I'd like to teach the world to paint in perfect harmony...

Blog blog blog blog. I am a bad blogger.

I'm happy if I can even post once a week. It's not that I don't have much to say; anyone who knows me KNOWS I have a lot to say! I've just been busy. Which is the story of my life, really. I've decided that I must like it that way.

The beautiful thing is that my busy-ness is all for myself. I often work 15 hour days, but it's for me. I work late, I sleep late, I paint. Of course at the moment I spend far more time in front of my computer  on the admin and marketing side of my business than I do in front of the canvas. But it won't always be that way.

My Painting Soirees are really going well. I started them as an income stream, but I'm finding that they really bring me great satisfaction. I thought that getting people together to paint would be a fun thing to do, but it goes deeper than that. Many of the people walk in having never painted on a canvas before, and they leave with a completed a painting....and they are SO happy! Which of course makes me happy. One first-time painter said "I never thought I could do that!" Now that is satisfying!

So my new mission in life is to get people to paint. At least once. And hopefully they'll get hooked on it. (Hey, there are worse things to be hooked on!) I have a student who had never painted before. He came to two Soirees, and then went out and bought his own supplies. Yeah, he's hooked.

Yes I want to get people painting - especially the ones who have never tried, or are afraid, or who have painted but abandoned it. I want people to come to my Soirees who say that they can't draw a stick figure. I want the people who really need a break. The people who really need to go play in the paint.  The people who need to feed their souls! Painting is good for the soul. We all need a respite in this overly plugged-in society. So I encourage you to paint. Or draw, make music, create. Collage, knit, get your hands in some clay. Unplug for awhile. It may sound cliché, but you really do need to take some "you" time. (Yes...you!) And don't worry about what it looks like. That is not the point - especially in the beginning. The point is simply to do it. Try it, see how it feels. Blend some colors, get lost in the paint. Or the fabric or the clay...

If you'd like to paint with us, check out my Painting Soiree page.

Painting Soiree: Success!

I've had 3 Painting Soirees in my studio so far, and I must say they've been a lot of fun! 

"Fractured Sunset" The first Soiree!

What is Painting Soiree, you ask? It's my new project: painting workshop parties. It's guided painting in a fun environment. People come to my art studio, bring beverages of their choosing, and go home with a finished canvas that they painted!

"Penguin Soiree!"

I provide the studio space and all of the art supplies. We have a few drinks, turn up some tunes and paint! We start with an "inspiration" piece that I've painted, and go step by step recreating it. The beautiful thing is that you don't have to have any experience painting. 

Everyone can paint. Some people are intimidated or afraid, and I get that. Maybe they were criticized in school, or perhaps they're just afraid of expressing themselves. Afraid of failure, afraid of success... I get it. But I'm here to tell you that you can paint. You can paint. You may not be able to paint like Claude Monet, but you have your own voice and your own unique style. Everyone should paint! There is something very satisfying about dipping a brush in paint, and putting to the canvas, especially at the end of a work day.

Painters at play on "Vincent's Sky"

I learned quickly that it takes very little convincing to get people to paint once they're in front of a canvas. People want to paint. It's impossible to just sit there when you've got a blank canvas and colorful palette of paint at your fingertips. It's just pure potential! One of the first things I tell everyone is to take as much artistic license as they want to make their painting their own.  I hadn't realized exactly how different each person's painting would look! It's really wonderful to see my original paintings go through the filter (the mind, hand, personality, experiences and whatever else makes an individual unique) of each person, and transformed into something entirely new.

"Vincent's Sky" Soiree!

I'm really excited for future Soirees! I'm holding them once a week, on different evenings. If you're in the Denver area and would like to join in, you can sign up at my website, or if you're on Facebook, please join my page and sign up there for a 25% discount.

And definitely drop me a line if you have any questions, or feel free to comment below!

Adventures in plein air painting

My friend Xan Thomas and I went to Garfield Park in Denver to paint en plein air. It was a nice break from the hustle and bustle of Washington Park (which is one of my favorite places when it's not teaming with legions of health nuts).

 Painting outdoors can be wonderful, but it does have it's challenges; the elements, the bugs, the ever-changing light, and... the people. It's hard to catch that artistic groove when your thought process is being interrupted every few minutes by well meaning passers-by. It's only natural for people to want to see what someone is creating. And if you paint outdoors, every once in awhile you're bound to encounter an armchair art critic who wants put in his two cents. Everybody's a critic!

Happily we did not run into the usual barrage of people at this beautiful park. But there did seem to be a lot of boys on wheels - several groups on bikes, skate boards and rollerblades - going around the park.  I'd say they were between 8 and 12 years old. They'd just go around and around, and each time they passed us, they'd slow down to check out our paintings. Sometimes they'd yell "That's beautiful!" as they rode by. Towards the end of the day one of them gathered up enough nerve to hop off his wheels and come take a closer look. He was all wide eyed and enthusiastic and asked "Is that hard to do?"
"No!" I said. "It's fun!"

I hope we inspired him (and perhaps some others) to paint. The look in his eyes reminded me of what my friend Ravay Snow says about artists: "We do magic".

It feels pretty cool to be a magician!

I failed to take pictures of what we were working on, but I did snap some shots of the park and the sky. These were taken on my iphone...

Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window

Alfred Hitchcock directed many films that have come to be classics: The Man Who Knew Too Much, Notorious, Dial M for Murder, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, The Birds, North by Northwest, and of course Psycho (which, to my delight and my mother's horror, was shown at an assembly at my junior high school). But my all time favorite Hitchcock movie is Rear Window with Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. Actually this is one of my favorite movies across the board.

Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (Google Affiliate Ad)

In honor of Alfred Hitchcock's birthday, I've found two trailers for Rear Window. The first is the original trailer, it's kind of hokey but fun. The second one was redone to suite our modern tastes. I like it - it's dramatic and it really makes me want to see the movie again!

Subway as art

I love, love this video! It was done by Improve Everywhere http://improveverywhere.com/, and is not as fun as some of their others, like Star Wars Subway Car, or Who You Gonna Call? (which reenacts the opening scene of Ghostbusters in the New York Public Library), but it really is quite enjoyable. It pokes a bit of fun at the art world, but at the same time it makes people look differently at ordinary objects. The descriptions of the "art" (which include trash cans and cables) are priceless - it's worth pausing the video to read them.
My favorite part? When someone puts a red "sold" dot on "The Arriving and Departing Of the Train (Ongoing since 1932)".