An Artist in Chaos: Growth of a Discipline

When we are young, we develop habits, some good, some not so good. I have every excuse to be disorganized as I'm creative and it's a creative trademark but I have seen what happens without organization and a game plan. You push paint around....I"m gonna trademark that one of these days-maybe a book, Yes, a book.

Pushing Paint Around: I've always talked about times of fermentation and I still believe in it although I believe discipline and organization can help in two ways.
 • When the inspiration strikes you are ready and available to work instead of fighting with obstacles and disorder. Disorder is something that is very agitating in a moment of inspiration. I have experienced the feeling of being ready to shoot an amazing photograph but your equipment was either not taken care of or something you needed wasn't available in the chaos.

• I think the disorganization keeps the holding pattern longer and prolongs the feeling of fermentation. I realize that as an artist, things inspire me regularly, my life and surroundings should be uncluttered and available to realize the inspiration of light, of objects, of nature.

• Disorder can depress and confuse the already cluttered mind. So many thoughts stream through becoming dried dead leaves on the bottom of a great flood instead of the light and the colors that dance on the surface of the water. How many thoughts and ideas have been lost due to clutter and chaos?

Stop Playing: Start Doing, No Excuses: I pride myself on the ability to be honest with myself about my shortcomings. There is no way to change or improve if certain parts of your personality are set in stone. I quit smoking many years back and one thing I never did is say, I'm a smoker and that's the end, I was always open to quitting and eventually I did.

I have a lot of disorder in my life, I don't take care of my things the way I need to. I could use the excuse of being an artist and having a chaotic mind but I"m continually insisting I can improve.

Discipline: is the ingredient in a cake that makes all the ingredients rise and be a cake, it is the binding that keeps the creative endeavor on track. I plan on one day having an agent but until than I need to discipline myself to be the best I can. Discipline and organization are two qualities I will use to take a life time of pushing paint into a career that I can be proud of.

Honesty: is what allows you to perfect what ever you are doing. The initial ego and excitement of creation can overshadow your subject. I have painted many portraits and animal images that at the time I was quite proud of but later saw them closer to reality.

Honesty and humility is the only way I know to get to the next level of this craft. I don't think an artist ever arrives at a place where they are an artist and that's that. It is a continual growing process and the image you are supposed to create is very illusive and changes with age. I have just recently started to see glimpses of the image I have sought for so many years.

Self-Reflection: This can really include all of the above but there can be no growth and success without self reflection and there can be little self reflection without quiet. A place, a time to be present to truly take stock in the work you've done and the work you will do, this is how an artist breaks forward and become what they are intended to be.

Teaching Painting and the Gallery Critique: I don't think art has ever been meant to be an isolated craft, I'm not saying creation is not an isolated and personal act but I do feel it needs to not be in a bubble. For me, art is something that needs to be interactive, the viewer must react or it is a beautiful tree hidden in a forest. It is still as beautiful and every bit important but it doesn't speak to anyone.

I want my viewers to react, to feel something and that charge of chemistry between the viewer and a piece of art creates a relationship that begs to be available and shared. I want what ever I create to be taken as a personal memory, a cherished thought or idea that connects deeper than the surface. The viewer nor the artist really needs to know the reality, it is that intangible and mysterious interaction that makes great art.

I have gained more from teaching art and receiving critiques from galleries than I have ever received from simple words of encouragement. You burst the bubble, you get out of what is comfortable and understood and you explore not only your own reasons for creating but how they are taken by the novice and the expert, it is a wonderful disruption of what you see is common or ritual.

I went into my studio this morning and started organizing. I felt like I was digging through some one's attic and finding perhaps a past life that has been waiting to be discovered. Suddenly the ideas became more clear, the abstract made more sense and the true need for discipline jumped out as if I was saving an artist from their own chaos. Stay tuned for a lot of work.....

Check back with www.artbygordon.com for new artwork, writing and photography.

Fruits of Labor: Often an Inspiration Takes Time to Appear

Sometimes it just happens, I've set up this still life for the last week or so and nothing has jumped out. Often, much like a painting that sits on the easel with nothing to add, an image needs to become what it needs to. Sometime it's the simplest bit of light that paints an object that turns the mundane into something special.

I have stood in front of sunsets that seemed for all purpose amazing and yet the eye seems not to notice the intricacies. It is the most subtle light and the illusive hue that makes a simple subject more profound. These images capture a feeling of an afternoon, the sun descending somewhere outside and a memory of a rainy afternoon or an early spring day.

What struck me most about these still life objects is the background, a subtle orange or yellow hue that makes the whole atmosphere seem anything but ordinary. I want the viewer to taste the sweetness of the blood orange or the bitter yellow in the lemon. These colors paint the scene in an intangible presence and I believe that is when the mundane and simple becomes extraordinary. This is my quest as an artist to find the intricacies in light and a moment of the ordinary and make it say something to the viewer.

I would appreciate any opinion on these images as they are adding to the prints being sold on Fineartamerica and I want to know what would constitute art for my viewer. Take  a moment to share your opinion, thanks as always for your time and interest.

Dallas Zoo: Wildlife Portraits

I went to the Dallas zoo with the idea of getting close-up animal portraits. I spent 30 minutes watching the gorillas and talking to the zoo keeper. Each gorilla has their own personality and I enjoyed learning about the individuals.

When  you bring a child to the zoo you tend to be chasing them and trying to keep up. When you go with a specific intent, you can concentrate on the specific species you intend to photograph and are more able to just relax and enjoy them.

I watched a group of chimps in a very tender moment. It's amazing how much more you see when you stop and enjoy them instead of running to the next exhibit. The two chimps sat and groomed each other while a young baby hid behind the bushes and played, doing somersaults and enjoying the sunshine.

Next I was lucky to have a cheetah sitting right by the window of the enclosure. The pair of cheetahs were quite active as well and stepped into the light. I got to see more of their personalities than usual, the last time I remember seeing them resting in pasture too far for my telephoto to capture anything but a group of spots.

The giraffes were fun because they come up to get feed, you can pay to get some leaves to feed them. I was impressed by the textures in the face and the eyes and the intricacies of the spots.

Discipline is often the muse that makes us find our creativity

I am working hard to continue to find objects that can be used in abstract images for wall decor. Tonight I found the silhouettes of summers' garden made dramatic imagery.
To create when nothing inspires is where discipline comes in. You are forced to see beyond a gray winter day and seek light when there is none available and I believe that is the fuel that feeds creativity when the muse doesn't show.

I have also been in a situation where the scenery was so breathtaking you couldn't do it justice even if you tried. I was in Glacier National Park and between altitude sickness and a feeling of being overwhelmed, it was hard to shoot something that was truly remarkable.

There is a great space where you need to work a bit harder to see beyond what is obvious and yet the light is perfect, this is the sweet spot and what follows is a landscape where the creative thrives.

Nature's Illusive Form: Nature Finds a Path to Contemporary Art

An autumn stream becomes a rich tapestry of colors as nature intended.

I love the patterns in nature. As an artist, finding a unique perspective that can show a viewer something they might not have seen before is a large part of my artistic intent.

I have always painted landscapes and seascapes but I could never perfect what is already real. I am competing with the greatest artist of them all: God. All I can hope for is to show the viewer an aspect of that image that moved me and perhaps move the viewer with the same or varied feeling.

As I have been photographing more regularly, I have found the need to see deeper than just the landscape. Especially when the light does not cooperate with the subject or doesn't show up at all.

A red Photinia becomes a graphic image when a late afternoon light catches a few of the leaves.

I learned to isolate parts of nature when my desire to photograph didn't lend itself to the light of the day. On a gray winter day, when there is nothing but flat, bland light and no objects are discernible by any effective modeling,  I have discovered a new way of seeing the landscape.

I started seeing how images were painted by stray bits of light. Suddenly instead of a bland landscape, I was able to find just a piece of that landscape that could be a graphic object. I don't even care if the final image is discernible, it is more the aspect of its abstract nature that intrigues me.

A Mexican Milkweed becomes the center piece of discussion as the background blurs into cool greens and blues. These plants are crucial for the survival of the Monarch Butterfly, the pot shows the colors and textures of the wings and would make a nice conversation piece and accent in your home. The pot is also available on Etsy.

I have started gathering autumn leaves, green leaves and patterns in water, in the past I would  have struggled to find something in abstract but now the image jumps out at me. It's a muscle and to strengthen this way of seeing the landscape has changed my whole outlook on contemporary art.

I believe that bringing nature into the house can evoke a calm center as well as a conversation piece for visitors. I like how without representing a specific subject, the image evokes something without trying too hard to be abstract or artsy. I have found my way to the abstract and contemporary subject.

Different aspects of Autumn awaken a cool living environment.

Cat Portrait: Seeking light and finding graphic abstraction

It's been a long gray couple of days and the light has been inexistent. At the end of the day though, just a bit of light pierced through the windows and my cat was watching the birds as is his habit.

I photographed him with limited flash, a raw image that I used Photoshop to accentuate the bit of light touching his face and whiskers. 

I liked how graphic the image became. You can see the eye and his personality but he is become a bit of an abstract image of a cat. Even the light in the eye is hard and graphic and yet I believe you can still he an illusive nature in the image.

I am beginning to enjoy the idea of abstraction more than previously. I like the isolated abstract patterns of nature that create themselves a not so ordinary image of an image we see every day, in this case it's my cat, the birdwatcher, A.K.A Frady.

I would love any thoughts or opinions. Thanks for checking out my blog.

Fish Tails Part 2: Fishing Poles and the Illusive Striper

I remember Manasquan Inlet where I can still see my dad fishing on the jetties. He handed the pole to my older brother and up came a sea robin, a strange fish with wings for fins. My grandma got goosed by a stingray and I discovered mole crabs.

I had all the golden books about the seashore and it's inhabitants and fishing was superseded by nature, shells and just being by the ocean. When I was thirteen my stepdad bought us saltwater fishing rods and what followed was an odyssey to catch the holy grail of east coast fishing....the giant striper.

We would live-line bait from the rocks, caught many birds, a few black fish but not one striper. I always dreamed of disappearing from the group and coming back with a giant striper but it never happened.

We also fished for flounder, again not that much luck and after a while I began to take fishing for granted. I would give anything to go fishing in Belmar today.

After a long day on the jetties, the first gulp of Stewart's root beer cut through a day's thirst with an amazing rapturous sting. There were long nights spent fishing on the beach with surf tubes only to be awoken by my stepfather jumping up to set the rod I was supposed to be watching.

The mornings we'd  chase the flocks of birds chasing schools of baitfish as bluefish boiled the water. We'd throw metal lures into the schools and with every cast a powerful fighting bluefish.

We would fish on the pier in Point Pleasant where we saw a plane crash into the ocean, a swimmer who seemed intent on killing himself and I discovered the illusive weakfish. You let the lure sink to the bottom and if the bluefish don't hit it on the way down you get weakfish.

The wonderful thing about weakfish is they run and it was a wonderful exciting feeling to realize you just hit a monster that was running full speed out to sea. I even was lucky enough to catch several with my Uncle Bill-I remember him asking as the line screamed, "What you got there?"

We still have those rods and all I can say is we definitely got a lot of use and wonderful memories out of them. I would say they were one of the best gifts we had received that literally carved out a piece of my childhood.

I never did catch the Striper, although I did seem him under the waves when we dove for lobster in Shark River Inlet. We caught lots of other fish and spent many a night building memories. How I miss the ocean and yet since then we have adopted a special place in our hearts for Florida.

On the next post, I'll explain how we actually started catching fish and they got bigger. We caught tarpon in the keys in the next post.