The insomnias guide to insomnia.

Ok this isn't actually a guide, but I liked that title. It is however a short article on something that creative people often complain about. I decided to do a little google research (i.e. not real research) on insomnia and particularly getting up in the morning when the previous night didn't go well. I found a lot of bad articles. Particularly, I could tell within the first few sentences whether or not the person was an insomniac.

For instance, one article written by a writer, one oddly who wasn't an insomniac himself, had all sorts of "advice". I looked around to see what kind of expertise he had. Was he a scientist? No. A nurse? No. What was he? He was a writer, and by the picture looked to be younger than I am. Hmmm. But I read it. What did it say? The opposite of what most insomniacs know. It said to stay in bed, keep your eyes closed, and keep the lights off. Don't get up, it said. Now I know his advice SOUNDS logical, but it isn't really. Because usually, and I will just speak for myself, it is my MIND that keeps me awake. Not books, not music, not doing things. Doing things gives me a calming satisfaction, reading distracts my mind from whatever it is thinking about. Just lying there? Well to be honest, that is what I do 99% of the time, and I can tell you definitively IT DOES NOT HELP!

On the other hand, the worst thing I can do is get on the computer... the light of the screen has been shown in studies to disrupt sleep patterns. So I should get on the computer when I'm trying to get up in the morning. See, I know there are insomniacs out there who just get up early, that's the symptom. Mine is the opposite, I can't go to sleep, when I do I wake about 4 hours later. Another article, one I actually liked, was called "10 Geeky Tricks for Getting Out of Bed in the Morning" and hell I'll go ahead and give you the link http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/02/10-tricks-to-ge/

I read another similar article that said something to the degree that if you don't go to sleep within 5 minutes of going to bed, then you aren't tired enough. What?!?! First of all, I feel bad for this guy's sex life. I mean, I don't have one myself right now, but if you wait until you are that tired and you have a significant other waiting for you, well, yeah.... we can see where that will go. Second of all, I don't think I have ever in my entire life gone to sleep that soon. Ever. Which means that, basically, if I wait for that moment, I won't sleep. Like at all. It takes me that long just to get sort of comfortable.

I have a theory about sleep and tiredness. I think that my insomnia really is in my mind, my habits of thought, and is connected to many things, as much as in my body. One of the mind traps is a kind of lack of faith. Not necessarily religious faith, but just a feeling of comfort and safety. I CAN'T go to sleep, I tell myself, what if something happens? What if I have things I needed to do? Only it isn't this coherent. I think that I can't sleep because I can't trust the universe to keep me safe while I sleep. I feel responsible for the house, for myself, for my pets, etc. I can't go to sleep, what if something happens? This is silly of course, but it also explains why I have trouble getting up in the morning. My mind has finally abandoned that train of thought, and besides, it is morning... I made it through the night. I was a sentinel. The sun has risen. All is well. I can rest now....

The worst part is that I do best doing my art in the morning before work. I have to start getting ready to go to work at 11 AM. Since I have been trying every single day to get up early, and failing almost every day, my art time is being whittled away, hour by hour, day by day. If I could just convince my sleepy headed morning mind that yes, it is important to get up, and not only is it important, but it is enjoyable. Believe it or not, I like mornings. I like being up, having coffee, the cold morning air... I just don't like getting up. Somehow I have to do this though, I have to get up... preferably by 7:30. I need that quiet time alone in my studio, while everyone else is asleep and nothing else is expected of me.... I need it. I wish I could do it.... Cross your fingers and wish me luck, because I'm going to try again tomorrow.

Something for me to color! There is a whole side of my work that doesn't get much attention, and lately it's been the thing I do when I'm sick or bored or just want to mess around. I don't have to do much research on images, it's all drawn from my imagination, and I can do it while lying propped up in bed. I know I need to work on some things that require me being up in my studio, but really, I have to give myself a little room for play!

Death

That's quite a title isn't it? Sorry, no photos at the moment. I have ten minutes before I start getting ready to go to my office job, that every day I am surprised I still have.

I've been thinking about death, because I just experienced it. Death, loss, and the ephemerality (Is that a word? Probably not, my spell check is telling me it isn't) of everything we have and hold dear. My cat died.... painfully, after licking a rock we believe was radioactive. It was awful.

Then, as I was preparing to figure out a way to back up my computer with little money, the hard drive just suddenly went poof. It's dead, and I didn't save anything. At the moment the most heartbreaking part is losing all the photos of the cat that just died!!! I was pleased to find just 6 photos of her on my mom's computer, which is what I am using now.

It's hard to suddenly have things... GONE... and living beings that you love. It's like a hole. I mean it is one of those things we all experience. We'll lose everything completely at some point. I don't know what happens when we die, but whatever happens, as they say, "you can't take it with you". Which means if we are somehow conscious, we lose all of it. I guess being a painter is somehow comforting, because an oil painting can last for generations after I am gone. But that same oil painting too will go some day, whether it is 50 years or 5000, it will go, too. Woah, what a thought, in all the changes in the last, oh, 2000 years, what will things be like in 5000 years? We can't even fathom it!!!

Well, this was a pointless rant, and there goes my alarm telling me it's time to go get ready for my stupid job. Pray he fires me amiably, so I can get unemployment and get some art done. And soon, the sooner the better. If I go to work today and he tells me I'm fired, and I get to come right back home, what a celebration that will be!!!

As much as I would like to sit here and blog about the new layer to this painting, I have to go to my office job now....

I was on TV!

Oregon Art Beat had a special on collecting art... I remember them filming the show I was in, but I hadn't noticed that I was IN the filming. http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/videos/view/269-The-Art-of-Collecting. I'm at 7:47 if you don't feel like watching the whole thing... though I recommend watching the whole thing, it's actually very interesting.

It was an "Artists for the Community" show at the Albina Community Bank during First Thursday... I want to say maybe April? I think I price my stuff a bit high for those shows.... because I feel like my work is worth more than $100 a painting. Actually it's worth talking about pricing. People wonder why paintings "cost so much". I have actually had people ask me this question, people who seemed to think that spending $50 on a painting was a lot!

Lets break it down: One painting is not made out of thin air. It has within it years of training, practice, unsuccessful works, sketches, and lets not forget about school (I owe over 50 grand in student loans. If I sell my paintings at $5o a pop, how fast will I pay that back?)

The next thing to consider is that when an artist is doing relatively well, maybe 1 out of 10 pieces actually sell. So I wouldn't make $50 per painting. I would make $50 per 10 paintings. That's $5 a painting, which is about a third of what the materials cost, and that's only because I know how to get my materials cheap and I stretch my own canvas.

In order to quit one of my 3 day jobs and just focus on my art, let's say the real time waster... I need to make at least $1200 a month. How many paintings at $50 is that? I would have to sell 24 paintings a month. I'm lucky if I even finish half that many. If my paintings sold at $1200 a piece, they would likely be selling in a gallery, which would take half. Which means I have to sell 2 per month. And have a show every single month (which in most galleries, that's not the way it works.) I have been thinking about that actually, if you are in a major gallery, you usually sign papers that say you won't show anywhere else in town. Which means you get to show your work once a year in one city. (Which is why a lot of artists travel, or refuse to sign contracts) So I would have to make about $14,400 in one sale to live meagerly for a year. Only famous artists sell their work in the tens of thousands. (This is only because I have other income. If art is my ONLY income, well we get into a bit of trouble then don't we?)

And last but not least, we are talking about a completely unique object that will last longer than you do. It is something you can pass on to your grandchildren, and may actually be worth quite a bit more some day. You are buying a piece of contemporary history, a part of a whole paradigm. People pay a lot more for a mattress, a pair of shoes, or a nice dinner for two. It's all about what is valued.

The quality of my work suffers because I have to spend my time elsewhere to pay my bills. If I wanted to REALLY focus on my work, I would spend at LEAST 5 hours a day in the studio. But I simply don't have that kind of time. I have been doing good compared to how I usually do, which means I spend about 3 hours every other day in the studio. But what that amounts to is about one finished piece every month and a half, not including small drawings and sketches and stuff ( I may need to do another 100 drawings project, just to feel a sense of accomplishment)

Well, I gotta get off this computer. I have to start getting ready for my day job.... sigh.

Slug Painting... New Layer

Now it's starting to look like something. I still remember a dream from when I was a kid of mountains that seemed impossibly steep, and waking up and thinking: Those were not like real mountains. But I found some mountains that are impossibly steep:

I'm not sure, but I think these might be the Dolomites in Italy, which is part of the Alps. Looking at this picture makes me think the mountains in the painting maybe should be a little steeper - impossibly steep. It is those impossible things that I like, just subtle enough to be plausible but strange enough to evoke mystery and a surreal feeling. Though I could go the other direction and make things in my paintings that are completely implausible, like the classical surrealists often did. I think I should accept that if there is an "ism" that my work continues to come around to, it would be surrealism. Even my abstracts are a little surreal.

I am thinking about putting her in water too, as if in a flood, maybe ankle deep. How strange that would be! It is an accident that I hope to accentuate that her dress echoes the mountain. The shape and the folds, even the intended color (you can't see that yet, but you will when it is done). The square of light is a new thought, and not one I am entirely sure of. It implies that the light is coming from outside, but the quality of the light is different from the outside, so I might need to do some push and pull to get it to harmonize. There are better words for all this but it's almost 2:30 in the morning, so my brain isn't thinking of clever ways to explain things.

A thought I did want to address in this blog though: How much should I use source material and how much should I paint out of my head? It's a hard one to figure out. The girl, believe it or not, was sketched in pencil out of my head. It took many tries, and a lot of looking at vaguely related source photos from the internet, but in the end, I put all the photos away and just drew her as I felt she needed to be. Knowing anatomy a little bit helps. But would the painting be better if I had a model do exactly what I need her to do? I don't know... in some ways learning to actually perfectly paint the interior images bouncing around in my brain is an interesting challenge, on the other hand I am incredibly good at painting from life and from photos (As some of you may know from a few of my portraits). Also, painting from life makes it ten times easier to paint out of my head, so I really have to do both. Maybe I need to do more practice images: Meaningless still lifes, figure studies and landscapes. People like those things too anyway. I just need more time to work. I end up working on my art about 8 hours a week on a good week, and that simply isn't enough! It takes me 4 months to finish a painting, that really only took about 15 hours! Thats less than one weeks work at my law office job! Well, if I can get my work selling, maybe I can quit. In the mean time, I like having money.

If I only use source material, I am only limited to what I can get my hands on. What is in my head is totally unique, so I have to get people to model, and find landscapes to photo, and then guess at the rest. Its a weird process, but I think some day I will find the right balance, and actually get around to getting people to model for me (Ok I'm shy about it, several people had said they would... now I just have to take them up on it.)

Beet Gallery http://beetgallery.com/ is doing a call for artists that I want to try to get into. Actually, I want to submit my work to the gallery regardless of whether I aim for that particular show or not, because the gallery is awesome and I think my work would go well there.

The show is a textile show with the theme "Pocket". Thus, inspiration for making a marsupial like humanoid woman with babies in a pouch. I just thought it would be fun if she had 4 boobs and 3 fingers, and incredibly large feet.... we will see how she actually comes out.