I had been working hard, approximately 6 hours of painting per day, and with all of the other things I have to do, I had no time to write updates. In terms of what I am doing now – I had a lot of fun with plein air landscapes, and after doing about 10 of them got really quite good at it. Then I did about 10 more. All small pieces of course.
I wrote to a Ukrainian contemporary art association in Chicago about displaying my work and they responded that my work is too traditional. Never thought that I would be told something like that, but oh well. I have always done and will continue to do only that which I consider good and worthy of my time.
I do have a number of criticisms regarding so called modern art. First, a lot of it is morbid, dead, and depressing. It’s very easy to slip into that and make morbid art. By far easier than making something positive and uplifting. Second, a lot of it is merely intellectual, and a lot is blindly rebellious. Because the tradition was to put the subject into the center of a painting, some painters simply make a point to never do that. Or no not have a subject at all. Or to blindly do other things that go against the tradition instead of focusing on their art. It’s like a child saying “you told me to wash my hands before eating and so I’m never going to wash my hands before eating, just to show you that I am contemporary”.
I had never studied anything about art except on my own, and very informally. But knowing very little if anything about composition, rule of thirds, golden mean, etc, I created works from the very beginning that looked like I was aware of all of the formal things in art composition. Therefore, my logic is that if that is how I naturally did it, there must be something to it. It’s not to be rejected just because it is traditional. That is silly.
Anyway, I have an exhibition with Toller Cranston at his studio towards the end of March. Should be great.
I am also working on my second book, which will probably be called “from darkness to light” or something like that.