New painting- Putting it all together, maybe, finally

Here's the new painting I just finished. I'd like to blab on about it for a bit, if I may...

"wander heart summer breeze" 36x60 (click for details)

After two or three years of changing my style, and forcing myself out of my artistic comfort zone, I've finally got something in this painting that feels like, uh, hmmm, feels like it's where I wanted to go with this whole style change thing, actually. This piece is integrating comics and narrative, compositional flexibility, and richness of colour.

I think I can really do a lot with this style going forward, and I might actually be done changing my style for quite a while. Which is good, because changing your style for an artist is a risky thing: the partly evolved artwork will vary wildly in quality so it'll be hard to feel good about it. It probably won't sell well, you'll lose customers who like your old work better, and you won't have a consistent series of work that a gallery can promote to their customers. And it can get worse from there:

You end up with a pile of failed experimental paintings, pieces that might have some good bits but overall aren't good enough to put out in public. You not only spend a lot of time making these experimental pieces that don't turn out (and not making any money in the process), but then you have to spend a lot of time thinking about them and dissecting which things worked and which didn't and what to keep going with. Does it just need a small adjustment to make it good? Or should you just toss this whole idea out and start over? This also means you're spending your time thinking and puttering, which is great in and of itself, but you're not making any paintings you can sell, so again, you're still not making any money, while at the same time being frustrated with what you're doing. It's incredibly frustrating.

Don't get me wrong, I really like many of the transition phase paintings I did, and many of them turned out really well, but they just weren't quite 'there', they weren't quite what I was looking for. So that's why I'll say I'm happy I've gotten my work to this stage, because this piece feels like it's 'there', so it's a milestone for me. I can now start to assemble a consistent group of work in this style to bring to art shows and send to galleries. Wooo! (also: relief)

Here's a close up photos with for comparison of my old heavy paint style, with the new one, showing some texture:

Old style: There are probably at least 12 different carefully mixed colours in this section of sky.

New Style. A different (better) way to juxtapose different colours in an area.

What's changed over time is that I'm no longer working with really heavy paint with carefully chosen colour combinations, put down in a way that meant most brush strokes were final. I really loved the texture and colour I was getting from that, but I eventually found that style was, while kind of exciting to do, still too restrictive. I'll try to explain:

"Edna" 2013 - an attempt at more comics,
 but still with heavy paint.

Firstly, comics: the heavy paint didn't mesh well with adding comics style panels and insets,which is something I really wanted to do. Why do I want to integrate comics and text and narrative elements into my painting? That's going to take another blog post, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Anyway, at first I tried mixing comic panels and heavy paint, but the two things just didn't go together really well. (see Edna above) Then I started adding photocopied text in the base layer of the paintings, and simplified the paint, no longer juxtaposing multiple colours in one brush stroke. (see waterfront below) This allowed me to get some of the comics and narrative elements into the paintings that I wanted to, but it still wasn't quite there. It was still a bit too inflexible. Which leads to the second point:

waterfront, 40x48

Secondly, inflexibility: the heavily painted brush strokes and even the type of composition in "waterfront", didn't allow for changing the composition of a painting while partway through. I couldn't really add or move any objects in the painting or change colours without wrecking the quality of the existing brush strokes. I had to get the composition right at the beginning and then stick with it after that, so I spent a lot of time futzing and stressing at the beginning of every piece. This just became too stressful. Now with this new style I've taken what I started with the comics + text elements further, and I'm allowing a lot of areas to stay as transparent glazes so they don't all have to be filled in. The thin layers of paint also mean I can just add in new things at later stages. So, with this new style I can just start painting without having to have every last detail figured out at the beginning, because I know I'll be able to change things as I go along. I can just get some pencils and markers down and then go with it. Which is really exciting.

Things changed quite a bit between the beginning and the end. It's nice not to have to perfect the composition right at the beginning, knowing you can make adjustments later on.

Third, labour intensity: the heavy paint paintings were just taking too long to make, and I couldn't find a way to speed them up. As an artist trying to make at least a partial living from my work, the time it takes to make a painting is always at the back of your mind, applying pressure and stress. If this new style can help me make paintings faster, it will hopefully alleviate some of that stress.

New Robot Paintings Posted

red devil - 16"x20"

I've finished some new robot paintings and I've posted them to my website. They're all done in my undertexting style, which is continuing to progress, as I'm still trying out new things with it.

I know it's been a while since I've sent out an update, and I would've liked to have sent one out sooner, but I had surgery on my shoulder to deal with a recurrent injury, and that put me out of commission for a while. After I recovered enough to get back into the studio, I got my head back into it and shook off the rust by repainting over top of an older piece:

autumn tree, sailboat - 22"x30"

After that, I finished some of the robot pieces that I wasn't able to finish before The Artist Project Show. Check the link above to see them all.

Next up: I'll probably be doing another series of new robot paintings, so keep an eye on my Instagram/Facebook/Twitter feeds to see how those are progressing.

Robot Prints: As well, I'm thinking about making prints of my robot paintings available. If you might be interested in something like that, please let me know.


Thanks so much for reading,
cheers,
Marcel

Ottawa Art Event Tonight, and new paintings

Event: Today at 6:30 - 8:30pm
Location: Wall Space Gallery, 358 Richmond Road, Ottawa
What: "Talent Untapped" - (see link below)

Hi Everyone,

I know this is really short notice, but Wall Space Gallery in Ottawa is putting on an event for my co-exhibitor Paul Wing, who is a subject of a documentary film, and I believe they are previewing the film tonight. Check Wall Space's Facebook Event page for more details. I will be attending the event too and it would be great to see you if you're able to make it.

I'd also like to say thanks to everyone who stopped by this past Saturday, it was nice to see you all again and chat about art and whatever else. I'd also like to thank everyone at Wall Space for doing such a great job putting on the show.

New Paintings: I've just finished two more paintings. (detail pic above) I've posted them on my website and I'm going to bring them to the gallery today. As well, in case you missed it last time, I've also posted an online preview of some of the paintings in the show.

As always, I post a lot of work in progress pictures of the paintings on my Instagram and Twitter (see links below). And if you can't make to the show, I'll also be posting images from the gallery.

Thanks so much for reading, and looking forward to seeing you at the show!
cheers,
Marcel

Undertexting - show details

 

When: February 2015, opening Saturday February 7, 2-4pm

Where: The Elaine Fleck Gallery, 888 queen St w, Toronto

Hi Everyone,

(Note: this is the same as an email I just sent to my mailing list)

I'd just like to say that I have a show coming up in Toronto featuring the new painting style that I've been developing over the past year or so. The name I'm going with for this new style, and this show, is 'undertexting'. This will be the first time this new style of work will be seen in public.

As I mentioned in my previous email, rebuilding my artistic process has turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. I'm happy to say though, that I'm finally getting some results that justify the hard work, uncertainty, and the potential for a serious artistic disaster. Maybe I'm being overly dramatic, but sometimes in the middle of a long process like that when you don't know if it's going to work out on the other side and you have no idea if you know what you're doing, it definitely feels like an impending disaster of your own making. Fortunately I seem to have avoided that disaster thing.

(If the following text is underlined, I don't know why that is, just that this Blogsy editor is kinda buggy)

One other thought that I had about the work, is that more of my comic-book making roots are showing through in these pieces and I'm finding that the comic book elements are giving me a much larger scope for artistic exploration. This is great and I feel like there's suddenly a whole new continent of images to explore. And part of me is wondering why I didn't do this earlier. Ah well, I could probably explain why, but I should be finishing some paintings right now instead of figuring that out. (A longer description of the new style is in my previous email.)

So considering all that, I'm really very pleased to be able to share some new images with you that I've included in this email, and I sincerely hope you can make it to the opening on February 7th to enjoy some art and some conversation.

Thanks so much for reading,
cheers,
Marcel

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

robot legal trouble - pics online

I've finally posted pics of the robot commision I did this summer.

cheers,
marcel

autumn art update/notes on a new painting style

This is a copy of the email I just sent out to my mailing list. (My mailing list sign up page for those who are interested. )

grassy hill, mixed media, 24x32

Hi Everyone,

Wow, it's been a while since I've sent an update. It's not that I haven't been painting, it's that I've been working hard on developing a new style of painting, so I haven't really had any finished pieces to show publicly for a while. That's finally changed, as I've managed to finish some that I'm happy enough with to post online.

I've had a lot of ideas floating around in my head as far as new ways (well, new to me, at least) for quite a while, and I finally decided I was going to have to try to work through them. I've been working on trying to learn from many of the fantastic comic book artists and illustrators and painters who are posting their work online, while still maintaining a style that's really my own. It hasn't been easy, but as you can see from the detail photo of 'grassy hill' above, it's finally been starting to come together.

I'm now randomly pasting ripped up photocopies of pages from my favourite books as an underpainting layer, and I've dispensed with the really heavy blobby painting that I had been doing previously, replacing it with thinner layers that still reveal the text underneath. 

I haven't really figured out a good name for this style yet, but hopefully I come up with one before my new show, which is slated for February.

That's right, I'll be having a show at the Elaine Fleck Gallery in Toronto in February, and it will be all new paintings in this new style! (Holy crap, I sure hope some of them turn out! (eep))

I'll be sending out updates more frequently this fall with new paintings and news about the show. 

Thanks so much for reading,
cheers,
Marcel

This new style thing finally starting to come together

Or, the maddening process of deconstruction and reconstruction.

Here's the first result that I'm maybe a bit happy with:




Deconstructing how you imagine and compose your images and reassembling the into a new way of working is a frustratingly slow process. Actually it's not just reassembling, because it involves trying to incorporate a whole lot of new techniques and ideas, so it's a really messy maddening process. Mainly because you know you have to do it to expand your art, but you're not making any money while you're doing it, and you really don't know if you're going to end up with anything sellable at the end either. Ack.

Here are a couple of detail photos. (All taken with my phone, so photo quality might not be great)








Cheers,
Marcel

Rocket boy experimental

- this is the other experimental painting I finished. You can read more about them here.

Here's a detail image:

Cheers,
Marcel

rainboots painting posted online

I've finally processed proper photos of this painting and posted them to my website:

cheers,
Marcel

Rain boots umbrella - new painting finished

This one will be going to my show in Toronto for the month if March. Glad it's finally finished, It took a lot longer than I thought it would. No title yet, I'll have to think of that next week.



Cheers,
Marcel

New paintings from my Toronto show now online

on my website. I've collected the paintings in the show under the following link: Elaine Fleck Gallery - November 2013

The show is still up for another week or so in case you're in Toronto and would like to go see the paintings in person. The paintings do look so much better in person than they do online.

When my friends came to the opening they were all commenting about how they loved the texture in the paintings and how they were surprised to see it because it doesn't show up in the online photos. I'm not sure how to capture the texture better, but maybe it's something I'll have to work on.

Edna - 22x30

New experimental comics-inspired painting

I tried out this new kind of comics-inspired painting, mainly to see how this would look when finished. I've been thinking about something like this for a while, but you can't really tell how it's going to look until you've actually done it.





Detail pics:








Cheers,
Marcel

New coastal paintings now posted

Check them out here:

Out to sea

Coastal blimp

I do need to come up with better names, but I'll try to get to that later. I'm starting to feel the pressure for my upcoming show in June, have to get painting!

Cheers,
Marcel

Clouds

#workinprogress




Cheers,
Marcel

Coastal blimp finished

This one's all done. Time for tea!




Cheers,
Marcel

New coastal painting in progess

I'm happy to be back painting again working the rust out. This one's going to be in my Ottawa show in June, which will be at Wall Space Gallery. This is the underpainting stage.




Cheers,
Marcel

Latest painting online

'Roof grannies'


This one is in the January show in Toronto.

Cheers,
Marcel

Parka people - finished

This will be part of my show in Toronto in January. It's 40"x60" so it's on the larger side.

Now I have time to paint one more large piece. But i have to figure out what to do first. Figuring out what to paint next is always fraught with anxiety because you have to commit to an idea and hope it works out.

Cheers,
Marcel

Autumn colours - new painting

Just finished this one. Here are some photos from my phone. I'll post proper pics when I've got those all processed.

Also, I have a show coming up in January, do I won't have as much time to blog from the studio for then next couple months. Although I will post up details soon.












Cheers,
Marcel

boreal skies

I've posted a proper photo of my latest landscape painting, called 'boreal skies'. It's my first try at 40"x60", which feels pretty freakin big! I really enjoyed having so much space to pile the paint onto, so I hope I sell some of these big ones so I can keep doing more of them.