Objects as objects

With school starting, I haven't had much time for updating the blog. However, I felt that today was a good day to catch up on things. First of all, the more I work, the more I feel like my paintings metamorphosis into their own "thing." I rarely plan out what I am doing. The extent of my planning consists of gathering materials and a surface. Though I guess I am always prepared with knowledge and a comfortableness within my own context of painting, so I somewhat will always have a degree of expectation. The work above is our "second" painting in painting class. I am just going with it. I actually stole some images from R.H. Quaytman ( I have been reading more about her work, and the more I read the more interested I become). The pyramid-like shape is from one of her pieces and was kind of a jumping off point for me in this painting. Since then I just have been adding and adding, letting whatever comes out of my brain happen on the canvas. Matt said something to me that really resonated. He commented that I always feel like I have to "start over" when I have a new painting, and that I give myself a harder time than I need to. It's true that I have a, "So what have you done for me lately?," attitude, but I DO need to lighten up a bit. I need to get over the fact that there will be motifs that want to occur again and again in the work, and I just have to let them. 

In class we also had a small discussion about paintings, or any work for that matter, representing themselves as objects and not as a metaphor for something else. For some reason this idea was hard for me to grasp. We have been conditioned for so long to think, "Here's my painting...this is my idea...this is how I constructed that idea...etc., etc.," It's a very strange thing to let a painting or image or thing exist as itself and not try and attach something to it. I need to think about that some more...On another note, I have been doing a lot of reading and I think that it is helping me clarify some ideas, or at least give me some new things to think about. There is so much information out in the world, I wish I could absorb it all. 

I am going to try to enter in 2 Juried shows in the next few months. One is with the Utah Division of Arts and Museums, and another is with an online gallery called, "Upstream People Gallery." I need to put my work out there. 

While perusing through the online gallery website archives, I stumbled upon this artist that I was particularly attracted to. Her structures and forms are similar to mine and also her color palette. Just some visual eye-candy....

By the way her name is Minerva Ortiz