. Flipping the painting upside-down I then add a light wash of Sepia, let that soak in for a few minutes and then add another light wash of Prussian Blue. Be careful with Prussian Blue it is a very powerfully deep pigment, so use it with care or it will take over you entire piece. I then add, in places, a thinker wash of Raw Sienna once again. I let it all run and mix, using water to mix or wash places were the color is to concentrated. After it has dried sufficiently I then turn the painting right side up once again.

.6 Always working from background to foreground I use Green Earth (or any green with a bit of blue hue to it) for the back ground hills. I add the color as a back ground color for the foreground trees and bushes as well.

7. Using Sepia I darken up the foreground tree line. I also us it to start putting shadowing into the teepees and cabin.

8. Putting Prussian Blue in a deep wash I both darken up the foreground tree line and with a wash of Sepia give it a greenish blue tone that corresponds with the evergreen colors of Montana.

9. For the mid ground, which is a possible field behind the two figures on the right, I used a light wash of Burnt Sienna. This pigment has a red tone to it. I bring it in to the for ground just slightly.

10. Now it is time for details. I add a hint of Crimson to the shirt and dress of the figures on the right. Also a bit of Prussian Blue washed in with the Crimson. This is to draw your attention to the figures being that I chose them to be the subject of the painting. I then start to add details with a very fine pointed brush and a very heavy Sepia wash. It all most looks black if layered heavily.

11. After letting it dry set it a side for a couple days and then evaluate it. If it has enough redeemable qualities, to keep it from being used as fire starter, then sine it. Remember to buy some U.V. protectant fixative and give it several coats for archival prepossess when you are finished.

Note: Remember, watercolor is a very hard medium to work in. It is like a cat, it does what it wants when ever it can get away with it. If you are doing WET ON WET, meaning putting your washes on top of wet paper or other wet pigment, it takes a lot of practice. Start with small sheets of paper and work up to bigger sheets once your confidence and skill level rises. It is also O.K. to generate fire starter; meaning that you aren't failing by not getting the desired results immediately. Most pro artist in general will admit that they throw away or cover up sixty to eight percent of their work before they get something they really like. That is a lot of fire starter:)

Material: Watercolor brushes: 2 in. flat, 1 in. flat, and a fine pointed detail brush. Paints: Raw Sienna, Sepia, Burnt Sienna, Prussian Blue, Crimson, Green Earth (blue hue).

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

"The reason artists show so little interest

In public freedom is because the freedom

They've come to feel the need of is a kind

No one can give them--they can scarce attain--

The freedom of their own material:

So, never at a loss in simile,

They can command the exact affinity

Of anything they are confronted with."

Robert Frost from:"How hard it is to keep

From being king when

It's in you and in the situation"

It has been a while sense I last posted, sense last May I believe. What happened? Well let me tell you......

It was space aliens.

There are moments or months when in hindsight you are able to look back and think: "Wow, I did a lot of growing at that point." This always helps me feel really smart at the present moment, I point out at past memories with a laughing finger; "Would you take a look at that sucker back there (snicker, snicker) who did he think he was? What a bunch of lame ideas and naive beliefs!!!" Then I give my own ass a kick and tell it to get in line; "If you hadn't been there you wouldn't be here you silly muff!" Yaaaaa, so self gratitude only goes so far, even with my self.

So you are probably wondering what I learned over the eight and a half months I have written nothing and for all plausible reasons seemed to have been abducted by space aliens or weird corn farmers in Nebraska. Well, maybe you aren't wondering but I am going to divulge my great knowledge upon you anyway. These will be mainly notes for the artist that is trying to do and sell work, because that is what I do:) You may disagree but unless you are an artist and have more experience I will only laugh at you, and I may laugh at you any way:-)

Thoughts After My First One Man Art Show:

1. Never let any one person tell you which is the best of Your Work and which does not hold up to Par.

2. Do not price your work on the merit of what you give a piece. An artist will always look at their work through different eyes than the client. There are pieces that I do that I know aren't perfect in all their qualities and that can make me bias towards certain pieces while my audience only sees what they are and aren't draw to.

3. Chiggers will go through socks and lace holes in shoes.

4. The audience's judgement of your work tells you more about the audience than it does about your work. (When I was in Nebraska I had several people point out how sexual my work was. When I asked them why they thought that one said "Well, you know? You have that one with the orgy in it and several others with people having sex." I tried to be tactful and ask her which pieces these were, when she pointed them out I did my best to just nod and smile. Clouds and shadows to me, to her they were explicitly sexual images. Granted some of my work is sexual but the funny thing was that the pieces I did purposely put sexual themes in never got commented on as having such.

5. Always have fun!!! Don't let some one pressure you into doing something that isn't fun. Art shouldn't be a big theme for stress. When I am not having fun I realize that I have to check my motives behind what I am doing and why. When the joy goes out of it and it becomes all serious and life threatening it is time to pull back and take another look at what you are doing. I don't get paid well enough yet with my art for it to be stressful, so forget it man, I am not going there. In fact even when I am getting dropped six figures I am not going there, money isn't worth it ether:)