Adjusting for Changes

Things change. And art is no different. There have been huge changes in just mediums available. And platforms. When I was majoring in Fine Art at the University of New Mexico watercolors were always done on paper. Canvas was for oil. And we stretched our own as well as learned to prepare the surface with rabbit skin glue and gesso. Acrylics were very new toward the end of my studies.

Little did I imagine I would one day be using intensely colored watercolors on canvas platforms prepared specifically for the medium. I can get the colors once only available in acrylics. And I can float those colors across the canvas. It was an amazing change for me from the pale colors of watercolor carefully applied on hot or cold press paper. And it was a change for the art buyer.

As I educated myself I found myself also having to educate my public. This is especially true on social media like my Facebook page, Binford-Bell Studio.  And as galleries began to fail and fairs no longer attract buyers like they once did, social media became more of the market place for artists and clients to interface. Art buyers want to know the artist. And so I began posting progress photos which ultimately became Creative Process blogs here.

But then things changed again. I blame the iPhone. And the tablet. So quick and easy but if I take a progress photo with my tablet and you see it on your iPhone it is not a true representation of the work. And viewers began to see cats and dragons in the skies. It belittles the work. And it puzzles me because I will look at the painting and not see it. Something fails in the translation. So no more progress photos taken with my tablet. I do after all have a great DSLR camera.

And I will post less progress photos. I will still take them to put into a Creative Process blog, and to judge the status of my own work for me. Some aspects of this new mixed media I work in is very fast because it is poured. But progress slows down as I edit that; refine the accident as it were. And lately I have added another medium to the equation; oil sticks. I joke at exhibits that I will use whatever it takes to achieve what I want.

I just don't want to confuse the viewer with what may be just a transitory dragon created by and iphone and a ipad.