New canvases for the show

My show partner Dale delivered the 15 new canvases for our February 2012 show at Concrete Ocean yesterday morning- there was a 50% off Art Alternatives artist canvases sale where he works, so we threw down & bought them all at once. It was about $200.00, an average of about $13.00 or so a canvas- not bad! They are gallery wrapped so we won't have to worry about framing, and of decent construction- every bit as sturdy as what I'd been working on the last two years. For one room in the show, Dale & I will show canvases of the same size, bearing the same title,  predetermined while working seperately in the months to come. Dueling Minds, Dale has dubbed the show- he & gallery owner Bryan Pease roughed out the sizes & arrangement of this strategy awhile back, and now the real work has begun.

Letting someone else take the reigns, submitting some control of the whole process of how the work will be done is new to me, and it took a little faith in my friend, but Dale has been of great reassurance and I think it will be good for me. Also new to my vernacular will be my working entirely abstract as opposed to my usual figurative expressionism- Dale is an abstract painter, and to provide unity, I've decided to work alongside him as such. While I've toyed with abstraction in art, I'm a novice at this, but want to try something new and need to grow. I've made a few abstracts on canvas this summer for the adjoining room that will round out the show, and it's been freeing, if not successful, though the few friends that have come around recently have responded positively. We'll have to see if the public reacts the same way, if I can make a sale. I already jumped into this stack of canvases, well into the medium-sized 24 x 36" pictured above to the right in the last 24 hours, and have lost myself in it- that's a good sign.

Juggling work in the coming holiday season, along with my two bands & the fitness routine will be a trick- I'm not known for balance in my life. It has to be to the maximum in all things I do. This mindset, determination, personality disorder or whatever you want to call it comes in handy when learning four hours of music for shows with two separate bands, concentrating on painting for several months at a stretch, or losing 30 lbs as I did recently, but doesn't always transfer well to a harmonized, everyday lifestyle. They call it attention deficit disorder nowadays, and give chidren drugs to squelch it- when I was a kid they just called it creative.

Your life is worth everything- Make the most of it!
More Later!