Path to the beach

This is the first completed post South Carolina painting. "Path To The Beach" is literally that, a painting of the path to our beloved beach.  With the continuing snow and cold here at home, I'm really missing walking our beach...

Lessons learned while walking the beach #2:

  How Artists are like sharks teeth.

There are a lot of wanna be sharks teeth on the beach, some of them are really hard to tell from the real thing just by looking, but there is one no fail test, try to break them. 

The shell bits that look so convincing, break as soon as you put pressure on them, real teeth are almost impossible to break.

A lot of wanna be artists break as soon as they run into difficulties. They don't sell the way their family and friends assured them they would, they get an unfavorable critique, or two, they don't get accepted into a show they apply for...and they pack up their paints and move onto a new hobby.

Please don't get me wrong, a lot of hobby or Sunday painters, are the real thing, there is nothing wrong with knowing the limits of your ambition. 

Shark tooth hunters learn fast, that if you want to find a lot of teeth, find the bands of grit and debris. Like sized objects collect in bands that stratify the beach. Since most sharks teeth are fairly small, most of them will be found grouped together in the band of thumb nail sized bits.

The really good ones, the big ones, will be in the bands with the larger pieces of, and complete shells. There aren't many big ones though, so, do you forgo quantity for quality? After all, you might get lucky really good ones do appear in the smaller bands, though rarely. 

Or, do you persist and hang out where the big guys go, for artist, do you try for the better show? Take the chance on a solo exhibit? Or stay where you're comfortable showing in the same group shows year after year, without ever taking a risk...  Risk is hard, and frightening.  Most artists don't have driving ambition, they are happy doing what they are doing. There is nothing wrong with you if you know you really don't have enough ambition to take the risks.

If you do have ambitions though, consider the band you're in, could it be holding you back?

The dream of every sharks tooth hunter is to find a megalodon tooth.  Megalodons were massive prehistoric sharks, and their teeth are also massive.  Their teeth are found on the same beaches, but almost never in the strata bands the other teeth are.  

I've yet to find one, I know a devoted hunter though. This guy wears hip waders, and has an assortment of strainers he uses to sift through the tide pools of the estuary.    As soon as the tide is out far enough to start to expose the estuary sand bars he's out there, in all weather.  He's been doing this ever since he retired 10 years ago, his wife helps him and together in 10 years they have found 2.  One was this year and I was fortunate enough to see it, he wouldn't let me hold it though lol.

For artists, as it is for this hunter, megalodons take total devotion, a lot of time/practice, patience, and a bit of luck.

 

Path To The Beach, Glazed Acrylic, by Robin Baratta. 8x10, $120.00

Beach Thoughts

We've been back from our southern vacation for a few days now.  Just long enough to get back into the swing of things. 

I really miss my studio when I'm away. Every year I come up with a new plan on how I'm going to spend the 6 weeks immersed in paint, and each plan fails. The truth is, I'm a studio artist, I started 4 paintings while we were away this year, but with out the room to work I  end up outside, where the bugs and sand find their way into the paint, mixed media lol. 

So instead I fill my sketch book and walk the beach. 

I've got a good start on turning the first of those sketches into a painting. 

This is the lay out and under painting, with the first bit of texture layering. 

So, what did I learn beach walking, and people watching?

Beach combers are like art patrons.

At the beginning, they're pretty indiscriminate. They pick up any and everything pretty. 

By their second or third snowbird vacation (art show/gallery shopping trip), they start to specialize. They know this trip isn't a one time thing, and they aren't going to pick up any old thing just because it's pretty. 

A popular specialty is sharks teeth. The problem with this is there are lots of shells , but not many teeth. Complicating things farther, lots of shell bits and debris look like teeth until you examine them closely. So the genuine article can be missed if your not willing to bend over and really look. 

It also takes an 'eye' to find them. Most people walk right over top of them with out noticing what's right under their feet, so having a mentor show you what to look for helps a lot.

Also the best ones are often outside of the most searched areas, you need to be willing to search them out and take a few risks. 

Next time: what searching for sharks teeth taught me about artists. 

Our beach

This painting is too badly flawed to ever be shared beyond this blog, but this is our beach, the one we go to South Carolina to walk on. Oh beach how I miss you here in the midst of the polar vortex. 

Tide pool 5: Aliens amongst us

I just finished this painting, or at lest I think it's finished. This is one of the paintings I did in South Carolina last month. It was a 'fail' so that means it was  ready for experamenting on.

It's been cut up, painted over, collaged on and at last I'm sorta happy...

The subject is some of our beach finds. I miss my beach walks, sigh. 

I thought the the crab 'skeleton' was other worldly looking so the working title has been 'aliens amongst us'. What do you think?

Snow In The South, And My Interview On The Terra Skin Blog

Well we're back, we've been in South Carolina for the last 5 weeks. Did you see the coverage of the ice storms in Georgia? We were also hit by that storm so I have lots of pics of palms in the snow.

 It was too cold to do much work, but we spent a lot of time bundled up walking on the beach, which is one of the big attractions for us.  I'm still the Queen of spotting shark's teeth, even though I wasn't trying very hard I found 237 this year, crazy, I think the ability to spot them is a by product of developing the artist's ability to discern the important details and disregard the unimportant.
The link to the interview I did on the Terra Skin Blog is here check it out. Be warned you'll learn more about me than you ever wanted to know ! lol

The Question We're all Asking...

...is where the heck is spring!?!  Dang this  winter is wearing  out it's welcome.
We woke up to snow AGAIN today...this isn't fun anymore...sigh.
Anyway, enough whining.
  My practice is to hang a painting  where I can look at it for a couple of days before I declare it done.  Sometimes even after I've posted it here, I go in and change something, that just wasn't 'right'.   The painting I'm working on now  is one of those that never seems to be done. Perhaps in part because it's a landscape, which isn't my usual thing. Looking out the south window of Art Emporium the view of the Port Stanley beacon on a early spring day inspired me, and now is frustrating me, but I'll get it, or gesso over it.
My students have been exploring Gullah art, inspired by some of the wonderful works I saw while we were away. One of those arts are  shell and found object encrusted sculptures and mosaics. I found these to be fascinating. They spoke to my own love of texture, and the ingenuity of the artists, making art from what others see as 'trash' is inspiring.
The first project my students worked on were masks and mosaic-very simplified for my nursing home clients, more complicated for the rest, then we moved on to sculpture.  The armatures are floral foam and masking tape, the shells set into paper mache clay, the results, awesome.

We've started our next series, this time we're working in collagraph, stay tuned!

I'm back

We got in late Wed. night from our New York trip. It was wonderful, and I have two picture cards full in my camera bag. I haven't had a chance to see them yet, as I had to work yesterday and I go in, in about 1 1/4 hours today. I'll have a lot to say as soon as I have a few moments to get to the computer.

For now I just want to remind everyone that the Dorchester Show is tomorrow, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. at the Dorchester arena, across from Timmies on Dorchester Rd.

This is going to be part of the Monarch piece that I'm working on, you can see the tissue paper that I'm using, a bit of a challenge, but I'm liking it.

EDIT: New York was cleaner and friendlier than I expected. We did most of the touristy stuff, Empire State Building, Macy's, Times Square (our hotel was 5 blocks from it), Broadway (we saw Spamalot~hilarious) Harbour Cruise etc etc. The tour was so tightly scheduled that if you weren't there when the bus was to leave, you were left behind, and some folks were.

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The M.O.M.A., and the Guggenheim. The Met was amazing. I could have spent the whole week there alone. Just seeing all of the paintings I've studied so long 'in the flesh' as it were blew me away. I've always wanted to see the mummy portraits in the Egyptian section, so I quickly breezed through that, then on to the art of the Renaissance, and Modern Masters. I can't begin to tell you the impact of seeing those paintings.................... there is a reason they are the classics, and the people who painted them are called Masters. No print has that impact.

M.O.M.A. is of course modern, Picasso, Gauguin, Monet, etc etc. There was a Van Gough exhibit on while we were there, again, I can not describe, no words are adequate. How can it be that no one saw the genius of this man during his lifetime???

Guggenheim was under renovations so we weren't able to see all of it, which was a disappointment, but again what we did see was unbelievable.

I was intrigued by the people/patrons.

There were the people who went around listening very intently to the ipods provided, I wondered if they actually saw what the artist was saying, or only listened to what the narrator said.

There were the people who were there to 'do' the museum, almost as if they were checking off a to do list, they seemed more intent on getting through it than in seeing what they were there to see.

There were the one's with cameras, bagging big game, more intent on what was in their view finder than in front of their faces. There was one guy in the Van Gough exhibit sneaking photos, since photography was not allowed, and he kept pushing people to get a good shot. I wish I had ratted him out, but... I'm too nice.

And then there were the devote, worshipful, examining every brush stoke, and constantly getting in the way of the big game baggers, Guess which one I was lol.

All in all, it was a fantastic trip, and if you get the chance, GO!