Yesterday, I stopped by Cafe Monet – a restaurant on Ancha de San Antonio – and met the owner. When I told him I was Canadian, he became animated. “But what’s that accent?” he asked. “Ukrainian”. Turns out he lived 6 years in Moscow and spoke excellent Russian!”

Next thing I know, we are sitting drinking wine and eating cheese in his restaurant with the father of the musician from “Impossible Nothing” or something like that. After a while, we headed over to the Biblioteca and he surprised me by buying my self portrait.

Surprisingly, I seem to sell self portraits rather well. It’s the second one to go this month. Other than that, however, I hadn’t been doing too much painting. I did a number of $100 small paintings, 10 x 15 cm, and then went even smaller to 10 x 5 cm.  My framer made me 10×5 frames (instead of 10 x 15 like I asked) so I was forced to make paintings to fit them. It was fun, but I think I will again start on some larger works, because, ultimately, they are somehow more satisfying.

So now, I am a permanent artist at Punto Fijo Galeria on Recreo 11 and also selling in a hotel on Zacateros and soon to be a permanent artist at the castle gallery, which will be one of the best galleries in town, and I will lend a hand with curating the shows and arranging the works as well.

In other news, I just bought a good microphone and plan to make archival recordings of some of my 300 + original songs. Not to say that all my material is amazing, but it would be a shame if the songs got lost. Right now, all I have are rough recordings, and I’d like to take them up a notch, quality wise.

Usually, what can be lacking is A) a certain color B) contrast (darks or lights). It is surprising that by adding a color that was previously missing or fixing the contrast can literally take a painting to the next level.

As for the “thought” that goes into my paintings, that is being kept at a minimum. Right now, the primary thing that interests me is the feeling that the painting gives me. Curiously, I am beginning to experience all of my work up to 2007 as rather dark. All that work was made while in an altered state of consciousness, and is perhaps a bit far-out for anyone but a crazy hippy… And what crazy hippy will spend $500 or more on a painting? But that is beside the point.

What I was saying is that now the feeling I get from a work of art is the primary thing I’m interested in. And the second thing I am interested in is in doing something new with every painting – something I haven’t done before. These are the things I focus on, and I find that I am currently painting better than ever, easier than ever, faster than ever, more confidently then ever, and with less rigidity. I like it!

It is obvious that the more time an artist spends marketing himself or herself, the more successful that artist will be (in terms of sales etc). Yet at the same time, that artist will be limited in terms of his or her actual art skill and power, because instead of painting (and therefore learning and improving) that artist will be taking care of marketing.

I basically hardly do any marketing for any of my work. It is hard enough to just photograph everything I do and add it to the website… Add to that framing and doing shows, buying supplies, actually painting, sleeping, eating, some hobbies, some extra work on the side… That leaves very little time for marketing. And in a way, I don’t really care. What satisfies me is the creation of new and innovative works of art – as well as the creation of music or written word… Whether I make a penny from this is secondary. For example I spent a year making the Dimension Dream CD and I don’t think I made more that $20 from it so far. Probably because I didn’t market it. But as an artist, I feel that time is short and I must spend it doing what only I can do – that is creating art. As for marketing, that is something anyone with a brain can do, so I have trouble forcing myself to do it. Just a few thoughts.

I’ve been thinking that thoughts control the body, but also, if thoughts are something real, they must have an effect in the world outside. Every action has a reaction. A thought is a sort of an action, therefore there must be a reaction. I don’t think that the reaction resulting from a thought must necessarily be limited to the body of the person thinking. I think it goes further than that.

Curiously, if I am around people who are high, drunk, etc, I can feel what they feel, to some extent. I can definitely experience an alteration in my own consciousness.

But back to marketing – I think that as long as I consistently create better and better work, marketing will take care of itself. I think if you have a shitty product, advertising is very very important. But basically – and this is a guess because I dont watch TV at all – you don’t see any commercials of Ferraris, Rolls Royces, Mercedeces, etc.. You see Hyundai and Kia commercials (sorry South Korea!) That’s because everyone knows that a Rolls Royce is a top quality car, and there is no need to market it beyond that. This is what I am hoping to achieve – by creating better and better work, to have my work speak for itself, so that I don’t have to.

I really don’t like approaching galleries and asking them to see/show my work. I much prefer being approached by galleries. Having said that, I’m off to sleep. Painting is going really good as usual. I may also begin working on a book about my experiences in Korea.

Andrew

=

Artist and Shaman

“Oh yeah, I am famous, I am going to show in Soho and then in Spain,” he told me. “And what do you do?”

“We are painters,” I told him, speaking for me and my friend John.

“Oh yeah? What do you paint? Houses?”

I felt not the slightest bit of uneasiness because I am sure of my work and don’t need the approval of anyone else to validate what I am doing. In any case, we had a very interesting chat. I gave him my card.

“If your work is good, then this house is your house,” he told me. “Here we only have the best. But if your work is shit, then you won’t hear back from me. I’m telling you straight up. Your body is a temple and if you put shit into the temple, then whatever you make will be worthless trash. Are you addicted to anything?”

“Nope…”

He didn’t buy it. “What about weed? You smoke weed?”

“No, actually, I don’t. I used to take some substances while I studied shamanism in Peru, but for the last two years, I haven’t really taken anything.”

The painter nodded. “That shit alters your metabolism and makes you think you’re all spiritual, and that everything is so magical… But it’s all bullshit.  You don’t need any substance to be what you are. As long as you take substances, you will never be able to express your true self. To do that, you need to be sober. Then God can guide your hand. But when you are high, you are allowing some other forces to come through you. Then, nothing you make truly reflects you. Its all crap and garbage, even if you believe it’s great. David Leonardo and myself studied with the Huicholes, we went there to check out the whole thing… And I came to the conclusion that it’s all a bunch of shit. There is nothing to it. All that shamanism is complete garbage…”

And on he went like that…

Of course, I told him that I never paint the same thing twice… It would have to be different. But he didn’t mind. “As long as the feeling is the same,” he said.

So I bought my materials and got to work. After a few days, I realized that I had already put in more hours than $100 could possibly cover. The painting was looking good and would easily fetch $300 from another buyer. I experienced a dilemma – since I knew that I would only be paid $100, would it be worth it for me to put in even more energy and effort into the piece? “If I put in a few more hours, I’m going to return the downpayment and just keep the painting,” I realized. I also realized that if someone wants to spend $100, that person can’t possibly expect to get a $600 work of art at that price… Which is to say, I would stop painting 6 times sooner than I would if I were being paid $600.

Luckily, I ran into the man a few days later. “I think it’s finished” I told him. I had passed the $100 mark a long time back.. It was now a $300 painting and I figure that if he didn’t like it, I would keep it for myself.

He came by and saw the work “No, no, no,” he complained. “The feeling is not the same… He is not happy.. She is not happy… She doesn’t have power… The sentiment is different…”

“I told you,” I said. “I never paint the same thing twice. I have changed, my environment has changed, my style has changed… You can’t possibly expect me to re-capture the exact same feeling twice… I am a mirror reflecting everything… And nothing is ever the same!”

But I took his critique to heart and returned to the canvas. I had been more interested in materials and various visual effects I could get, and wasn’t particularly interested in the facial expressions etc. I wanted the materials to do the expressing. With the use of silver and gold leaf, I created interesting variations of tone. The leaf was painted over with a thin glaze, so that some of it still shone through. I also bought silver metallic paint and mixed it with regular acrylics and oils in order to get subtly sparkling colors. Finally, I used tons of glazes.

But as I kept working, the hours no longer mattered – I was now creating for me, not for sale.

When I finished my piece I realized that it not only resembled the digital piece I wanted to copy but also a 2007 self portrait. Here are all 3 images for you to enjoy.

Los Novios (2011) : The piece that my would-be buyer wanted me to reproduce...

Attempt 1 : Picassoesque interpretation. The woman reminds me of somebody I saw that day... Both expressions seem like masks. But in a certain way, I already like it. The buyer says its not what he was looking for. He wanted something more majestic. "Let me go at it one more time," I tell him. "No, no no... It's not going to work," he answers.

Now that I am not obligated to sell the piece for $100, I work on it for 2 more days, taking my critic's comments to heart. I base the man on myself, cover the breast, which he found offensive, and give the girl more presence. I also take advantage of my newly found freedom to deviate from the original composition - the color of the background changes, the girl's eyes open. The idea of a similar painting done in 2007 in Korea comes to mind. That work included halos. Without looking at the 2007 painting, I add halos and finish the work.

The 2007 painting. More naive in style. The girl still has a flower. Only this time her halo is more passionate than mine, and mine is green, due to all my interest in plants. The salvia plant takes center stage. Notice that my halo is in the forefront here, covering the girl's halo - meaning that my plans are more important to me than her plans. In the new 2011 painting, our halos intersect to make a pretty pink color. Also the girl's halo is in the forefront (but does not cover mine) Note that our 2007 halo colors were not really compatible (red and green cannot intersect to form a nice color) while the 2011 halo colors are. None of this was planned at all - these are just my observations of m own work.

One more painting comes into the equation. 2006, "Mother" - my second ever acrylic painting. Perhaps I should not have destroyed this work, but it just somehow happened. I kept trying to be satisfied with the work, but somehow it did not please me, and I ended up painting over most of it to create - "los novios" the painting my would-be buyer wanted me to reproduce.

This is what the actual final version came out to be... Notice I glued 2 Huichol objects and the girl now has real earrings. This is because I am moving in the direction of incorporating found objects in my art. At the same time, it is important to not overdo it.

For example, in the above mentioned song, I go through 14 chord changes during the verse (that is to say, the harmony changed 14 times without repeating any pattern) and then 7 more chord changes in the chorus. There were 21 changes in the sequence before the entire sequence began to repeat in verse 2.

This is rather typical of a lot of my songs. I tried to count the chord changes in my new song “She Is Love”, trying to figure out how many chord changes there are before the entire pattern repeats. I think the verse had about 21 changes without repetition (or rather with only partial repetition) and then there were so many changes in the chorus that I lost count. Likewise, Dimension dream opens with a 7 chord sequence for the intro, goes into a different sequence of about 15 chord changes, then into the chorus, with about 8 or 9 more chord changes. Only then, the entire thing repeats. I suppose this is something unique that I do with my music that I have not seen done very much by other musicians. The only band that comes to mind that does such things is Queen.

To give a final example, the sequence of a popular song probably has a sequence of 4 chords on average before the first harmonic repetition. Some songs have only 3 chords, and others repeat between only two chords – “What I Got” by Sublime repeats the D -> G sequence from the intro until the outro. This never changes at all. In contrast, my songs probably have an average harmonic sequence of 20 or more chord changes. I just thought it was an interesting thing and worthy of pointing out.

In my music, as in my art, I try to do things that have never been done before. It interests me to find harmonic arrangements that had never been used by any other band – hence the complexity.  Here is a song from Peru that uses some unusual chord progressions:

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000167 EndHTML:0000003115 StartFragment:0000000454 EndFragment:0000003099

Baby blue

2010, Peru

CHORDS USED: 13: Dm Em Em-1 Eb C7 Fm Am C F Bb G G7 A7

Intro

Dm Em Em-1 Dm

Eb Dm Eb C7

Dm Fm Am

Without you it’s a tough time

Dm Fm Am

without you it’s a rough ride

Dm Fm Am

I am going through a tough time

C C7 F

It’s a long and winding road

Bb

with no end in sight

F Dm

and no lights to guide

G G7 C C7

only faith to carry on

F

I have lost the one I love

C

I don’t know where she may be

Dm Dm7 G G7

if you see her won’t you tell her to come back to me

Cause I waited all my days

how much longer must it be

if you see her won’t you tell her

that I need her please

Dm F

Baby blue

C A7 Dm

I’m in love with you

Eb Bb

for your touch I waited

Dm Eb C7

baby blue ooh ooh

—–

There were micro repetition in some parts of the song, but from here, the entire song continues with verse two and makes a large scale repetition. This tendency of mine may be especially exaggerated in this song, but it is actually pretty common to all of my music, with the exception of a few “simpler” songs.

I was recently asked by the Huichol friends for whom I made the website www.Arts-Mexico.com to paint them a portrait. Last night, I took my piece of gesso covered masonite and started on that. It went really well. I started by outining the pictures (working from several photographs as well as memory) in brown paint, then coloring in the various basic colors. I had no trouble whatsoever with the composition.

I painted the Huicholes as archeotypes. You can tell that they are Huicholes but you can’t tell who exactly they are. I painted the generic Huichol face – the essence of the Huichol.

These people in particular remind me of my grandparents. They are in their 50′s or 60′s, but I painted them in their 30′s or 40′s to capture the timeless essence of who they are.

The main thing I want to share today is that this painting really benefitted from the addition of gold leaf (which in a way serves to say that this is a work of art and not an attempt to imitate nature) and the oil paint, which I added on top of the acrylic. The oil paint really brought it all to life, and I thoroughly recommend all artists using acrylic to go over their finished painting with oil.  I just put the paint on my finger and rub it in, and the effect is wonderful.

After a very productive period of painting, I find myself out of ideas. What more do I want to say at this time? I probably need a little bit of a new influence in my life – some inner or outer change that can be reflected in my artistic expression.

I finally found a gallery to represent me here in San Miguel de Allende. It is a nice little space not far from my studio and hopefully it is just the first of several galleries of which I will be part.

While painting is slow, I have turned to music to keep my creative flow going.

I music, I am continuing to experiment with uncommon chord changes, trying to do things harmonically that I hadn’t done before. In my paintings, the subject matter is a reflection of my life and really quite arbitrary – it is simply inspired by whatever is happening inside and out – while the colors and the composition are my real focus. What interests me is the color harmony and the balance of the composition. That is not to say that I am not that mindful of the actual content of my paintings, but the forms I put on canvas are simply a container that allows the color and the composition to exist. It is the same with my music.

Musically, words are often secondary, although I understand that they are deeply engraved into the song and often cannot be separated from the melody. Still, my conscious challenge with the songs I make is the harmony – the chords I use – and the overall structure of the song (the composition). I also pay a lot of attention to the “feel” of the song, and this is also one of the things I pay the most attention to when it comes to painting.

In many of my songs, I try to use at least one unusual chord change per song – if I can get away with it. I try to use chord changes that I have not seen used in popular music. For example, in my recent creations, I’ve been playing with F#7 -> C7 -> E -> A -> F#7

The F#7 -> C7 change has not really been done much in popular music, as far as I know. The 7th note of the F# (E) blends with the third of the C7 (also E) and keeps the progression together. Then the E is found in the following chords as well.

Or take my other song (Waiting): G -> B7 -> Em -> C7 -> G ->B7 ->Am -> D7
I like the G -> B7 -> Em progression and would normally end it with a G7, but here I go to a C7 instead, which I had not really ever done, as far as I know, and have not seen done in popular music much. Again it’s the E note that keeps this together. Also while I have often gone Am -> B7 and had seen this done a lot in Russian music, the reverse move B7 -> Am is not very common at all, as far as I know.

Hopefully this post will shed a bit of light on my thought process while creating.

Andrew Osta
Sept 21, 2011