It's happening around us whether you notice it or not.... our space is shrinking. This can be terrifying to artists and gallery owners alike. Small art seems to be where the trends are falling these days. Maybe because people like to support more artists, or because they want to display them in a gallery style fashion (as seen below) which seems popular in contemporary design, either way it's obvious that downsizing your art can be a smart thing to do in the current art markets.

Read below for my response to this article: "Downsizing your art: It may pay to create small."

Okay... here is my full featured artist post! My featured artist this week is Archan Nair. Archan is a self-taught artist, was born in India in 1984, formerly a fashion major working in his family company. Around 2006 he began to discover his love and talent in painting and digital art. Since becoming a an independant artist in 2007, Archan has worked with some major companies and magazines including: Nike, Sony, Microsoft, GQ, Vogue, and you have likely seen some of his car company ads for Chevrolet and others. 

Click below to keep reading about my featured artist!

I still owe you a full blog post. Today was full of wonderful things that took up more time than they should have, so is life and enjoyment. I am also postponing my full official post for other reasons... and trust me they are worth it. For now I shall leave you with these three images of recent work from the artist I will be featuring, Archan Nair. 

Please feel free to post any comments on what you think, questions you might like me to address in the full post, or whatever else comes to mind while looking at these three images. Thank you, please check back in a couple days for the full post!

Have a topic or post suggestion you'd like to see me post? Let me know! 

Here is my (very malleable) schedule for upcoming blog posts:
-February 23rd: ARTicle (an art related article) -"Downsizing Your Art: It May Pay to Create Small"
-March 2nd: Inspiration post/Pinterest Board feature
-March 9th: My creative processes
-March 16th: Featured artist:____________ (tbd)
-March 23rd: ARTicle - TBD...
-March 30th: BIRTHDAY BLOG! (A reflection on 28 years of living a creative life)

For many artists, writing an artist statement is not easy, especially when you haven't been writing them already for years. When coming up with my first post-graduate artist statement, I scoured the web looking for an easy and simple guideline on writing a good artist statement. Many of them had pages of information on all the "Do's and Don'ts" of writing them, and generally just an overload of information. I wanted a simple and straightforward approach that would give me some real content for my artist statement. Questions, I wanted just some simple direct questions and an outline to guide me to the right things to say about my art so I could explain it to anyone. 

I found the basis of my artist statement by asking myself a few questions based on my art and the processes behind it. The questions allowed me to directly focus on the important aspects of what motivates and drives me to make my art. And to figure out what I think about my art, before I start to worry over what other people might think about it. All of this put together, along with my half-way decent writing skills, allowed me to write a professional artist statement in about an hour (with a little extra time to let it sink in and go over it again).

It happens to every artist (I think)... they find something amazing and go with it for awhile.. but then the inspirational buzz wears off.. and it starts to get harder and harder to make each mark. At least this is what has happened to me this past week. So today I am coming back to my computer, outside the studio, and searching for empowering sources of inspiration to get me back into the studio and pick up my brush with fresh energy. 

A common first stop for me on this personal journey is an artist whose work and practice I greatly admire, Flora Bowley of Brave Intuitive Painting. Her video is beautiful and immensely inspiring (it makes me want to throw out my oils and convert back to acrylics), PLUS she's a fellow Oregonian!