TalkingFox

New Work

Since I’ve moved my art production seems to have slowed a bit. Gee, it couldn’t have a thing to do with the 100 lbs each of fruit and veg that I’ve put up this season could it?

I’m afraid that living in the state of Agritopia after 6 years in the sub arctic zone has brought out my hoarding instinct. I must confess, however, that the many jars of vividly colored produce appeals to my aesthetic instinct as well. All that and it just flat tastes better than the commercially canned stuff.

I’m working on the GFCF cookbook as well…and I gotta tell ya my DH loves research and development days.

Be that as it may, I have still managed to get a few pieces done and I’ve quite a few more on the drawing boards.

I’ve started digging into the reference shots that I took while living in the Alaska interior and the ones taken on my recent trip through the Yukon and Northern BC.

This is the most recent painting.

Birch Catkins Mixed Media 2008

I’m finding that very loose brushwork used to create a lot of detail is getting to be my most used technique and tends to make said detail a little less stiff to the eye. It also gives my aspie penchant for twiddling with stuff a place to go that is productive. I’ve also been noticing that over the last few years that my work has been moving from and expression of how I feel and more into an example of how I see.

I like the way that this piece moves.  It invokes spring breezes even with the main focus being on the botanical aspects.   It’s peaceful without being static.  It’s also a study in complementary color relationships without getting in your face.   Overall I think it works.

Birch Catkins detail

Click on the image for a closer look

I’ve also been getting some of the photos that stand on their own finished.

Spring Anemones 2008

Click on the image for a closer look

I do tend to see the world in macro…these flowers were only 2 inches or so in diameter. They were the first wildflowers that I saw of the season and were bravely blooming next to a motel parking lot in Tok, Ak

As always I welcome your opinions of the work, positive and negative alike. And again as always prints of these pieces are available at my Imagekind gallery

Posted in Fine Art, Photography, Prints, art, autism, new work | No Comments » | Viewed 562 Times

Interviews from afar

The nice folks at 1st Angel and Friends art site from the UK recently asked to interview me for their site.

You can check it here.

Liz, the site owner has cram packed her site with loads of interesting articles relating to the arts of all stripes.

Thanks Much!

Posted in Fine Art, Prints, art | No Comments » | Viewed 627 Times

Leaving Alaska

In 48 hours I’m moving away from Alaska.

Part of me is happy to be going to a place where it doesn’t get below 20F often and one doesn’t have to shovel out in the winter or worry about avalanches, volcanic eruptions, frozen pipes and automobiles or getting stomped on and/or mauled by wildlife.

Another part of me is sad to leave a place of such breathtaking beauty. This place fills up my soul through my eyes.

Living in Alaska pushed my work into areas that I said that I would never go, mainly into landscape.

I don’t know how I could have avoided landscape work living here. Every day brought a different and more intensely beautiful vista, even in the middle of town.

I think it’s all about the light. There is a color of light that’s pervasive here that is usually reserved for a few fleeting days in the very early spring in environments further south. It’s a sort of pinky- golden color and being as there are so many white barked birches , it’s reflected back everywhere. In the winter even snow dumps acquire alpine glow. Add to that the extended sunsets (hours and hours!) and well, even the big 64 box of crayons wouldn’t be sufficient to render it. The sky is always doing something utterly amazing.

One thing that I found impossible in working on the Northshore series was capturing the sheer magnitude of the larger views. Trying to catch color as it was ended up looking garish on the page. Seriously…the color is so very intense that even photography doesn’t seem to quite catch it or ends up looking less than, well, real.

There is not a film on the planet that can even approximate the living blue of glacial ice.

It seems that Alaska will not allow itself to be taken out of context.

In response to this I ended up focusing on small moments rather than the grand view.

This is an example of that and is the last piece in the Northshore Series:

Barnacles, Bladderwrack and Basalt

Mixed media on Paper 2008

Okay before you say “gee it looks just like a photograph” Look here:

Barnacles, Bladderwrack and Basalt detail

Mixed Media on Paper 2008

I’ve heard Alaska described as brutal, savage, and uncompromising. I think it’s more supremely indifferent. It has an extreme and vital sense to it that is separate from human doings. The place thunders under ones feet.

I’ll miss it….except for when the mercury hits -50.

Posted in Fine Art, Life in General, Northshores, art, new work | No Comments » | Viewed 540 Times

A small feather in my cap

I’ve had a web gallery on Imagekind for a little over a year now, as have countless thousands of others.

Imagekind does very high quality prints at reasonable price points. Gotta love that.

As of this morning I was chosen to be a featured artist! This is a big deal to me as there are so many very talented people with their stuff posted on Imagekind and very very few are selected to be Featured Artists.

You can check it  here

woohoo!

Posted in Fine Art, Photography, Prints, art | No Comments » | Viewed 536 Times

Are we there yet?

When I was in college my art professor suggested that there needed to be 2 people working on any given painting. One to paint the thing and another to stand over the artists shoulder and smack him or her repeatedly with a stick at the appropriate moment screaming: It’s done It’s done It’s done DON’T TOUCH IT!

I always have to fight the urge to judge my past work by current standards and the subsequent urge to rework a piece. Repeatedly. To the death.

The question is, is it ever appropriate to do so?

I have to be very careful about allowing myself that liberty. It IS however, at least in my world, OCCASIONALLY warranted.

I’ve just completely reworked a piece that I had deemed finished in 2005. Why?

Well after spending 6 months closely observing the Northern Lights I felt I could do the subject more justice without ruining the feeling of ‘wildness’ of the piece. In short, without overworking and waxing too technical, reworking with restraint. HA! No sticks or shouting required.

If you’re interested in taking a look, the piece has been posted here

I welcome your comments and opinions.  Feedback helps me to be a better artist!

Posted in Fine Art, art, new work | No Comments » | Viewed 497 Times

Artism Blog II

Why on earth would I write publicly about something as deeply personal and potentially socially stigmatizing as being autistic you might ask?

1. Because there is no possible way that I can separate my artistic process from my autistic function. Believe me, I’ve tried and tried again. In order to begin to explain my work in any kind of real fashion I must address the autism and visa versa.

2. Blogging gives me an avenue to actually express where I am in either process in a manner that is less socially awkward and potentially alienating i.e. the ability to edit. It’s also helpful the the reader decides when they’ve heard enough

My work is an area where I apparently have a really difficult time interacting like a civilized human being. This forum also gives me a place where I can send people that are interested in what’s happening in that area of my life without having to traverse that slippery social slope.

If I perseverate, (an action I once had a friend call “arting in my face”) the reader can opt out on their terms, no harm, no foul.

3. I hope that I can, in some small way, dispel some myths and stereotypes that surround Adult Autistics and Apergers folks from all areas of the spectrum.

I don’t claim to be any kind of expert on the subjects that I am putting forward for public perusal.

All I can do is share my personal experience.

As far as the potential social stigma? Well, I’m capable of committing social suicide all by my lonesome. This blog isn’t going to make a whit of a difference there…..

Posted in Life in General, art, autism | No Comments » | Viewed 598 Times

Soundtracks

Another huge influence on my art has been music. I can’t work without it.

Each piece that I start is worked on to the same music, much to the consternation of room mates and spouses. Apparently, each painting has its own soundtrack.

It seems that an internal routine gets set with the music and I have an almost impossible time re-finding the mindset that I was working from when I stop working. I hate it when my my train of thought derails! Music serves me by blotting out external stimuli, which I have a hard time filtering.

Music also acts as a sort of emotional/ intellectual mnemonic device for me. It helps in keeping my work from becoming overly preoccupied with detail and stiff. In short, I can set aside technical aspects of art and ride on an emotional stream pouring out of the speakers.

A wall of sound protects me from the outside world and allows me to put my brain on artistic/autistic autopilot. This frees me to work as I see and at hand rather than dealing with niggling mental subroutines.

I tend to get utterly immersed when listening to music anyways, working or no. Sometimes my eyes roll back in my head and I cry unconsciously.

When I’m perusing new cd’s to purchase, one of the biggest criteria is “Can I work to it?”

which is , btw, one of the greatest compliments that I can pay any given album.

Currently in heavy rotation are:

Afro-Celt Sound System: Anatomic

Sound Track: Tout Les Matins du Monde Crappy film, GREAT performance by Jordi Savall

Bjork: Post

Tanzwut – Ihr wolltet Spaß Tanzwut are the boys from Corvus Corax plugged in

Gjallerhorn All albums. An awesome group of Swedes residing in Finland. As a didg player as well as visual artist, this stuff makes me crazy

In Extremo All albums. Another Mittelaltel Metal band from Germany, similar to Tanzwut

Mozart: Requiem Mass performed by the Wiener Philharmoniker

Posted in art, autism, music | No Comments » | Viewed 498 Times

Sing along (electrically) with Uncle Walt

As an artist I am, like most other artists, asked about major influences on my work.

Last night, as I was watching a wonderful biopic on PBS, I realized what a profound influence that literature has had on my work. More specifically poetry. Even more specifically the works of Walt Whitman.

I was raised in a family with a love of literature of all sorts. My mother read me the works of Emerson, Scott, Longfellow, Frost and manymany others as a very young child. It got to where I could recite many before I was even out of kindergarten. Of course this was no doubt due to the fact that my mother herself had many works memorized and would recite them to entertain us as she baked or did some other household task. I always liked the rather macabre ones like Longfellow’s “Wreck of the Hesperus” and Sir Walter Scott’s take on Goethes “Erl- King”. Yeah, ok, I was a weird kid.

As I got older I discovered Blake, Neruda, TS Eliot, and Rilke, who are some of my favorite poets still. I would suggest that anyone who wants to go into the Arts of any stripe read Rilkes’ “Letters to a Young Poet”.

Walt Whitman’s body of work has, however, impacted me more than that of any other writer, poetry or prose.

I discovered Whitman at around age 12 , when I fancied myself a fledgling writer of sorts. I have since read and reread “Leaves of Grass” over the course of my entire adult life.

I recently passed on my grubby, tattered, dogeared copy to my daughter who writes.

Whitman’s pure physicality transcends time and cultural boundaries. It transcends the restrictions of the society in which it was created. It trumpets a strength in the most fundamental act of simply being as well as a deep love for and unflinching examination of existence .      What courageous writing.

When I’m feeling unsure of my work or weirded out by my own weirdness all I have to do is pick up “Leaves of Grass” and open it to a random poem.

I read and am renewed, recharged and reassured.

“The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab
and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you. ”

“Song of Myself”

Stanza 52

Thanks Uncle Walt. And Thanks Mom.

Posted in Life in General, art | No Comments » | Viewed 498 Times

Artism Blog!

I’ve never been much of a blogger. Well, barring a few posts on MySpace that is…..

I’m an artist. I’m also a musician. In addition to these things I’ve also been diagnosed High Functioning Autistic/Aspergers.

Now the autism label can be fraught with mythconceptions. I don’t necessarily consider it (at least for me) a disability…well, maybe at parties. Rather I consider it to be who I am, rather like having blue eyes or an allergy to ragweed pollen.

More importantly I hold firm to the notion that I don’t need to be “Cured”, social interaction difficulties aside.

In the coming posts I’m going to try and document my artistic process, my thoughts on autism in general and whatever else strikes my fancy.

Posted in Life in General, art, autism | 1 Comment » | Viewed 522 Times