It has been a while...

Hey followers!
It has been over a year since my last post. There are many reasons for why I stopped posting here but I am not going to go on and on about that. It is no fun dwelling in the past when there are so many things to look forward to.

As of a few months ago I have finally realized that I CAN be the artist that I've always wanted to be. I looked at some of the contemporary artists that I follow on a regular basis and just thought "Why can't I?" 

I mean surely there are more talented people than me, more experiences people than me, more- the list can go on and on.

But the interesting part is that after I wrote down "Why can't I?" in my sketchbook I wrote "Listen to the silence." Listen to the silence. Just because there is silence doesn't mean that something is wrong. It doesn't mean hurry up and find something different to do. It means enjoy that moment. Enjoy the quiet moments where you are stuck on an idea or don't know how to proceed. Enjoy just where you are at that moment.

This was very important to me and my realization about following my passion. It meant I wasn't a screw up for not figuring things out right away. I was right where I needed to be. If I never realized that I could be an artist then I would still be in the process of figuring out why the heck I got my art degree in the first place and what I was going to do with it.

In college I was taught that with my degree I wouldn't be an artist. I was taught to think that I needed to find something art related but I couldn't have my career be "artist." This is so wrong. 

1. Because people in college are still figuring themselves out and molding themselves into who they want to be when they are older. 
2. Because just because you aren't the most talented at a certain thing and there are a million artists in the world doesn't mean you can't be an artist.
3. Because being realistic and being a dreamer do NOT need to be separate.

Don't get me wrong, I am still figuring out how to make this work. I am listening to podcasts and webinars, reading books and blogs who train artists how to market and how to be a successful artist. I am submitting my work to juried shows and getting rejections as well as getting accepted. I am figuring out how to create a podcast for another interest in my life with someone I love. 

So over the next few posts I am going to be trying out some new ideas, maybe more personal blog posts like this, maybe more of what I am working on and how. I just needed to give you all a little update. I want to share with you my journey through learning how to be a successful artist and have a support system in place for anyone attempting to follow their dreams. Let me know if you liked this and want more of the personal blog or if you want something else!

I am slowly but surely figuring it all out. But watch me. I am going to be an artist.

 - Art Otter

p.s. If anyone has any helpful podcasts, books, webinars that they think are related to this and helpful, please share below!

MARY ELLEN MARK

Some of you may have heard about Mary Ellen Mark passing away on May 25th. Some of you may even know a little about her and her amazing work. But those of you who do not, here is a little snippet into her amazing career.

Mary Ellen Mark was an American photographer, she did all kinds of photography from photojournalism, portraiture to advertising photography. She's been in museums worldwide and has 17 published books of her photography, not to mention the many awards she received throughout her career. She was known for being the "a snake charmer of the soul" as she was able to capture people so intimately.

A little about her life: Her first camera was a Box Brownie which she received when she was 9 years old. But all throughout high school and college she focused on painting and art history. And in 1964 she received her Masters Degree in photojournalism. Right after college she received a Fulbright Scholarship to photography in Turkey, where she also traveled around to England, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain to photograph. In the mid 1960s she moved to New York City to document the demonstrations in opposition to the Vietnam War, the Women's Liberation Movement, Transvestite culture following themes of homelessness, loneliness, drug addiction, and prostitution. Only a few years later, she was a unit photographer on movie sets for movies from Mike Nichols' Catch-22, and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now and over 100 other movies.

Mary Ellen Mark, Laurie on Pike Street Seattle, 1983, Gelatin Silver Print

Mary Ellen Mark, 1983, Life Magazine: Streets of the Lost, Runaway kids eke out a mean life in Seattle, Gelatin Silver Print

Mary Ellen Mark, The cast of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Oregon State Hospital, 1974, Gelatin Silver Print 20x24 inches

Mary Ellen Mark, Woody Allen on his balcony, Manhattan, NY, 1979, Gelatin Silver Print

ADVERTISING AS ART

I know before I've posted how to be creative with advertising (see it here) but in this post let's talk about how advertising and art have been linked. Hopefully many of you watched the final episode of Mad Men this past Sunday, if not it's OK... but you should start watching Mad Men ASAP, and as viewers you would know when the advertising group (SC&P or McCann Erickson) would present their ad to their client they would really try and create a feeling sparked by the creative work. Art is just the same, art is only good if it creates a feeling within the viewer. Anyone can throw paint or charcoal at something, but if you can make someone feel something and move them with the specifics of what you did or the meaning behind it, then you've done your job and your work should be in a museum.

Advertising and Art have always had a close relationship for the obvious reason, they're both visual ways of communicating something. The beginning of that is Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and his lithograph prints and posters specifically. Even though he was a very skillful Impressionist painter, draughtsman, and artist in general his work with prints of the dancers of Moulin Rouge are what started the connection between Art and Advertising.

Throughout Art History we do see a lot more artists attempting to make the connection between Fine Art and Advertising. Another successful artist who made the connection is Andy Warhol. He started out early doing ink blot drawings of shoes and ended up creating massive collaborations. We all know of his Campbell Soup Can...

Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup Cans, screen print, 1962 Display view at MoMA, New York

Andy Warhol, Absolut Vodka, screen print, 1986

Another artist who has combined with advertising is Norman Rockwell, like in this "Out Fishin'" Ad created for Coca Cola in the 1930s. This piece specifically creates a feeling and a world that you'd want to live in.

It's hard to tell when Art and Advertising combine which it better belongs to. They say any advertising is good advertising. Yet just a few lucky advertisers come along and create a feeling and a connection with the viewer that are memorable for many years to come. That is the connection with Fine Art and that is how you know you are a truly talented advertiser.

BIRTHDAY POST: GEORGES BRAQUE

Born today in 1882, Georges Braque would become a major French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor. Most importantly, he was a major contributor to Fauvism and the development of Cubism.

Georges Braque in his studio (from BRAQUE: The Late Works)

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves ("the while beasts" in French), who were an early 20th century modern artists who embraced painterly qualities and bright colors over the actual representation. Braque joined in on the movement right in the midst of it in 1905. He painted along with Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz who lived in Braque's hometown of Le Havre. In 1907, he exhibited his Fauvist works in the Salon des Independants. Later on that year his work became influenced by Cezanne whose work he was able to see in Paris when they were exhibited large scale for the first time after Cezanne's death in 1906.

Georges Braque, landscape at la ciotat, 1907, oil on canvas

Georges Braque, The Viaduct at L'Estaque, 1907-1908, oil on canvas

The combination of Fauvism and the influence of Cezanne resulted in the beginning of Cubism. From 1908-1913 Braque's work reflected experimenting with perspective and geometry. In 1909 Braque began working closely with Picasso: "A comparison of the works of Picasso and Braque during 1908 reveals that the effect of his encounter with Picasso was more to accelerate and intensify Braque's exploration of Cezanne's ideas, rather than divert his thinking in any essential way." After broadening their Cubism ways together, Picasso and Barque began working with collage in 1912. This is when Braque invented the papier colle technique, which is when collage is strictly paper on a mount whereas collage can be anything on a mount.

Georges Braque, Guitar and Fruit Dish, 1909, oil on canvas

Georges Braque, La Guitare, 1909-1910, oil on canvas

Georges Braque, Fruit dish and glass, 1912, papier colle and charcoal on paper

 I think what is most amazing is that Georges Braque worked with Pablo Picasso and invented Cubism and papier colle collage together, yet in the years I've been studying Art and Art History this is the first time I have ever heard of him. Clearly people have combined the works into solely Pablo's work an it is about time to give Georges Braque the importance and recognition he deserves.

CELEBRATING LANDSCAPES

Today is Earth Day! Besides actually sitting outside and enjoying nature, what is the next best way to appreciate the natural world around us? That's right! Landscapes.

Within landscapes there is not only amazing natural scenes but emotion and a spiritual element. The added spiritual elements in landscape started in East Asian art with Daoism, and in then the West there was Romanticism. Where landscapes (with no added spiritual element) started with frescos in Greece and hunting trips depicted in Egypt.

Romanticism is the type of landscapes that we think of when we think of the stereotypical landscape. There were many prolific Romantic landscapes artists: Joseph Mallord William Turner, Frederic Edwin Church, Caspar David Friedrich, John Constable, Thomas Cole, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and many MANY more. In the 19th Century romantic landscapes were prominent in Dutch and American tradition of painting where they would have special schools devoted to learning about a genre of art like the Hudson River School. It started with a craze for landscape painting with the Dutch in the 17th Century with Realism but it really caught on in the 19th Century again starting with the Dutch. Quickly American artists jumped on the romantic landscape bandwagon to show off their new frontier which was different from the European atmosphere art enthusiasts were used to.

Let's look at how not only the composition of these pieces create great strength and pride but also include an emotional feeling attached, either through the weather or the colors and brushstrokes.

Frederic Edwin Church, The Heart of the Andes, 1859, Hudson River School

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818, German Romanticism

John Constable, Stonnehenge, 1836, Victoria and Albert Museum London

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Wreckers Coast of Northumberland, 1836, Yaler Center for British Art

Thomas Cole, The Oxbow, 1836, Metropoliatan Museum of Art New York

 Now in East Asian Art, landscape is considered their most valuable contribution to the art world. They didn't have a mad craze for landscape, instead landscape was deep within their culture and was spread out over many centuries. William Watson wrote that "It has been said that the role of landscape art in Chinese painting corresponds to that of the nude in the west, as a theme unvarying in itself but made the vehicle of infinite nuances of vision and feeling." A lot of East Asian landscapes are monochrome which is attributed to Wang Wei's paintings where he devoided the use of figures and shifted to monochrome style of painting. The Song Dynasty Southern School has some of the highest regarded landscape paintings. There is a shan shui tradition where the landscapes were never intended to represent real locations even if they were named after them.

Song Xu, Landscape After Wang Wei's Wangchuan Picture, 1574, Ming Dynasty

Tang Yin, A Fisher in Autumn, 1523, China

There is so much more in the history of landscape and how it evolved in every culture around the globe. There are many books of the topic and papers written about artists who were devoted to the landscape. So, if you are interested you should check it out!

ART QUOTES

It's Tax Day, which means (at least here in America) that it isn't the happiest of days. So cheer up fellow artists or art lovers! Here is a collection of 20 inspiring and wonderful quotes which I've collected over the years that I keep in my sketchbook and flip to whenever I need a little push. It's a random grouping of quotes that will either get you pumped up and ready to work or view art a little differently than you did before.

"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." -Cesar A. Cruz

"Date yourself. Take yourself out to eat. Don't share your popcorn at the movies with anyone. Stroll around an art museum alone. Fall in love with canvases. Fall in love with yourself." -unknown

"If you can't convince them, confuse them." -Harry S. Truman

"All progress occurs because people dare to be different." -Harry Millner

"Art is not what you see but what you make others see." -Edgar Degas

"The best things in life aren't things." -Art Buchwald

"Art is the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos." -Saul Bellow

"When the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order." -Pablo Picasso

"I began to feel that the artist is not exempt from life. There is no way out from seeing art as a reflection or meditation or a comment on life. I became interested in the process, including the artist's life. I became interested in how art reflected life issues, or existential issues with which we are all involved." -Donald Kuspit

"I paint the sort of paintings I can, not the ones I necessarily want." -Lucian Freud

"I always felt that my work hadn't much to do with art" "I ignored the fact that, after all, art derives from art." -Lucian Freud

"As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want paint to work for me as flesh does." -Lucian Freud

"Art school has taught me that my greatest tool is myself"

"Stop thinking about artwork as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. That solves a lot of problems: we don't have to argue whether photographs are art; or whether performances are art or whether Carl Ander's bricks or Little Richard's 'Long Tall Sally' are art, because we say, 'Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality and all sorts of things can make it happen'... [w]hat makes a work of art 'good' for you is not something that is already 'inside' it, but somethings that happens inside you - so the value of the work lies in the degree to which it can help you have the kind of experience that you call art." -Brian Eno

"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life." -William Faulkner

"Art and love are the same thing: it's the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you." -Chuck Klosterman

"Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings." -Agnes Martin

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." -Pablo Picasso

"Creativity takes courage." -Henri Matisse

"If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if i cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost...keep going, keep going come what may." -Vincent van Gogh 

  I believe that all of these quotes can be applied to any situation and can be viewed a million different ways. That is the amazing things about art, it's always up for interpretation (I mean seriously how many of those began with "Art is..."). Comment below or tweet at me with your favorite art quotes @ArtOtter

STILL LIFES AREN'T BORING

When you first start as an artist, or if you are walking through any art museum you see tons and tons of still lifes. Many people imagine it is the basis of all art forms, you know once you've practiced with enough boring things like apples and oranges then you can start to branch out to figures. But, still lifes weren't even apart of the Western Art World until the late 16th Century. Before then almost all paintings were religious or documentary. And so if any still lifes were made they still held religious symbolism.

The first types of still lifes that were created were of course within Egyptian tombs. They would have artists paint any sort of riches from food to items on the walls of the tomb thinking that in the afterlife they would be there for the deceased. Some of the other earliest recounts of still lifes were within Pompeii and were Roman mosaics used for decoration and signs of hospitality. None of the still lifes up until the Dutch and Flemish paintings in the late 16th Century were what you'd think are typical still lifes we see covering museums today. The Dutch and Flemish painters were in a craze for still lifes because of the combination of religious images being banned in the Dutch Reformed Protestant Church (which led to the symbolism within still lifes) and the simple obsession with horticulture that the Dutch had.

Egyptian wall painting of food (http://www.timetrips.co.uk/still_life_history.htm)

uncovered still life found at Herculaneum showing Roman still life (https://sketchesandscratches.wordpress.com/tag/vanitas/)

Willem Kalf, Still Life with Ewer, Vessels and Pomegranate, oil on canvas, mid-1640s, The J. Paul Getty Museum

Jan van Huysum, 1723, oil on panel, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (http://www.essentialvermeer.com/dutch-painters/huysum.html)

Something funny and interesting that I found about still lifes is that there was a genre of still lifes known as "breakfast paintings" which would be the presentation of the upper class breakfasts while also a religious reminder not to be gluttonous.

Willem Claeszoon Heda, Breakfast Table with Blackberry Pie, 1631, Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister

As you can imagine, still lifes evolved along with the many art movements, being the cornerstone of all styles and genres of art. You can find a still life of any genre and style of art you desire and probably by any artist you desire as well. It is the basis of all artists today and a great way to study the aesthetic elements, but it shouldn't be thrown aside as a beginners form of art.

Ori Gersht, Blow Up, photographs and videos, 2007

Still lifes allow the artist to impose any sort of composition and arrangement of elements within the artwork. This sort of freedom allows for many styles and genres of art to take place, which led to how contemporary still lifes will include two-dimensional or three-dimensional mixed media and sometimes even video or sound.

Next time you think Still Lifes are "boring" or "too beginner", think again.