Make Angry Art and Become Famous

July 16 & 17th of this month, I am having a sale of almost all of my paintings. This includes encasutic, oil and drawings. There are figurative and abstract paintings. Paintings done before 2014 will be 50 to 60% off. I have posted only a sampling of what will be available. The doors open at 1pm both days and finish at 4:30. Previews by appointment. Directions to my home. studio/ gallery are found on my webiste: http:www.ezshwan.com

Why am I doing this you may ask? I am a painter. It is what I do. I make visual art to be seen. My online galleries are good, but they don't give the collector the chance to experience, or touch the art in person and I have scores of paintings that haven't been seen or at least not for a long time.
 
I sometimes ask myself, Why am I making more art?" I was sent this article by Enrique Martínez Celaya and it expresses how I feel about creating and continuing to make art until I am physically unable to do that. Below are some excerpts from his article:

“Being an artist is not a posture or a profession, but a way of being in the world and in relation to yourself. An artist is revealed in his or her choices.... Understanding who you are as an artist should be thought of as a life-long process inseparable from your work.”

• “How can you stay vital? Study yourself. Study the world. But do not become an authority on either. Something secret, mysterious, must always remain.”
• “The viewer completes the endeavor. There is no work of work of art without the viewer.” 

 

Notes on Ethics
• “Wide acclaim is not needed for something to be true.”

• “The qualities that distinguish great art from the rest are, directly or indirectly, related to ethics. At the heart of great art you will find love and compassion

It was suggested to me that if I wanted to become famous in Mexico I should make angry art. That will never happen.

Work from my archives

Here are some faces in encaustic that I made several years ago. They were just a part of my series. "Time of Witness" ; my tribute to the wisdom of the Mexican woman. I made 13 of these faces of my friends and neighbors.

Transfers on encasutic over oil

My daughter and I are getting ready for our gallery show the 2nd of January and I decided I would make some paintings that I could sell for lower prices than my big, new works.

I chose some face paintings on wood that I made as demos for my online classes of painting and drawing faces and covered them with clear encaustic and transfers using parchment paper - my favorite way of transferring onto encaustic. Here are a couple results.

I don't have a name for this one - any suggestions?

Grandma's Recipes

working on new website

I have been working for over a week on building a new website. I almost talked myself out of it until I saw that all the images of my abstract paintings had completely disappeared from my old site. I knew it would be a learning curve, so I cleaned my studio and moved my laptop to the lovely, light room, upstairs, where after the first frustrating day, I managed to put it together. It now has almost my whole art life on it. The link below will take you to the working site. I hope sometime today to have it published to my existing domain. If you take the time to look at it, please note any typos or confusion. I don't think I can see straight anymore.

.http://www.ezshwan.com/index.html

The view is restful for my tired eyes

Even on a gloomy, rainy afternoon, this is a pleasant place to work on the website

 

Figurative and Abstract paintings sold

With Arms Wide Open, 24" x 24"

I am pleased that I have had classical art training so that I can move between painting figuratively and abstract. I love doing both, but I stay with one or the other until I have a whole series made.

Saatchi Online Gallery informed me this morning that my painting Quiet Time was just sold and will be picked up Wednesday to be shipped to the client. I hope I will be informed in what country the buyer lives.

With Arms Wide Open was sold a while back.

Quiet time, 24" x 24"

The series , Into the Silence, so far

I have an impromptu one day class on Wednesday, and have to scurry to clean up my studio where I have spread materials on all 6 tables. I will put the paintings that I have been working on in the stacks so there will be room for the students.

I feel that it will be good to take a break, since my biggest problem when I am working figuratively, is over working. I probably should hire someone to burst into the studio and take the paintings away after I have worked on them for a couple of days.

Here is the series so far:

Oil and encaustic

encaustic

encaustic

encaustic

encaustic

oil and encaustic

encaustic

encaustic

encaustic

in process - encaustic

just oil so far

encasutic

More unfinished portraits in encaustic, oil and lots of scraping

I am working on several paintings at once. Hopefully, that will keep from getting picking and overworking. These are all still in progress. It is an interesting journey. These painting will be finished when they are finished. I don't know when.

I find that photographing the progress everyday helps to see what is working and what isn't.

The figure is painted in oil, encaustic over oil stained board and more oil on top.

oil and encaustic

all encaustic painting, after scraping almost everything I had done before.

Another reworked painting. All encaustic

Encaustic over an old encaustic painting. Lots of scraping through the many layers

Clear medium with stencil over the face. It will clear some more when it is cool.

Back to figurative encaustic painting

I have been working on some abstract paintings over the last 2 weeks, and now I feel pushed to get back to figurative. I love drawing and painting the figure, but I was so out of the zone that I had to pick up my own book, "Painting Portraits in Encaustic" to remind me of how I do it!I know myself well enough that it will probably take a few bad starts and some scraping away to get the natural momentum building again.

http://www.blurb.com/b/4375616-painting-portraits-in-encasutic

 

 

In the meantime here is a painting I did last year. It is not part of a series, but stands alone. It had been another less than satisfactory painting that I scraped down to the board, to find a colorfully stained board with a thin layer of wax still on it. I began drawing with charcoal, hence the very dark blacks. I continued with encaustic paint and oil glazes.

Flirtation, 24" x 32"