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!

So much has changed in my life since my last post. The house we had been renting for awhile got sold, and we had to move. We found a new place rather quickly and didn't have much time to prepare for moving, but we made it. The new house is so much nicer than where we were living before and I have an official garage art studio now! I share this space with my wonderful lover who is also an artist. With the new house came a LOT of work, and I am finally getting caught up and all the way unpacked. I also have an entire room just for my dread work! This is so nice because I don't have to worry as much about my work hurting my kitties, or them hurting my work. On top of all the home chaos, I also got a new part-time job working at a frame shop and took on a few art event projects. I was chosen to coordinate an Open Studio Tour for my small valley that will bring the public into many of the local art studios and give those artists more exposure and interaction with the public. Open studios are fun but a lot of work, and especially when all those studios are spread out over a 20 mile radius. I am so happy to be so busy and active in the local art community and taking bigger steps towards becoming a successful local artist as well! I will try to post here more often about what I am working on both for my art and my dreads. Sorry I waited so long since the last one guys <3

Once again First Friday is upon me, and it is also my final art critique day. I have graduation in about a week, even though I have to come back for summer classes. I am excited and a little nervous about it all. This critique should be interesting as I have switched from my whimsical colorful paintings, back into the dark unsaturated world of charcoal. It is quite a messy world too. I had to make some changes to my studio space to accommodate my new processes. It feels so good to get back into creating work directly with my hands, though last night I nearly split open a finger because I have been shading with it too much. I have also put one of my charcoal drawings up in a group exhibition in the library (which my friend Rachel and I put together). We also hung a print show this week in the semi-private studios for our First Friday event, we even got our print professor to submit some artwork. I hope tonight has a bigger turn out than our last one (which was still quite the event). However things turn out, I am very much looking forward to getting all these things done, and being able to catch my breath again...

Last night we had our first Open Studio event! We have semi-private studio spaces in the basement, that most people don't know exist.. So we decided to throw a First Friday event/show. All the students put up some of their art on our freshly painted wall in the newly cleaned up studio entry way. We had a good turn-out for not having planned or advertised too much. There was a small string band that played for awhile to keep everyone spirits high and their feet tapping. So much good food showed up to be snacked upon, and almost all of it got eaten! Can't wait to see how many people show up next month. It was really a great time to pull together an event and see all the people that come through to talk to us about our art and check out what we do in our windowless basement...