Old Habits

I had a blog years ago where I posted every day. I also included a new image every day. While this worked great for exposure to new people it also kept me inspired to create new work constantly.

There was a philosophical purpose to my art. Just create something every day. It didn’t have to be good or great or even something I would show to anyone. It was just about the creative process and to keep my mind active in this process. Dedication does not have to mean perfection. Dedication is just about putting the time in and working on it every day.

For the past week I have felt more like my old self again. During Covid I opened my little art shop. Unfortunately a very good friend of mine was dying from a terminal illness and I had to become his caregiver. During the pandemic nursing was nearly impossible to get and the last thing he or I wanted was for him to end up in a nursing facility where he would basically die alone. So I closed my shop most of the time and took care of my friend.

This took a greater toll on my than I had thought. After he passed away I reopened the shop and I struggled to get back to normal. I thought it was other things distracting me, but I think my perspective changed and I also stopped creating just to create. I was focused on too many things that didn’t matter. When my friend passed away he wanted to leave me everything, money, property etc…. It wasn’t just for me but it was for others as well. His family thought otherwise and took most of the money and whatever else they could. My friend had a trust and thought he had made preparations for all of this but no, the family he had counted on to do the right thing did the exact opposite. And I was in the middle of this fight. This sucked the creative life right out of me.

It has been about two and a half years since his death and this is all finally settled. It wrapped up a little over a month ago and I am just now feeling back to normal. I noticed the creative flow coming back and I didn’t realize why until now. I learned something about myself. I can do a lot of things when I am stressed out. I can take care of others, I can manage a business, I can live a productive life. But I cannot create. I cannot think like an artist. I don’t even have the desire to push myself to learn more about my craft.

Last week I was reading something my friend had written. It was about how he discovered digital art and how it changed his life. This is something we had in common. We were both photographers, artists, writers and we both had an affection for mixed media art. This is what got me back on the right path.

Frustration and stress can take a lot away from you. When you find what takes it away and what makes you happy, do that as much as you can. Trust me. It is worth it. I know my artwork isn’t for everyone. But it is for me and my sanity. For all we know we only have this one life, so I’m going to continue living it the best way I know how. And yes I’ll be writing on here a lot more!

Ai fashion

Lost and Found

This has been a weird year. While working on the online store I found that I liked a lot of what I was doing but was a little uninspired by some of the work. So I have been redoing everything over and over. Nothing like overthinking and over analyzing your own work. Maybe I’m an artist maybe I’m just still checking undecided on my college application.

I do believe the only consistent thing I do is to be inconsistent. I bounce from idea to idea like a 3 year old picking his favorite toy. It is not ADD, I’ve been checked. I think it is more of I just want to do too much!

During these last few months there have some incredible advances in the art world. A little thing people are calling AI. Yes, artificial intelligence. Just like Alice I have wandered my way down this rabbit hole. This is part of the reason I have been behind on blog posts, Instagram posts, new art and I have also changed the whole online store. Good thing I have my work inside of the coffeehouse because otherwise I would be broke!

This will be an Etsy store as I have art prints, digital downloads, custom shirts and so much more. Etsy seems to be the best way to sell online because of the vast number of different images and products I come up with. Yes, I am that random.

Now this is the part of the blog where I sound like an asshole. I was a professional photographer for over 2 decades. I was agency approved by all the major model agencies in LA and they would send top tier models to me for test shoots. Meaning nobody got paid and we all got images to use for our portfolios to get more work. It was commonplace for models and photographers to work like this. But then it all changed.

The internet ruined this practice. Suddenly many models, well, they wanted too dollar when they had no experience and really not good portfolios. Now I’m not saying I should always be paid, and I’m not saying models do not deserve to be paid. But if you do not have experience, in anything, you need to work your way up to too dollar. So long story short, I stopped photographing models. I did meet some great models over the years and have worked with them since my retirement. The good ones are always worth working with. But now I have something that may be a replacement. AI.

Yes, I have been creating new work via AI. Replicating model shoots. Creating anime. Creating a whole new body of work! I am deep down in this rabbit hole and loving it! Some of this work is out there and some is just fun. I will be showcasing more of it here on this site and today is the first example of what I have been up to.

My current motto is “nothing is real but everything is for sale!” I was lost and now I am found. At least for the moment!

This image is of an artificially created person who doesn’t exist. I have already created numerous images of her (not all nude with big fake breasts) and I am working with many different programs and applications to get the images just right. I’m sure there will be a revision of this image in the near future.

I am also working on anime, this is a new world to me as I am not really a fan of the movies and have watched very little of it. But this possibly gives me a new perspective on how to create anime characters. Or I’ll fail miserably, either way it will be a new experience.

Then there is a cross over type of AI. Where I combine actual photographs with more than one form of AI image generation. This is where it gets tricky because I have to be more specific in my descriptors. The use of vocabulary is essential when creating these images. You can end up with exactly what you wanted or nothing close to what you wanted!

I am still learning and still pushing my own boundaries. Thanks for being here for the journey!

Rejuvenation

I took a trip to Rome. This is the best thing to happen to me in years. I was unsure and my wife kept pushing for a long vacation in Europe because since the whole pandemic we have not been able to go anywhere really.

I was burned out and feeling a total lack of creativity even when creating new art pieces. This trip has boosted my spirit. My soul is full once again.

It isn’t just the art and people and food, it is the getaway from the norm. Of course the art and culture here definitely are a huge plus. I just feel inspired and empowered.

I sat with an artist in Positano and we discussed art and it was a beautiful experience. I had a photo shoot with a model in Rome two days ago and it went so smooth and I love how the photos turned out. The flow has come back.

This has rejuvenated me back to where I don’t care about the 99 people who don’t understand my art, I just care about the one who does. I am not making art for the 99, I’m making it for myself and the one who gets it.

Almost there

I have been working on the shop for many weeks now. It is almost done. I have donated many items, thrown out what was trash and am now setting up the workshop portion of the shop.

This is where I will be creating new pieces and working on new concepts. I have never fully committed to my conceptual projects quite like this. There has been a lot of back and forth and I have struggled a lot more than I thought I would have solidifying this idea in my head of how I wanted my art space to be. I can’t believe it took me taking everything away and out of the shop more than once just to bring back what I loved and rearrange over and over again. I drove myself (and everyone around me) crazy for the past 6 weeks or so.

Now begins the exploratory phase of unfinished ideas. No guarantees, no promises, just me in a space unleashed. No rules to follow and no listening to advice from others. The only advice I am taking is something I should have taken to heart decades ago.

My elementary school art teacher knew I was a conceptual artist before I ever even thought I could be one. She was my teacher from kindergarten through high school. Yes I grew up in a small town. I remember in 6th grade she loved my choice of colors and how I always took the assignment where I wanted it to go, bending the rules we were given in class. Later she helped me break the rules and encouraged me to keep digging deep into my imagination. And yet for some reason I just didn’t listen. I guess I thought I knew better. Wow, I was so wrong.

I have been a working artist for many years. Not even realizing it at times. My photography and my carpentry and my music have always been incomplete simply because I was playing by the rules I was taught how to break. It is difficult to explain but looking back I can see how contractors hired me for jobs that nobody else could figure out how to do. I created tools and tricks to create custom pieces for their customers. They were works of art, but I just looked at it as work. I did this in everything. I took it for granted.

This ends now. I am officially challenging myself to make the art I want to make. No rules, no one specific medium. It is all one. This chaos is the most serenity I have ever experienced in my life. It is a welcome change.

Soon I will be open to the public again. Who knows what will happen, all I know is I will be happy. I already am just thinking about what I have accomplished in the last few weeks. Here is to new beginnings.