Jbird4art's Weblog

Artwork Accepted

jbird4art — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:38:31 +0000

Is happy to announce that Canoes Resting in the Shade, Southold, has been accepted into the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Clubs 115th Annual Juried Exhibition. exhibit runs Oct. 4-28 2011 at The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South New York NY

Bogged down by the art world

jbird4art — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 12:32:14 +0000

So I feel as if I’ve been bogged down by the art world. I was eating at painters restaurant in Bellport last night and they have lots of artwork by I would say beginner artists probably all donated, and a lot of it was rudimentary – but then I realized that there was also a certain joy and confidence in this artwork. Then I realized these artists didn’t care about their technique, their movement, wether they are traditionalists, abstract, or the other myriad of art movements. They were just happy creating. Somewhere along the way, admist Facebook, art competitions, and the web, I lost the joy of painting. It became a job, a chore, and a source of stress over wether I was good enough, marketable enough, selling enough. Somewhere along the way now I must return to finding that child like joy of just putting paint on canvas!

Nobody wants to work anymore

jbird4art — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 13:17:02 +0000

So last night me and some friends were hanging out having a discussion and the subject of working came up. My friend was telling me a story about being in Hooters and having a discussion with a young women working there who was also going to college. Now she was worried about finally having to get a REAL job at the end of her college years. She also noted that she didnt really want to work. She of course complains about not having enough money and that even though a second shift at her job there is often available that working a second shift would also be too much work. (Meanwhile the whole time she sat there just talking to my friend not really doing any physical work). This amazing set of statements correlated perfectly with a situation with a family member of my mine as well. That no matter how many job opportunities I have offered to this certain person that they repeatadly turn down. But they are continually out of work, looking for work and when I see them on facebook, always hangin with friends, drinking beers and just hanging out. This so boggles me and is beyond my comprehension, that perfectly able people just stay stuck where they are. It is almost as if it is their crutch per say…oh im broke, and i cant find a job, poor me syndrome – but i think that they prefer to stay there. Maybe to them life is just easier that way or it is simply a case of thats what they know and are comfortable with- and they dont want to change.
So is this just a trend among our country that no on really “wants” to work anymore??

Housewives of Orange County

jbird4art — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:12:14 +0000

So for fun, I’ve started my latest quick caricatures of the housewives of OC. Ive been a fan for awhile and my first housewife in particularly bugs me and gets under my nerves. personally i think she is a bully and a screetch on the show…..so here is Tamra Barney…..

"Un"Real Housewives of Orange County

The passing of Timothy J. Owens

jbird4art — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:39:38 +0000

My father passed away on August 24th, 2010. It was the end to a complicated and tortured life and relationship. My father served in the Vietnam War. Only just 17 he enlisted no questions asked. Once in Vietnam, he experienced atrocities that we cannot imagine. He also fell in love. War and love mixed all in one spot. He also fell in love with Vietnam itself, commenting on the simplicity of life there in letters he sent home. He got stuck in a moment there, never really leaving Vietnam behind even though he came home…..He had tried to bring the girl he met there home but couldnt, and his reception back home was even less pleasant. Violent protests against the war, against the veterans, and yet he felt great pride and great anguish over it all and not yet even a man to process all those types of emotions….

He was a man that hid from himself, from the world, from his memories and from his emotions. We never really never knew him as a person, only as a ghostly shadow of his former self that lurked around the house. It was literally like living with a ghost. There but not there. He drank through most of my childhood, and we did the best we could to avoid him in the house, hiding from drunken stupors and abusive ragings. We never spoke. Regular conversation was not heard in our house. Instead it was always an intense silence. An intense lurking, an uncomfortable and almost unbearable tenseness amongst the house. How do you learn to live life among parents who are so engrossed amidst the passed, who arent in the present, who are lost in the past

3 Paintings in Richeson 75

jbird4art — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 21:21:59 +0000

I just found up that three of my paintings were selected for the Richeson 75 Landscape & Seascape 2011 exhibition. The show will will run from June 24th – August 26th at 557 Marcella Ave, Kimberly WI. The 3 paintings are:

Canoes Resting in the Shade, 24 x 18″ Pastel on paper

Morning Trees, 18 x 12″ Pastel on Paper

Mt. Sinai Harbor, 18 x 12″ Pastel on Paper

Daniel Greene portrait

jbird4art — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:50:06 +0000

so last night i got my daniel greene portrait. I was the model for the pastel demo on tuesday nights. It was amazing!! It is unbelieveable that I will 1. have a piece of work by him 2. that i will get to study and stare at it for hours and 3. that it came out awesome!!! I am very excited to share some of the pics I took of the process and will truly cherish this for years to come …..

Artwork donated to Marty Lyons 25th Celebrity Golf Outing

jbird4art — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:03:01 +0000

This is the artwork that I donated to the Marty Lyons 25th annual celebrity golf outing. It was an amazing event. The evening started out with the golf outing which was held in the incredible heat. All the golfers were truly troopers for being out there and golfing through the hot weather. Golf was followed by a cocktail hour where some of the celebrity athletes mingled – including but not limited to Joe Namath (Broadway Joe), and I would definitely list more but unfortunately I am not a huge sports fan – and where people got to peruse through the charity items. That was followed by diner where Marty gave a moving and heart-wrenching speech about the Foundation itself, and the family that the foundations had granted a wish too. I had to personally go home and give my kids extra hugs and kisses that night and be truly grateful that they were healthy and with me. That was followed by a live auction with some of the select donated items, which included my pastel painting. The piece was sold and donated back to the foundation to be hung in their office. I had collaborated with Marty himself on some of the elements of the painting, so he was more than happy to have this piece for his office. I was very inspired by the entire evening.

Pity Pot

jbird4art — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:45:59 +0000

So today I admit I am sitting in my pity pot. Some days you just cant help it, no matter how hard I try I just can’t seem to shake this feeling. A day where I just don’t feel good enough, smart enough, creative enough, entrepreneurial enough, competitive enough, successful enough, can’t make the kids happy, can’t make the husband happy, and definitely can’t make myself happy. No I’m not asking for sympathy or self-indulgence, but I know that everyone must have these days as well. Some days i think our society is cut out to make one feel inadequate at all times. From the culture of glamorous marketing to the raving promotion through ‘social’ networking, which somehow doesn’t seem all that social anymore but just blatant self promotion and one upmanship. Even the songs on the radio blast about how fabulous the ‘rock/rap’ star life is with all their bling and cars and money and everything that the average listener doesn’t have. I’ve actually started going back to classical music where I don’t have to feel so depressed all the time about what I don’t have….Oh wells, its just one of those days. I’ll be spending the rest of the day trying to reflect on what I do have and finding the simple beauty in that.

Smudging and underpainting in pastel

jbird4art — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:01:01 +0000

So Ive never been a fan of smudging in pastels, the overly rubbed in look, but I recently discovered the other day that if its done when youre first putting on the chalk, the underpainting shall we call it, that it really eliminates a lot of the extra layering needed to get the pastel build up. A teacher of mine long ago had taught me to make the drawing in conte chalk and then smear it to fill in some of the tooth of the paper, so it is similar to that, but i think the actual pastel does a much nicer job of this. Since I work in a lot of ‘transparent’ layers, I find that this allows me to get to the really juice fun stuff much sooner. I usually put my underneath layer much brighter and colorful than the top layers will end up being.