The paint diary is a project I have been working on for about a month on my other website www.shopoilpaintings.com. It serves two distinct and valuable purposes: its a ritual that allows me to take the time to write down the things I’m working on, the things I’m thinking about and general thoughts, feelings and plans as it pertains to my painting career and my ambitions. The second reason is less romantic and more pragmatic which is it helps with my website’s SEO (search engine optimization). Many places are having AI generate their “blogs” on their websites. Many of these blogs only exist to be read by the google algorithm to help the algorithm direct searchers to the right place. I decided to actually write my blogs but do it in this holistic way that aligns with my goals as an artist and less about driving traffic to my website.
The last thing I’ll say on this is that it’s quite a strange experience writing these paint diary entries (there are about 10 on www.shopoilpaintings.com). It’s strange because I am writing publicly but I know no one will ever read them. I need to both be cautious and mindful about people’s names and business but I can be open, vulnerable and transparent (to a large extent) because few humans, if any, will ever read this.
If anything I will perhaps revisit these entries years from now the same way one would revisit a private diary. At the risk of sounding arrogant I think I am quite innovative with this paint diary idea because they take relatively little time to write while simultaneously satiating my need to document and express my creative practice all the while pleasing the search engine gods at google. Anyway I am quite proud of this innovation and moving forward I will be dividing entries between this site www.maxlowtide.com and www.shopoilpaintings.com.
Today was spent mostly doing boring and tedious work to finalize some aspects of the other site. Magdalene thought it a good idea to frame the paintings which I am selling, which was really a great idea because many of them look so much better, and I am selling them after all so it’s nice to include a frame with them. But all to say that meant that every single painting needed to be reshot and reprepared for presentation on the website. I have been very meticulous about this process but it will prove to be worthwhile in that this site is a sort of “set it and forget it” kind of project.
If I never had to photograph another oil painting in my life I would be quite content with that. Oil paintings are notoriously challenging to photograph because oftentimes some of the painting dries matte while some dries glossy and semi-glossy. Specifically, blacks and darker values are extremely frustrating because they reflect so much light and blow out your values when trying to photograph. After all these years I am still trying to figure out how to do it. Sometimes natural light is the key, other times not.
It doesn’t really matter, what I’m mostly saying is that I had an administrative day and did not spend it painting. However as it turns out this is the reality of working artists: equal parts painting and doing marketing type things and applying for opportunities. I will say I am very proud of the collection of paintings of shopoilpaintings.com. All the works with the exception of one have been painted from life and many of the compositions and paint handling is extremely technical and well achieved. This portfolio currently indicates the high water mark of my painting career to date – for the most part at least. They are not tediously rendered portraits from photographs but rather more sensitive intuitive works that indicate a certain degree of proficiency I have achieved between my eye and my wrist.
Enough of that, most of these types of themes can be read about on the other website. I am currently pondering a way larger and more substantial theme which is getting my masters in art history aka going back to school. I’m not going to get into the nuance here as much of this decision is extremely personal.
One aspect that isn’t is that in order to get into school I will need to write a very strong and technical academic paper on an art history theme. I am giving myself approximately one month to figure out what this theme will be. I have had some ideas but many I fear are low hanging fruits. A few obvious topics that much art history ink has been spilled over may include: who was the first “modern” painter? How did the invention of the camera facilitate new modern ways of painting? One that comes to mind is something David Hockney spent lots of work on which was about the use of optical devices like camera obscuras and camera lucidias by old masters – Caravaggio, Ingres etc. One idea I’m thinking of that certainly aligns with my painting interests is the impact and influence the Mexican mural painters – Rivera, Siqueiros, Orozco, had on the abstract expressionists like Pollock. My sense is that this too has been written about a lot however many there is a new angle to unlock here. Whatever the case may be I am going to need to knock this essay out of the park if I am to have a chance to get into an MA program. Needless to say I don’t look that amazing on paper, with the exception of my painting portfolio.
There are of course other components I need to get together in order to achieve this new goal and this will now occupy much of my time and attention for the remainder of the year. Fortunately I have about four months to get my house in order so there is time.
I will continue to read a lot in hopes that the topic of my thesis paper will jump off the page. I am reading the collection of written works by Robert Motherwell right now and it’s dense but fascinating. Less dense and more accessible for a dummy like me than reading Greenberg.
On the topic of painting I finished a painting / drawing today that is quite dark and powerful. I will attach a portion of it here on this paint diary entry. The painting began as a drawing with Sakura marker on a large piece of panel. It began as a fully abstract, intuitive entity. I was listening to Paradise Lost by Milton when I made the drawing because I wanted to source energy and vocabulary from that work and include it in the picture. The drawing was very reminiscent of my paintings and graffitis from a decade ago. I wanted to pull from that very raw creative spirit that I possess. I want to experiment with elevating that raw energy into something that would be appropriate for a gallery space. Key word: try. Perhaps it will never happen. The work I made really is quite powerful in my estimation however it also feels a bit juvenile. I want to pull from this deep creative reservoir I have in order to make my own abstract works. Reading Motherwell one gets the sense that when visual art, painting, is pontificated over enough, and given the sense of our own art history that we cannot escape, all roads lead towards abstraction. Perhaps that is naive and is a sense that will come and go with the seasons but whatever the case may be, rendering photographs in oil paint is not art, and more or less that is a part of my practice that I will leave behind moving forward. Except of course if someone wants to pay me for that. And also once or twice a year I will create an intensely resolved, high resolution work to remind people of my technical prowess. That aside, those books are closed and should be forever. I have very little respect for the mural painters around me who render portraits from photograph with that ugly all spray can style.
