Julie T. Chapman - ArtBlog

Folks, I’m jurying an upcoming show for the Parklane Gallery, located near Seattle, Washington. It’s an exhibition aimed at animal artists:

Parklane Gallery in Kirkland, Washington, invites all animal-loving fine art artists to
participate in Parklane Gallery’s second annual juried show this
October. Gandhi said “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress
can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” In these tough
economic times animals are being abandoned in record numbers. It is a
privilege for both the artists and Parklane Gallery to take this
opportunity to exhibit animal themed fine art and also support a varied
list of local animal rescue organizations. The prospectus can be downloaded at http://www.parklanegallery.com/downloads/Prospectus-0910.pdf

Parklane Gallery is very fortunate to have the nationally recognized
artist Julie T. Chapman of Montana as our juror.

The important dates for this show are:
Entries Due Friday, 8/14/09
Acceptance Letters Mailed Friday, 9/4/09
Artwork Due at Parklane 9/29 - 10/1/09
Show Runs 10/6 - 10/31/09
Artist Reception Saturday, 10/10/09
Pick up Artwork 11/2 - 11/4/09
Artwork will be shipped Wed. 11/4/09

I’ve asked them to be sure that painting images are submitted without signatures so I can jury blind.

It’s time once again for a highly irregular look into another aspect of the art world, brought to you from the skewed perspective of yours truly. Today’s topic:

How to Paint Wildlife Cheap’n’Easy

1. Go to any craft store and buy some cheapie canvas panels, preferably mounted on non-archival cardboard.
2. Buy some student quality paints and brushes (no sense paying more! no one can tell the difference anyway!)
3. Now we come to the subject matter part! you have several options here:
   1. You could actually go out and find some wildlife and take photos of it, but WOW this involves a lot of time and trouble. Geez, you have to know a whole passel of stuff, like where to find wildlife, and how to operate a camera, and you have to be in shape to hike around for the animals, plus you’d have to have a decent telephoto lens, unless you just want to go to Yellowstone and walk up to a reclining bison (they’re no different than cows, right? no danger here!) with your little point’n’shoot and get some photos…obviously, this is the most troublesome and expensive option so you should probably skip it.
   2. You can buy some cull slides from a wildlife photographer … but this does cost money, and we want to do this for cheap, eh!
   3. You can get some images off the internet - maybe some vacation photos someone posted on Flickr or Photobucket (heck, it’s on the web, no worries about copyright!)
   4. Or…you could just copy an existing artist’s painting. This cuts straight to the chase, now doesn’t it!
4. Ooohh, now for the hard part - how do we get that image you’ve found onto your canvas?? You sure don’t want to spend the next, oh, 5 - 10 years learning how to draw, now do you? Hey, no worries - we did say “easy”! You’ll just need to make one tiny little additional investment in a projector - for example, the aptly named “KopyKake”, which advertises “no more frustration of freehand drawing.” Wow! ANYONE can draw now! Never mind those elitist snob artists who insist that other artists “really should learn how to draw before they paint”. Fortunately, these projectors don’t cost much at all compared to the TIME you’ll save! Oh, you might have a few niggling worries, such as the distortions introduced by camera lenses, or whether you can actually see all the legs in that horse photo properly…but if you can’t tell the difference, no one else can either! so get going and project that image onto your canvas! man, this is easy. Those big-name artists must be living the life of Riley doing this!
5. Finally, the fun part: slopping paint around on the canvas. Oh boy! colors galore! you might have heard something somewhere about lightfastness, but nowadays everything is so advanced that can’t really be a worry, can it? They wouldn’t sell paints that weren’t lightfast, I’m sure!
   Now, applying the paint in the right way and in the right colors and values might take a LITTLE practice….but thank goodness you have that projected image to guide you! just mix up colors that look exactly like the image and put them exactly where your projection shows you! Photos are totally accurate representations of the real world, right? so your painting will be too!

WOW! now isn’t this fun?? After just a couple of these you ought to be able to charge several grand for each one! time to call up some galleries!!

“…if it doesn’t, it’s inventory”.

This nugget came from one of my gallery dealers yesterday. He’s a gem - totally politically incorrect and prone to sharing his opinions with any and all - and I always find myself laughing out loud in a conversation with him. He was, of course, talking about the current economy’s effect on art sales. But he was also talking about what motivates people to buy art, and threw out another quote while he was at it:

“Subject matter trumps quality”.

He noted that there were very few ‘pure’ collectors - people who buy art based on quality, rather than whether the painting depicts their favorite species.

So - these statements are probably enough to incite a few comments. Whatcha think?

It’s high summer, and time for all of us to be outside recharging our artistic batteries. Last Sunday was the Drummond, Montana rodeo - a favorite of mine, and about an hour’s drive from home. Kesler furnishes the roughstock and pickup riders, and they’re superb - the pickup men dress in bright red shirts and white scarves, and there are some very rank broncs in their string. It all makes for wonderful theater.

This rider made his 8 seconds and is being rescued off the still-bucking bronc. Look at all the action and color! For me, this is pure candy and joy. What’s yours?

Art is the highest form of play (according to me). I’ve actually said this in some of my workshops, when I can remember to between the booze and cracking the whip on the hapless participants.

Here’s someone who has figured that out - this is the “Where the hell is Matt” viral video from YouTube. This obviously is more in the category of performance art - but it is still wonderful, creative play.

So. Are you playing enough?