Change

I recently came across this, writtin by John Stoehr in the Charleston City Paper, on the topic of the arts and the way they have changed since we all got linked up online:

"These have characteristics that challenge the old guard of established arts professionals... These characteristics include participation over presentation, collaboration over competition, amateurism (in the best sense of the word) over professionalism, and process over product."

That's as good a definition of guerrilla painting as I've heard anywhere...and since "amateurism" means doing something for the love of it rather than for the money, that's as sound a reason as any. You want to learn something, enjoy the colors, do justice to your subject and to your own perceptions & feelings, but it doesn't have anything to do with making money.
He continues:

"Grassroots creativity is an old idea (Walt Whitman exulted the inventive potential of diversity), but the difference now is scale.
Ninety-five million Americans are applying the ideals of Web 2.0 to the real world, including their approach to the arts."

Hmmm...makes you wonder what that might look like.
Probably something quite different from what we grew up with...

"This can be troubling to institutions like art museums, says Nina Simon, a consultant and author of Museum 2.0 (www.museumtwo.blogspot.com). In trying to serve what MIT media professor Henry Jenkins has aptly called the emergence of "convergence culture," museums are increasingly afraid of "losing control."

John Stoehr
Charleston City Paper
Charleston South Carolina

I like to think it will bring more beauty. Like the lamplighters in The Little Prince, lighting their lamps as dusk falls in different parts of the world. Like a dance.

Artist Corps

Artful Innovation: Obama and Arts Education
The concept of an "Artist Corps" is an interesting part of President Obama's education policy. Of course, if artists are to teach, especially in inner-city schools, they'll have to be trained in *that* job as well as being trained artists.

It would certainly help to keep kids interested & engaged at school, and this interest might overflow into their other classes. Their awareness would be enhanced, they might create mental connections that they otherwise wouldn't and see solutions & possibilities that they hadn't thought of before. A real open-ended endeavor, likely to pay dividends down the road. Sort of a jump-start to teach kids they can make things happen, take criticism, change things, express themselves and their world, make effective decisions, interact, concentrate, participate...and that sometimes there are no wrong answers.

Yes we can.

Waltz of the Colors

Last month we had a benefit sale for 1+1, the charity that the Guerrilla Painter started for rural development in Latin America. We had all kinds of things from Bolivia & Peru for sale. One of my friends, who had been to Bolivia, was commenting about how she liked the oddball things: antique aguayos (hand-woven woolen pack-cloths) and a lantern from the silver mines in Potosi, where she had actually been inside a mine. She remembered how amazing it was to see the miners, working hard and smoking cigarettes inside the mines and using these lanterns, which burned up oxygen which was already scarce enough at over 13,000’ altitude. Obviously, when she looked at this little lantern, she saw something different from what most people saw.

This is what happens when we look at our surroundings for things to paint…we see things differently from anyone else. Sometimes we end up looking for subject matter similar to what we’ve seen other people paint, but this conventional wisdom can often result in uninteresting paintings and frustrating experiences. It’s more work to see things with fresh eyes, and it’s hard to value our own vision sometimes, but isn’t that what painting is all about?

I happened to be in Denver yesterday, standing in a parking lot near a highway, waiting for a few minutes. I focused on a highway sign and the cars going by. I wondered how I would paint such a mundane scene, and then I noticed how colorful it really was. Blocks of bright colors interacting, like a dance.

One palette, many visions. You choose. Austere or rich, or a combination of the two...traditional or edgy, ambiguous or vivid...

"In self-trust all virtues are comprehended." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Plein-car, plein-van, plein-camper

Sometimes your best painting buddy is your vehicle. If the weather turns chilly or breezy (or even if it’s just too sunny) all you have to do is find a place to park where you can paint out the window. If you have a hatchback (or a camper shell), you have more options for finding a view. The Guerrilla Painter does this all the time, and he finds that listening to the radio helps him concentrate (of course, I’d want to avoid the news, which has been way too interesting lately).

Often, it’s while I’m driving that I’ll notice something worth painting, so it’s easy enough to just find a place to pull over. It’s a good habit to keep your gear in your car, ready for any opportunity. It only takes a few minutes to shift into "right-brain" mode and notice colors, shapes, lines, value contrasts. Maybe you find yourself waiting for someone, or there’s just a few more minutes of daylight with the sky turning colors, or you notice an intriguing architectural detail...

Sitting in a car can also help you focus by protecting your privacy and keeping annoying onlookers at a distance.

Keep Them Wild

We recently had to kill a mountain lion who had been preying on our lambs and hens. It turned out that he was missing one of his canine teeth and had a gum infection, so he might have been having trouble bringing down deer.

This really got my attention, because the Guerrilla Painter has been living here for 30 years and cougars have only been seen twice (up in trees). This one was coming around the buildings, sometimes in the daytime.

I did some reading, and it appears that the cougar population has been increasing at the same time that people have been moving into their habitat. They are by nature reclusive, but they will follow the deer (and raccoons). Sometimes people allow deer in their neighborhood, or raccoons may be attracted to dumpsters, and if a cougar follows them there, it can become habituated to humans and possibly become a threat to pets and people.

I used to live in a foothills neighborhood with its own year-round resident herd of mule deer, and they were so much fun to watch. It never occurred to us to chase them away. Cougars (and their tracks) were seen only occasionally, and we expected that they would remain aloof. But that isn’t always what happens.

Keep Me Wild is a program that California has implemented to reduce wildlife/human conflict. There's no place to relocate problem predators in California, so prevention is the only good solution. Sometimes it's counter-intuitive to chase deer off your property, but it keeps them (and the rest of the food chain) wild. If you see a predator, you might be saving its life if you blast it with bear spray, an air horn or rubber buckshot.

Medicine Bow Mountains

Often, it seems that a painting experience turns into a story. That’s what happened when we went up to Saratoga Wyoming for the weekend.
On the way there, we took a shortcut through the Medicine Bow National Forest and stopped to paint. There were aspen trees, distant mountains, and some old ranch buildings, but I settled on a hillside of sagebrush. There was an interesting pattern of amber-colored tall grass, blue-green sage and lavender clouds.

About halfway through, when we’d been sitting quietly for maybe an hour, a young mule deer buck wandered into view. His antlers were in velvet, so it was hard to tell if he had one or two points. He browsed for awhile, less than 50 feet away. Then off to my right I heard something that sounded like a house cat. “Meow...” But what appeared was not a cat but a fawn, walking toward the buck. When it reached him, they sniffed each other, and the buck, wide-eyed, snorted and bolted away. It was like a teenager being approached by a baby sibling while he was busy being cool.

The fawn went off in another direction to find its mom. A case of mistaken identity, I guess.

Sketches

Sometimes a "sketch" is a very involved drawing used as a preliminary study for a painting, but I like to think of it as a minimalist composition, just the essence of something.

I've started to "go sketching" instead of going painting, packing just a pencil & eraser instead of water, paint & brushes. I'm not sure it's always quicker or easier, but it does give you more of a feeling of freedom. You can erase, you can make it small & simple. You know it's not supposed to be a finished product. And if you happen to be in a crowded environment (or anyplace public) you can be unobtrusisve.

It's especially effective when doing animals, since they're liable to turn or walk away. You can capture the outline of their head or their back. Even flowers can move, too, if it's breezy or if they're the kind that folds up at night.

You can still get the same quality of focus as when you're painting, maybe even moreso, since there's not so much standing between you and your subject.