report! & promises

untitled, 2008
acrylic on cradled wood panel
12 x 12 x 2 inches
•sold!

thank you to everyone who stopped by the pacific art league in palo alto this weekend for my silicon valley open studio (svos). i've much to relate about art, buying art, interest in art, what the heck art is for anyway—from my many conversations w/you all. a lot of common questions, which i answered commonly enough, yet better answers are beginning to form. for future blog posts.

for now, 2 things learned w/2 promises:

1) "your blog is useful for learning about art, what motivates you, etc, so please keep it, but you really need a portfolio up there, so i can see @a glance what your paintings look like." no argument w/that. just never allotted the time to upload one. i can paint, or i can work. sometimes, i can blog. regardless, look for my portfolio soon.

2) "i'd really love this painting—& i'd buy it, if it was bigger, much bigger, maybe 4 feet wide." this from well over 10 people, who were looking through my 12x12 & 5x7 inch paintings.

well, i was informed that people who visit svos were looking for inexpensive pieces, so i thought these 2 portable sizes would be appropriate. c'est la guerre/vie.

i've been slowing painting larger anyway (5x7 to 12x12 inches). & been worrying about logistics: moving large stretched canvases about, storage space, etc. but my friend donguri said just paint & work out the logistics afterwards.

so time to move to a larger substrate this week. i doubt they will be direct scale up copies, as i'll be exploring & working the medium w/larger brushes, different body movements, etc. expect to follow progress.

as for those small paintings (whether realist or abstracts) i'm not abandoning them. there seems to be a synergistic improvement which happens when i go back & forth. a different kind of focus. so they may seem different, but to me they are all part of the same exploration.

until the next post, thanks again for visiting me @my 1st svos.