In this together...

 Detail: The Trial Years: Scroll Number One.

Dear Readers,

Thanks for joining me this week. I hope your own art world is treating you well.

This past week has been a bit unusual as I started a new side project that I wasn't really expecting to start quite yet. The piece is called The Trial Years: Scroll Number One. It is an 8x3ft work on paper. The goal was to create four of these scrolls, one for every decade I have been alive. There may only be one in the end, as working on this scale is quite physical. I don't have any studio walls that are that large so I am having to tape the paper on the floor of my studio and work on my hands and knees or straddle the three feet width of paper and bend from my hips and paint on the paper on the floor. Fun times as you might imagine. I decided to document this project solely on my facebook artist page. Have you liked my facebook art page? Well if not please consider doing so as I am going to try to use it more for the latest updates and photographs of what is going on in my studio.

So this week I have been prepping and adding layers to this behemoth/hellion/monster (these are just a few of the pet names, I have given this latest experiment). It has been exciting to have a bit more of a focus in the studio and to just be exploring and making art for arts sake. It seems a bit like a luxury to just be playing around in the studio and working on a perhaps unsaleable painting in this economy/these trying times/recession but for some reason it is what I must do right now.

Things are a bit of a shaky mess financially and I hate to say that as I don't want to focus on the negative when I am a positive spin type of person usually. This week, there was that moment where I saw a "we're hiring" sign outside of an office type building at a strip mall and I wondered "Should I pull in and apply?" I quickly came to my senses and drove on. I have a job, it just doesn't pay that well right now. By being an artist I assume certain risks and this just happens to be one of them. I still wouldn't quit this job or trade it in for another.

I have a bit of an all or nothing personality and that works pretty well with the feast or famine art world. I just keep riding the waves, making my art, focusing on what I can control and hoping for the best.

Thanks for checking in.

Love,
Megan

PS. Here are a few ways to help an artist even if you can't buy their work right now:

1. Share their work, website, etsy shop, facebook pages with your friends via social networks and your own personal blogs, email, and word of mouth.
2. Encourage them, let them know how much you like their work and what it means to you.
3. Keep your eye out for opportunities for your favorite artists and share them. (Grants, residencies and galleries that are looking for new work.)
4. Barter and trade with artists.
5. And never be afraid to ask the artist if they might consider payment plan options. Most artists are glad to work with you on this.
6. Refer your favorite artists to design firms, architects and encourage people you know in these professions to use original and local art when they can.
7. If you have a connection with a gallery or a potential venue share this with the artist.
8. Be an advocate for the artist. Sometimes you have connections that artists haven't even thought of and you can connect the dots and get that artist's work seen.
9. And if you are an artist yourself, don't hesitate to do these things for your fellow artist. There is enough to go around and the attitude of being all in this together feels good and is helpful to all.
10. Share supplies that you may have that are gathering dust and that might truly inspire someone else!

Thank you! We really are in this together!
Until next week, keep fighting! The world needs your art!

A simple story

What? Friday already? Hello dear readers, lovely to find you here as always! What happened this week you ask?

Well, I completed 18 new works and listed them all in my Etsy shop! Last Friday's post really helped me to solidify my goals with the new small works I was creating. I love it when I sit down here to write my blog and suddenly I have a much clearer idea of what I need to create and of what I want the work to convey. I have said it before but keeping this blog for the last five years has helped my art in ways too numerous to mention. I think next to actually making the art, sitting down to write about the process as well as the experience of being an artist is something I would recommend to all artists, no matter what stage in their careers.

Three of my new pieces have already found homes and I am grateful. Please visit my Esty shop and have a look at these latest works. "The absence of words." 

And with that, I will let the new paintings do the talking. Next week, there will be more works in progress, this time in the form of larger 12x12" paintings on panel mixed with maps, at least that is my goal. I must keep moving and let the momentum carry me and remind me of all I want to say and of my certain purpose.

Every day we paint is a victory and many days it is a hard won battle but we always get there in the end. Always.

love,
Megan

The absence of words

It's Friday again! The weeks just keep spinning past faster and faster. I can't believe it is almost September already! Today as I write the windows are open and it is a grey rainy day and the music of Joy Division fills the air around me. This is writing, making and thinking weather! My favorite!

Let's see what's happened this week. Well as you know, last week I cleaned my studio after Stewart and I worked in it this summer completing our "a place called home" series. This week, I spent time getting to know the space again and sorting through all my tools and paints, trying to enjoy the space. I also painted in the space, working on the eighteen 6x6" mdf boards on two or three occasions since the clean up. These small works consist of gesso, white acrylic, torn vintage paper, graphite, color pencil, walnut oil and charcoal powder. They are not unlike the 12x12" pieces from my "Sometimes I love you and other stories" series in their basic composition and palette but there is something missing. The typed words on the vintage paper are not there.

I wanted to get away from the words and back towards allowing only the paintings to convey the message and somehow the absence of words seems to do just that. You can feel an eerie silence in these works. You want them to say more but they don't. They aren't talking back this time, it is all up to the viewer to tell the story and squeeze the meaning out of the dusty charcoal, the white paint and the void left behind on the paper.

Where are my words? Well for one thing, I am a painter by trade and not a writer. I love words but I can't use them all the time. Also, this has been a lonely time for me as my community has gotten smaller and Stewart is no longer here and I am no longer there. There is a void, so it seems the work would reflect this and it does. The lines are still there as the basic connection is still there. Communication from these works continues through the texture in skips and sputters of paint rather than type.

I have a lot more work to do on these new small works before I put them in my etsy shop, hopefully in the next couple of weeks. After that, I will start on the fifteen 12x12" panels with the vintage maps as I explore another concept that has been rolling about in my mind. Where it will go...

Until next week, keep fighting!

To remember again...

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As the weather cools (I come alive)

This week I had hoped to get back to my regular studio practice but this was not exactly the case, I got closer to it and that is what counts. I did work a little in my studio and I also amassed supplies so I could start working on the bigger series that keeps showing up in my mind. This is a slow rebuilding process but it is building nonetheless.

dark art in progress on mdf panel with a side of aubergines

I gessoed 20 6x6' MDF panels to begin a small series for my Esty shop. Once gessoed, I covered all or part of them with powdered graphite mixed with walnut oil. It felt good to just be making broad messy strokes of gesso over the wood squares and I liked covering over the white with the darkness. I am not sure what will become of these, if I will embed paper into these works or if color pencil will serve to brighten the darkness. They have landscape elements but truly I have worked on too few of them to figure out what they are yet. I am looking forward to resuming work on them and documenting and putting them in my shop.

vintage maps waiting to work

In the meantime, I received the vintage maps that I ordered for my next series of 12x12 panel paintings that I am gearing up to do. I also received the fifteen new panels from Perrodin Supply Co. I am so excited to be using their panels again! I also ordered some Gesso and other supplies I need for the project. So that is what this week has been about, getting all the materials together again, flirting with making and doing a lot of talking and thinking.

Also as a side project, I have been dreaming of doing a large paper piece that is affixed to the ceiling and is allowed to hang down and away from the wall draping down into a pool on the floor. I have been seeing this work ever since I went out to dinner one night with Stewart in Edinburgh. We were talking about our upcoming (at the time) series "A place called home" and I kept seeing this paper piece thinking it was for that show but it was actually meant for my show (a show I don't even have scheduled yet.) Yesterday, I mentioned on facebook that I was looking for large lengths of paper and today a large vintage roll of paper was delivered to my door by artist Linda Sheets! It is beautiful, yellowed, thick with the quality of maps. It is ideal. I can't wait to start working on it. I have been wanting to work on a large physical piece for quite a while, especially after making fairly small works for the last year or so. I am looking for a challenge and I need space for this work. I see paintings, drawings, maps, diagrams, an internal compass on paper. I have been thinking a lot about this idea of an internal map or gesture of the self. I have always been fascinated about what happens on the inside of people, what we hold on the inside of our skins. The thoughts, emotions, the beautiful and the ugly, deep inside - hiding. I am looking forward to seeing if I can turn this into something that isn't just juvenile, self absorbed or angst riddled... but I can't really allow myself to care too much about that. I am approaching this as a piece for me, art for art's sake, an experiment that may never see the light of day or could be a companion piece for the smaller works, not unlike a manual living was for the falling into sound works. I want to get excited about the work again and this project seems to fit the bill. We will see what happens. I don't even really have the appropriate space to work on this but I know I will make it work.

the knowledge seal,  a return to yoga

In other news, this week was spent in the company of good friends and fellow artists. It was spent walking and doing yoga and trying to take extra good care of myself. It is time to look inward and take care the way only I can, if I am to do the work I want to do. I am looking forward to exploring my new etsy series, my new 12x12 series and the paper piece of my visions with you all soon.

Thanks for checking in. I hope all is well in your art world.

Begin again...

The unknown variable
Mixed media on panel 12x12"
© 2012 Megan Chapman & Stewart Bremner

Well, let's see what happened this week. Mostly I tried to stay busy and I did a pretty good job of that for a while. I recovered my dining room chairs and I organized many drawers throughout the house...

The reception for my exhibition Hush happened last Saturday at the Fayetteville Public Library. There was a nice little group of people in attendance, I appreciate the folks who made it out. There has been a lot of art this summer, it seems to come in waves. Sometimes I fear my work has been overexposed in the region but when an opportunity comes my way, I generally say yes! Even while the reception was small in attendance it was large in sales, patrons and friends. I sold another collaborative piece and I sold two paper pieces that I created in Scotland, one framed and one unframed. I was quite pleased with these sales and I am thankful to the Fayetteville Public library for the opportunity to have an exhibition in the reading room. I just love how my work looks in the space, it really just fits right in. Hush will be up until September 4th. So if you are local to the area, I do hope you will get a chance to see my work.

After the reception, my friends came over and we had a little party. It was a fun time, I am so lucky to have such lovely, talented, and supportive people in my life.

The rest of the week just kind of happened, with more cleaning and organizing. I started putting my studio back in order after Stewart Bremner and my marathon painting session for "A place called home." It felt good to touch all of my things and take stock of my inventory. I also ordered fifteen more panels from Perrodin Supply Co. and ordered some vintage maps of America and Scotland for my upcoming series. I am excited to be thinking of my next series. I think I may also start another small works series for my Etsy shop soon as well. I will of course keep you posted. Later in the week I also sold one of my older paintings from my 2008 series "evidence of the disappearance" I now only have two of those older color series works left. It is hard to believe.

By next week, I hope to have everything in order and return to my regular studio practice so rather than me writing here so much about promotions and exhibitions, I hope to return to talking about the creative process and sharing works in progress and what is happening in the studio. This time last year I was working on feverishly finishing up Sometimes I love you and other stories for my exhibition in September. It is hard to believe that it has almost been a year. Time marches on, faster and faster. I am really looking forward to diving back in the world of making and doing.

Thanks for checking in with me this week and as always thank you for your support of me and my work. I can't do this without you.

Hush...

Well, here we are another Friday already! This has been a long and short week as many of you know Stewart Bremner left on Tuesday morning to go back to Scotland, but what you might not know is that it took him forty-five hours to get there! So even though I took him to the airport Tuesday he didn't get home until Thursday at 11am his time. I was vicariously nervous and stressed until he got to his destination which made time do strange things and here we are and it is Friday. But I still have some news...

If you are local to the Northwest Arkansas area on Saturday August 4th (tomorrow, as I write this) I hope you will join me in the Walker Community Room of the Fayetteville Public Library from 3-5 for the reception for my exhibition Hush. Not only will my work be on display upstairs in the Reading Room but just for the reception, I will also have the nine remaining works of Stewart Bremner and my latest series, A place called home. I will also have some of my remaining smalls works that I created in Scotland for sale only during the reception as well.

I have really enjoyed having my work in the library, the exhibition looks great and I can't wait for you all to see it with fresh eyes in a new space.  The exhibition will be up through September 4th.

In other news, plans are already underway for the next east prospect exhibition... oh yes, it is never too early to plan... Don't worry I will keep you updated.

Thanks for checking in and for reading. Sorry I don't have that much for you this week, hopefully by next week I will be finding my rhythm in this new reality and have lots to tell you.

Until next week, keep fighting. The world needs your art.