Reflecting on simplicity

Hi art lovers... all 3 of you. It's been a long time since I've posted.

A lot has happened. I lost a dear friend and client and I have designed and painted another set. A very complicated one. I'll post a photo of the set soon. But, its been a emotional and wildly busy ride! My life has been way to complex. Adding a new set design to the mix of a full time business and a family has totally exhausted me. I know, set boundaries silly! Although, to me, overdoing it at times stretches me and grows my knowledge and I believe God will use that to bless me down the road to a growing art career. Set design is a versatile art venue. I know a lot more now about painting big, painting objects and painting fast. I'm sure it'll come in handy somewhere. The most wonderful news is I actually painted while on my recent vacation to the beach on Padre Island! First time to paint there! Off the balcony of the condo we normally rent all I could see was sky, ocean and sand. Three distinct stripes of color. As a primarily abstract artist I loved that challenge.  KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid! The weather was divine. The wind, normally raging, was only a breeze and the November sun was low in the sky. The funny thing is my acrylics were still wet almost 2 hours after applying my underpainting! Coastal humidly apparently makes acrylic act like oils. I didn't mind to much because I love oils. I think I'll call this small, simple composition, "Balcony View at the Beach". Catchy huh?  Simple was my mantra on this long awaited vacation. I hope that when you look at this painting you enjoy a simple moment of peace. The stress and pressure evaporated with every humid brush stroke. I'd like to paint this beach scene again because the beaches in Texas are endless, so I'd need an extremely loooong horizontal canvas and an extremely loooooooooooooooooo-oooooooooooooooooooooooooooong vacation to get horizontal.  later....

HIGH TIDE

This painting was painted live at an event called FLOW, "For The Love of Water". The event was a weekend seminar/workshop thing to raise awareness of the drought in Texas.  I was asked to paint live at their "quick draw" auction. I did. Here it is.  It was a blast!  


The artist were asked to paint their love of water.  I absolutely love water, of course.  And I love color. High Tide is all about the emotion and life around water. Without it we die.  Water is fluid color, excitement, movement, reflections and collections of shapes. My watery painting is called High Tide because I love the ocean, and all the interesting stuff that washes up with the tide onto the beach. 

Painting-a-day!?

Hi art lovers! 
Well, here it is. My first painting-a-day! I painted it one day and then that was it. At least I know I can!  I think I'll start a fad called a-painting-somedays. Thank you Carol Marine for showing me how its done. I have studied her work for about 6 months now and I've learned so much from her blog, site and demos.  I've read everything she wrote about painting technique and then did these apples. I also did some pears but didn't finish painting them because I had to take care of my son Matthew.  On my wish list is an actual Carol Marine work shop somewhere in Central Texas.  


I loved painting this. I call it "out casts" because I just threw them on the table and painted them where they landed. I did turn one up though. I wanted them to look like they were marching off to jump in a pie. I was hungry. I painted fast, working from a quick pencil sketch while squinting at my still life. I used evening sunlight. This is acrylic on a 12"x12" gallery wrapped canvas. I had to use acrylic because of time and my studio is in the living room at the moment. One day I will have a real studio again. Until then I paint to the sound of "Super Smash Brothers" as it pounds out from my sons Wii - RIGHT behind me - and folding clothes on the couch in between brush washings. Sounds romantic, huh? 

Rufio redefined

Rufio the dog is now a $700 dog. The vet told us to keep him calm for 4 weeks. Ha, like that's gonna happen. After 5 recent trips to the doc and another new xray he is hopefully on the mend. His foot may face a new direction, but at least he'll be in college with his owner. It's been like having a toddler around the house. We've had to baby proof and buy new shoes. Oh well, he's so cute. Here he is. Now back to art... again.

Rufio - the lucky dog.

Hello art lovers and art doers... my daughter leaves for college in the morning, for her second year. We are helping her move into her first house, of which we are paying the rent. She's sharing it with 5 girl friends so it makes the rent pill easier to swallow.

Along with all the furniture from her room, we'll be taking Rufio, her new puppy. The previous owners said he is a healer/mix, but he looks more like a bird dog to me. Rufio is sporting a full leg splint because he got hit by a car yesterday. Fortunately the car only clipped his leg, but I watched in horror and I saw little Rufi fly in the air and then down the road. He is resilient! A broken leg and road rash on his tummy are all that happened. My daughter was in tears just like a new mom, but very brave. I was a wreck, just like an old mom. So, the mutt she picked up at the grocery store is now a $500 dog.

You know I really didn't want her to bring this puppy home. I'm way to busy to worry about yet another animal. But when we saw him we all instantly fell in love. I'll post his photo when we get back from moving her up to college. He's crying right now and it's breaking my heart.

Now I get to take care of him for the next 4 weeks, as he hobbles around. So much for being way to busy, huh? Rufio and I will be here in my home studio staying calm. College daughter will be working to pay vet bills, I hope. School starts next week and I'm wondering how it will all play out.

Gotta run. Rufi is call...

Food for thought follow up

Hi art lovers,

Well... the saga continues. Cash-for-clunkers is back on. The lady who was told to bring her car back, (on the news) has disappeared. Wish I could find out if she actually took her car back. More and more people will now be able to have that great deal! Unless of course the government changes the deal. Hope that's not the change Obama was taking about.

Sorry about my ranting... Now back to art.

I'm working on my "cityscape" paintings. This is the art I tore off the wall of the set I had designed for Guys & Dolls... I hope to use it as an underpainting for a triptych. Will post them upon completion.

Over and out.

This is so funny...no one reads this stuff. I feel like I'm writing in a diary or talking to myself.

Food for thought

Hi art lovers, okay, I'm already pretty darn fed up. This is not about art but the art of standing up.

I was at the grocery store today checking out and the registers froze. So I had to wait. All the customers had to wait. The cashier walked away, turns out to get help, without the good manners of letting us know what was going on. My transaction was finished. My groceries were in my handy, green, recycled bags and my check was in the machine. I was all done. But... I had to wait. Why? Wasn't I the costumer? Had I done something wrong? Then I remembered a phrase my first boss taught me, "The customer always comes first" ... so why did I have to wait for the register to get its repair before I could go home and cook the meal for the family that was sitting in my green earth bags defrosting? Why didn't the checkout clerk just say, "Ms. Owens, your check is good, go ahead and go home"? After all I'm at that store every single day! It was so crazy watching all these people try and keep it together for fear of acting without their manners, all the while the cashier apparently didn't give a rip about anything but her job.

Dinner done and family fed, I watched the news. I saw a report about the cash-for-clunkers deal that a lot of car buyers took advantage of. The million dollar advertising champaign said to bring in your clunker for cash toward a new car. Man, what a deal, right? Hoards of humanity took them up on their offer. After all it was a million dollar ad champaign, surly its a great deal! Wonder how the auto dealers managed to pay for all that advertising?

The reporter was interviewing a woman who had cashed in on the deal. So the deal is: The customer gets a new car at a great discount. Then the auto dealers get the cash from the government, for the clunkers they collect. This is where it gets tricky, it's the government who encouraged this cash-for-clunkers deal. It's the government who said they would pay the dealers to get the gas hogs off the road as a shinning example of the new change to make us a more efficient, greener, cleaner, America.... and of course to stimulate us enough to turn around the economy. Am I wrong?

Looks like the government is not holding up to their end of the bargain. The reporter said the dealers are not getting the money from the government in a timely fashion and they are stuck with clunkers. The profit they gave up in the deal is hurting their bottom line. The car dealers are now in trouble, (again) and they want the cars they sold back! So this dealer is telling his the buyers to bring back their cars!! Remember, the government owns a lot of the car industry now.

The woman talking to the camera in the news tonight was confused and waiting, trying to decided whether she should give her car back, even though the she owns it out right. It's officially hers on paper. Her name on the contract, the car in her garage. I thought, what good manners she has, so calm and trusting, that everything will turn out alright.

So, this is a warning humans. The government is not, and will not, hold up their part of the bargain. They cant... they are out of the money they never had! After all the CEOs need their bonuses, because they are so special at what they do.

The governmental cogs turn slowly and the government will roll along at its governmental pace as it always has. This will not change. The various government offices need there vacations and their time off.

What is changing? The change is going to happen on our end... not the governments. It must roll along on its bureaucratic wheels at a pace of a government employee on his government pay.

I must roll with it and I must wait. I have good manners.

And so it will be. We will wait. We will wait for our stimulus plan to kick in. We, (businesses) will wait for our cash incentive deals to get paid. We, (consumers) will wait for our health care. We will wait for a hospital bed. We will wait for housing to turn around. Our seniors will wait for medications or they'll just have to wait to die.

Eventually we will wait for our food in long lines. No more frozen register problems. Finally, we will wait and wait and then realize our freedoms defrosted and we threw them out with all our hopes for change. The customer will comes last.

What do we get in return? ... Guess we will wait and see.

I look at people on the highway in the midst of their road rage, flipping others off for driving to slow, and wonder how they will do waiting for government food. Its gonna be interesting.

By the way, I got up the courage and walked out of that grocery store today... without my receipt. It felt great. I felt free.

My 1st Set Design

Hello art lovers!

It was a beautiful morning in the hill country of Texas. That is until now as it is already reaching up into the 100s at 10 a.m. I thought I'd post/boast about my first set design for the play, Guys & Dolls Jr.!

It was done for a kids theatrical camp which is put on by my good friend Lee Coleé. Lee puts on a "boot camp" for 2 weeks, then the kids perform what they learned for the next 2 weekends. It always amazes me what she can bring out of those young blooming actors! This was the 4th time Lee had asked if I would design her set. Finally succumbed. It was a blast but it set me back in my graphic design business and I've been catching up ever since.

Here is the design. I drew this it pencil. After working with a miniature version of the stage which the previous set designer had built. I scanned it into photoshop and then painted my pencil drawing.

This is a picture of 3 of the 6 other walls, "legs" I designed on the side of the stage. They were painted as a continuation of the abstract buildings. Didn't get a good photos of those finished.

This is the, almost, finished back wall. Made a few changed during the process but it came out almost exactly the way I wanted it to. Still needs chimney smoke and a few more stars. The wall is around 25' wide x 17' high. Painted with latex on muslin. This image is kind of blurry compared to the above digital picture, but my friend Robert Anschutz, took this photo and did an excellent job even though the light was really dark in the unfinished set. The buildings changed color with the lighting during the show. The skyscrapers are more purple and the stars were glass drops I glued on.

It was really fun, but when the show was over the production crew did a thing called "striking' the set which means they tore it down to make ready for the next show. Very alarming for an artist. So I went over to the theater and cut off my favorite parts of the design. I'm going to stretch the pieces and make a triptych cityscape. I'll post it when I'm finished. Ah, the evolution of art...

It took me 2 hours to pull the 3 large pieces of muslin off, that were glued down really, really well onto that wood wall. I had to pulled with all my weight as the production crew watched and laughed! I couldn't move my upper body for the next three days. I sure learned a lot about theater though. So, now that I'm a sucker for the thespians I was roped into helping with the next show, "Stop The World I Want To Get Off". I'm in the process of painting dragons on 2 huge oriental fans and then I and a fellow artist friend will paint the floor of the stage like the Milky Way. I'll post those when done.

Opportunities to paint is an answer to my prayers... even though it's putting me in the poor house! Maybe some day I'll get paid to do set design. Over and out.

Change continued:

Hello art lovers,

Well, this blog thing is quite an albatross. It's been in the back of my mind like homework was in high school. Something I had to do but just couldn't bring myself to do so with out a ton anxiety. Dyslexia made it difficult. Reading is still difficult. Spelling too. So if you see grammar errors or I miss a typo, I'm sorry, its my eye-to-brain communication thing getting in the way. Please give my some grace in this area. This is the main reason I'm uncomfortable doing this blog. Guess I should have a disclaimer every time I post. : )

I've gone to many other artist's blogs and I have learned so much. What do I have that anyone would want to read anyway. We shall see...huh? So, just want to share my experiences in life and with art and try and bring something helpful to others. Plus, my good friend Jeannette encouraged me to do this. So if I'm boring blame her. lol. Jeannette Cuevas is an amazing artist with a talent that wins awards!

Heres the big news: my meeting with the Witte Museum in S.A. 2 weeks ago, was a huge success. I met with the president/CEO who is now very interested in helping me promote my father's artwork. Hopefully if her plans go well a retrospective show of Jack Fletcher's artwork will result. The show will also include the Men of Art Guild, (MOAG). Jack and Cecil Casbeir, another very well know artist in those days, started the MOAG in the 50s. This is important history of the emerging art scene in San Antonio, Texas way back in the 50s, 60s, 70s. Thanks to the MOAG it was a time when art entered the lime light of growing San Antonio and the MOAG made collecting art affordable to young couples. MOAG also supported upcoming artist where they had a chance at showing their work when they couldn't afford to go to New York or another prominent place in the nation where art had center stage. Man those MOAG opening sure looked fun in the black and white images my dad carefully collected. Alas I was only a baby.

Check out Jack's work. His talent was brilliant and his art was a precursor of cynical, postmodernism. I do web site design and I'm currently updating this site to add more of his work.

My hope is that this next retrospective show (had the first one in 2000) will bring more awareness of his work and a buyer will surface. Then maybe somehow my artwork can ride into the art world on his coat tails. This is my vision. However visions don't become reality if you don't take action. If I dont begin painting on a regular basis pretty darn soon it will just be hallucinations.

If anyone has any advice on how to resurrect an artist...bring their art back to life and market them from the grave let me know.

Change

Hi art lovers, 

Change is in the air for mo.  This is my first blog post and its really freaking me out.  I mean, why am I doing this? I hope my goofy blogs fill the air with encouragement and tidbits of information about things I discover about art. But mainly I just like to laugh, at myself and at life. Hope you do too. If not well, don't read me. : )

Obviously change is the new reality in America so why not me too. Change is really important to me. Its what I go through to put gas in my car.

Change is also about to happen in my career. More on this after my meeting with a museum. Spark your interest? Hope so...

Aren't you glad you found this blog!  Phew! I did it! Later...mo