I usually paint every day, even if I don’t feel like it. I say to myself “I’ll just do half an hour today” and go to the studio. Most of the time, I end up doing much more than just half an hour. The difficult part is always getting started. You sit in front of…
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ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN MAY 2012. I am an artist, which means that I like to create – visually, musically, or verbally… It doesn’t matter. I live my life in order to create, and I get my sense of fulfilment when I am being creative. If I am not being creative, I have a tendency…
Continue Reading →Machines can beat humans at chess, but how is that different from creating a work of art? It may be necessary to first define what a work of art is. Merriam-Webster gives the following definition: Art is the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects. The key word…
Continue Reading →Originally published in Lokkal magazine. Andrew Osta is an international artist born in the Ukraine, raised in Canada, and now living in San Miguel de Allende. He started painting professionally in 2005 and exhibiting his work in galleries in 2006. His work is currently on display at gallery Relox 46, at the Hecho en Mexico…
Continue Reading →My mindset has been somewhat philosophical lately. I have been thinking about art, about the meaning of it all, and about the commercial contemporary art market. I came across the work of figurative painter Alan J. Lawson, who studied philosophy, like myself, and appears to be able to articulate all of the concepts I would…
Continue Reading →Exactly 141 years to the day after the first impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874, I have left France by train to Geneva to start my 1 month residency in a tiny village called Trelex. Before that, a few days in Paris seeing the works of the Impressionists (left me impressed) and three nights in Brussels…
Continue Reading →The late Canadian skating icon, Toller Cranston, was the best friend I had in Mexico. We met at the end of 2011, when I visited his gallery in San Miguel de Allende for the first time. Just then, Toller was putting on an exhibition for a younger artist whom he had taken under his…
Continue Reading →I have completed 4 Cat Dinner / Party paintings and am working on the fifth. This is not something I do often – I usually create one-off images which are either major works or studies for major works. If I do readdress a painting or a concept, it is usually no more than once or…
Continue Reading →Overall, this has been a good year for me. I am enjoying painting and meeting with painter friends – Toller Cranston, E.C. Bell, Bruce Stuart, and others. Everyone is traveling lots. Nobody sticks around for very long. Some new friends came, others left, but everything balances out in the end. You can only maintain so…
Continue Reading →As a self taught artist, I am continuously learning through my own experimentation and self observance, and I make mental notes, and sometimes write these notes in a notebook for inclusion in a future book which I plan to eventually publish to help other artists, especially beginning ones. After several years of writing notes and…
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