Brian Grimwood – illustrations – book & chat

I am back from the workshop and had a bit of a browse of the bookstore. The little “Coffee With… series caught my eye… because of the illustrations on the front. (Coffee with Michael Angelo, by James Hall, fun!)

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On Amazon (click the image) you can see links to the others in the series, I particularly like the Mozart one, interesting use of colour. The artist is Brian Grimwood, I have just been exploring his website with delight. Ok, it is commercial art, but it is art. The image that follows is a good example of artistic exploration. I am in tune with that right now having been doing it solidly for three days. My hunch is that these illustrations are all digital, and he is a lovely digital sketcher!
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Paint, board and stuff…

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Acrylic paint, Gesso, and lots of MDB (Medium Density Board). I looked at a lot more than I bought, it is such a lolly shop out there. I hope this will enable me to mix all I need, at least for the weekend retreat. I then spent the rest of the day priming the boards, more to do tomorrow. The 500 ml of Gesso is almost gone, I’ll need more.

And, yes, that is my coffee.

Workshop Retreat on my mind…

I am getting ready for a painting retreat led by New Zealand artist Jane Zusters. Just as I am thinking of doing oils I think I will be doing acrylics at the retreat. Real media looming after all these digital images and work with the printer.

I am so “self taught” it is weird to go into a space where I will have a teacher. I am enjoying it so far, even though it is still four days away. What is useful is to get advice on materials, options, possibilities. I am going on another shopping spree tomorrow for media! What a blast.

The real studio is a state of mind.

Just stumbled on this again. It is dated. Id answer them diferently.

Thinking About Art: Artists Interview Artists: Walter Logeman
Artists Interview Artists: Walter Logeman

Walter Logeman, an artist from Christchurch, New Zealand, participates in the Artists Interview Artists Project. Below Walter responds to another artist’s five questions (Dwayne Butcher from Memphis, TN). In order to participate, Walter had to provide me with five questions for some other artist to answer. The assigning of questions to artists is completely random.

One answer I gave & that I do like still:

The real studio is a state of mind. Nothing much happens till there is a moment where there is a perfect storm of media, imagination, images and desire flooding together.

Zeitgeist – a swing to art, beauty & truth?

Zeitgeist. Time ghost. Spirit of the times. What is going on?

I was in tune with the Zeitgeist while going on marches in 1968-9. I was in tune with the Zeitgeist in 1969-70 when I was going into communal living and alternative schools. And again with personal growth all through the 80s. Psychodrama groups, and psychotherapy. And in the very early 90s setting up Psybernet as an online enterprise, I could see the dot.com era looming, (sadly I was out of sync with monetising my insight) I have loved being experientially involved in a world changing era.

I am curious about my current interested in art & creativity?

Am I sniffing something that is in the air?

I am curious… what do you think, is it time for a reaction against the pragmatic, quick, efficient, functional business like era we have been in? Is there a swing to art, beauty & truth?

They say that the … genius is always ahead of his time. True, but
only because he’s so thoroughly of his time.

Henry Miller, Preface to The Subterraneans,
by Jack kerouac, 1959

We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t the fish.

The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

The poet, the artist, the sleuth – whoever sharpens our perception tends to be anti-social; rarely “well-adjusted”, he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists among anti-social types in their power to see environments as they really are.

What we call art would seem to be specialist artifacts for enhancing human perception.

Marshall McLuhan