Back in Black

As we head closer to the holidays, and what is sure to be a few days of down time from the studio, I've been looking around the studio and taking inventory on projects started and those still proposed. I predict a very busy 2012 coming our way. I've begun reflecting on all the heavy choices I've made in the past year. Yes, it seems that this time of the year inspires introspection. We left our galleries this year, quit our professional job, and we have begun to move closer towards living the dream. I've set myself up for some scary and unknowing times for the future with the idea that it will motivate that insatiable hunger to produce that I once had before entering the world of public school teaching.

I have never looked at my production over the past few years as lazy, but the job and other issues surrounding previous decisions about the handling of my art most certainly stunted my energy to work like it meant something more. In the past few weeks since realizing the unhappiness of being away from creative minded people, the studio, and the ability to work with out surrounding myself with the politics of the city and the policies of the state hanging over my head has lead me to believe that some decisions, although tuff and life effecting, have to be made in order for a person to truly pursue their dreams.

The past several weeks have proven to me that I am most certainly growing hungrier and my imagination and inner artist has apparently been going nuts over the past couple of years. I've been finding myself drawing on everything, writing every dumb thing I hear down, and basically finding myself aligned with my tools. I've been going back and forth between graphite, ink, and oil paint depending on my mood. It feels great. Of course mistakes get made and you have to work to achieve that vision, but the feeling that something is gonna happen in there every time I walk through the Spillmanville door is great.

On top of everything, it has been uplifting to smell the mighty fumes of turpentine and oil paint coming from the painting room once again. I haven't really had the urges to paint in oil in quite a while, but it has been fun to have my old friends back. Although, the painting above is mainly tones of black, the time spent mixing that black from my tubes of red, blue, and yellow, have reminded me what an honor it was to have had the ability to truly learn the science behind this medium. It is even more fun however to utilize this substance in the actual act of creating a new image. The studio most certainly smells like a damn studio again.

Enjoy,

Spillmanville thinks that the plants in the window are making it easier to breathe.