I went to the Metropolitian Museum, sort of a date with myself, for lack of better company,  just to get away from the metrics grind and look at art.  To my surprise, the museum was almost empty; wish i gave myself more than an hour to romp as I would have stayed longer but they kicked me out before 9 PM. 

Decided to paint something afterwards.

What’s amazing to me, as I view my work transformed into digital media, is how far our technology has come.  I can now take my oil pastels, postcards, photos of work and scan them on an inexpensive scanner/printer and they look great!   In fact, they look as good as the originals. 

Is it my imagination or does my work just look good online (and the stuff I did 20 years ago look is now ripe today) or does everything look good online?

 Anyway, the sketch represents a sense of limbo I’ve experienced in a couple of areas recently and how to deal with it; I don’t think I could paint right now in the way I used to (below).   I did deal with the edges and tried to work through some threaded feelings that have (i suppose the right word would be "ribbons").

I could almost see myself knocking one of these off on a regular basis and just scan them and post it online (except this is a web metrics blog - so maybe I should post it somewhere else).  For that matter - could do the same with metrics work - take an example of something interesting, chart it and put it up (kinda doing that now).

I’ve showed these at WebmetricsGuru before and I’m just throwing them in because I like looking at them and it’s just an excuse.

Creativity is two ways, part passive - part active (I used to go after the passive part - ie: be inspired and let things just manifest—its also YIN/YANG).  The active part is interacting with the creation (making decisions at crucial points during the creation).  I’m reminded of Picasso’s saying …. "I don’t seek, I find".

And another thought was just being present in the work.  When I was a teenager, studying art at Cooper Union on Saturdays, one of my teachers said to me about one of my paintings at the time, "don’t be Mickey Mouse about it".  So I thought about being defined…and I defined the edges of this oil pastel sketch.

Also imagine the images of teachers past , particularly RHH, speaking to me as I paint; often that’s the only way i hear it. 

The SEO and Metrics work I do for my clients, and at IBM, is a similar process, and I’ve often felt my SEO work, particularly with The House Designers is a form of art.

By the way, tonight I also saw this show

Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh
Through July 9, 2006

Hatshepsut was pretty impressive, some woman to make herself, not a queen, but a egyptian king.

I also saw Duccio’s Madonna and Child that was recently purchased by the Met.

and the Veronese painting was pretty good; I can imagine the colors were a little different when the painting was first created and the background color probably had more texture where as now, it’s kind of dead. 

And I always try to spend some time with my one of my favorite paintings of all time, the best Cezanne in New York,

This Cezanne still life has been with me over 30 years, and it changes every time I look it, exactly what I strove for when I painted.   While Cezanne’s approach of deliberation with each brush stroke (approaching nature - the active part, letting the landscape/still life/person (treated as a still life by him) speak to him- the passive part - inhibited me in my painting style, and i’ve never given up my love for Cezanne’s work, or ever stopped considering him my favorite painter.  That it took Cezanne a long time (100+ sittings) to "finish" a painting (if a painting can ever be called "finished"..one just stops when you can’t go any further).

And the painting I missed, which must be on loan, is the Manet painting "Woman with Parrot" which is shown here in B/W (why doesn’t the museum show it in color?)

Is the other painting and painter most influencial for me.  Truth being, not so much for subject matter, but because of his brushstroke.  I can feel the artist and the feelings he had as he painted; I get that from most of his work. 

I also saw some phenomona around this painting around 20 years ago, sorta like a spark of pure violet mauve energy (or maybe is was my optic nerve, one never knows for sure).  I often think of Manet’s color as violet/lavender and Cezzane’s as a cobalt blue/green.  I like both and mix them liberally when I’ve painted.

Maybe that’s enough for one post.  I’ll do one more for Hans Hoffman and Delacroix.