Category: Portland Maine

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Drawing Maine Artist Portland Maine Watercolor

New Projects in the Mix

My world has become so full.  I am doing more design work and illustration than I’ve ever had before.  I have had at least three shows and a couple extra projects each year to work on and I now have a family to take care of and a son to raise.  I’m finally starting to feel okay with it.  This is it.  I’m living now.  Whatever that now is, I’ve got to live it.

I’ve been working on a watercolor of a bug every day this year.  Until about a week ago they were straight forward watercolors.  I’ve never used watercolor very much.  It was too unforgiving and I used a heavy hand.  I really just didn’t have the patience.  Enter toddler.  I suddenly have so much more patience than I ever thought myself capable.  The watercolors have advanced though, and I knew that sooner or later I would find myself adding myself back into the project.  This past week I started adding some geometric elements into the pieces.  I really like them.  Here are a few of the best ones.

I have also started another small side project.  I’ve always collected a number of sketchbooks.  One of my favorit types is called Dept. de Poche.  I have a small square book that I’ve started making simple graphics of whatever imagery I’m into on a daily basis.  I’ve started thinking of them as Squares of Vitality.  I hope to fill the whole book with foundation pieces of my vitality.  Here’s one of Mingus and some lettuce that is growing in my garden.

I hope this blogpost finds you well.  I’m wrestling with myself to get back into this space.  It used to be so good for me and I think that now more than ever it could be that outlet that I am not finding in other ways.

Peace
Mike

Categories
Art exploration found materials Found Objects painting Portland Maine Portland Maine Painter walking wood

Some Inspiration – Found Wood – The Exploration

Summer is in full swing.  My show in Bangor has come and gone and now I am left with the itch.  I have a show of watercolors coming up in Laconia in October, but it is the end of June.  I am not done making paintings like those that I put in “The Dinosaurs of Industry,” but in order to make more work, I need more materials.  I need some found wood.

When I get in this mood, I generally begin by taking some early morning walks.  The morning is the easiest time for me to think.  I have a clear head.  There is nothing to process from the day.  I can respond to objects that I encounter for their sheer aesthetic value and nothing else. There are several good spots to walk in Portland, ME to find found materials.  The Bayside community has two things going for it.  There is a high volume of low income traffic that roams through the neighborhood and sometimes you will find interesting tidbits of the night before, post-its, receipts, paper bags, etc.  There is also the architectural salvage store and a few warehouses and a drop off for a good will.  Sometimes people will drop off items, like plywood or busted furniture, which are not going to be useful to anyone in the future as actual furniture.  To me, these items are gold.  Often you will find small pieces of wood around warehouses that were used as packing or for trucks to drive over icy patches, etc.  I try to take nothing that looks like it is being used.  Lastly, the architectural salvage has a bin outside which houses pieces that they do not want to resell.  This usually results in a bunch of less than ideal looking surfaces, but sometimes there are some real gems.

I then tend to walk around the neighborhoods.  The West End is usually devoid of good building materials.  If you catch someone remodeling on the right day you could very well find something, but people in the West End clean up rather quickly.  It is the nice end of town after all.  If nothing else a walk through the West End is pleasant.  I then head down the hill and Close to the water.  Sometimes you will find some wood towards where the ships come in.  I do not generally walk up and down the docks as I don’t want to irritate the folks working on the ships coming in.  It is generally early after all, and the folks on the docks usually have been up far longer than me.

I then swing  down Grant and Sherman streets.  Apartments are cheaper there, so there is a high turnover rate and you can quite often find interesting things that people have left behind when they are moving out.  Tomorrow I intend to try walking around on Munjoy Hill.  I haven’t spent much time walking up there because until a year and a half ago it was way on the other side of town from me.  Now I live at the base.  There looks to be some good construction projects going on so I will probably be able to find something in the way of materials if I’m patient.

When I see something that I want to use, it isn’t a casual thing.  It hits me in the face with the wave of creation.  I want to use it immediately.  I want to hold it.  I want to carry it, however heavy it may be. There is no question in my mind as to the materials I should pick up and the ones that I should leave behind.  The right piece of wood can fuel entire studio days.  My energies have settled a bit after some intense work.  It’s time to find some creative fodder.

Peace
-Mike

Categories
Cityscapes Discovery Family Day Found Objects New England Painter Portland Maine totems Whale

Family Day and a Significant Break in Walking

Saturdays, since I quit working in the restaurant industry and found myself married with child, have become family day.  I often find myself reluctantly leaving the house to go do something social when really I want to hole up reading or head to studio, but all in all I am a fan of family day.  Today we ventured out for a walk.  After leaving the house and taking a left turn, we walked all the way up the hill and down the Eastern Prom to the water.  We then turned left again and walked along a bit of the Back Bay Trail.  The Back Bay Trail features a free wall where folks are legally allowed to paint graffiti.  There was a fellow working as we passed today.  As we walked past I started thinking about how I’ve always wanted to do work in public.  The problem is that I’ve never wanted to leave that lasting mark on a space.

I have often wondered, however, if the act of subtraction within a landscape might work the same as addition in a landscape.  Both Leave a lasting mark.  No matter how we look at it, the environment that we see is the environment that is.  What I mean is this, we cannot exclude the detritus of society in favor of a bucolic sense of the pristine landscape.  Our landscape is just as much our trash as it is our carefully tended shrubberies, raised beds, and lawns.  If we are to remove that detritus with the cognitive desire for visual change cannot that act make just as much of a mark as adding ink or paint?

The discovery of such an object, Gascoygne contended, is accompanied by an emotional experience “of an aesthetic nature . . . as the finder discovers an unrealised significance in the object” (p. 170). A new boundary is formed around the object by the finder through removing it from its found environment and placing it in a new one, thus empowering the finder in the role of creating a new reality for the object.  – Paul M. Cacim
I would argue that a new reality is also created for the space which the object formerly occupied.
After my wife and I had passed the free wall, we needed to stop to feed our son.  As we were sitting on a short fence, I noticed a stray piece of driftwood.  It struck me that it would be a good piece of wood to take home to work on, possibly to make another totem.  Then it occurred to me that the object had its own beauty that didn’t need to be removed from its environment.  Perhaps the drawing which I would make would be stronger left annonymously right where the found object was.  I decided to draw one of my totemic whales on this piece of wood, sign it, and leave it.  It was, I think, the first time that I have ever detached myself from the collecting process.  The collecting process encumbers my ability to distribute work in a manner that allows the necessary level of anonymity required to be successful in street art forays.

I was very much pleased with this piece and surprisingly felt fine creating something that only really exists on this blog and on my instagram page.  I feel like this fleeting level of connection is more appropriate than the attachment that I usually endow these objects with.  The act was more about that space than a gallery space or an art store.  It was that object AND place AND moment that I was attracted to.  Rather than attempting to render that level of excitement in a setting by making a bang up piece, maybe it is better to create and leave that piece?

Also, I wonder, as this act settled with me throughout the day.  I was able to show my discovery by creating this work and leaving it where I found it.  The tiny cityscapes project that I have begun is much the same.  I am excited about my discoveries.  I feel like not many people are concerned with looking up as they walk or drive about a city.  Things can be hidden in plain sight just by placing them above our field of vision.  I have been obsessed with looking up at these splices of Portland.  The pieces that I’ve been creating have just been the equivalent of a view finder showing others how and where to look to see these segments of society which are right in front of us.

My work is getting very exciting for me again.  Between the things I am reading and the theories that are starting to grow on me and the family that is constantly rooting for me and providing me pause, I feel as though I am becoming a much more mature artist.  I feel like I am actually chasing my dreams again.
Peace
-Mike