amo

When you look at a painting across a room, or even from just a few feet away, you get a different perspective than you do when you look at it on a monitor. It’s smaller in your field of vision.

And I’m starting to wonder why people take their artwork outside to photograph it. No one buys a painting and hangs it up outside!

However, I dutifully took this one outside and took the photo, then spent a lot of time correcting the color back to what it looks like hanging on a wall inside.

And here it is in the size I normally would have plopped into a blog entry without a second thought. See those warts? The roughness? The imperfections? You can’t see this much detail in person unless you get really close. . . closer than you’d get to anyone’s art but your own, probably.

(Of course, that doesn’t explain why the other artists I showcase here don’t HAVE any warts on their paintings, but I’m not famous or dead yet. Lord willing, I’ll have plenty of time to improve.)

This one (Boat, A.M. Otwell, 2008, Acrylic on Canvas, 11 x 14) is spoken for, but just in case you wanted to buy Pacific Fireworks for exterior use, here’s a photo for you.

(Email for pricing if you’re interested. Paintings stored outdoors will deteriorate significantly faster than paintings stored indoors. Pine needles not included.)

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention this was part of a “Different Strokes” challenge at WetCanvas, where a bunch of artists painted from the same reference photo. I chose to participate because I was drawn to the photo; it reminds me of the fishing trips I used to take with my grandfather, even though the boat really isn’t all that much like his.

Margaritte in the Cathedral
Thomas Jones Barker (1813-1882)
Oil on canvas
41 x 39 inches

The Gondola Ride
Salvador Sanchez Barbudo (1858-1917)
Oil on canvas
27-1/8 x 16-3/8 inches

The Pottery Sellers
Francesco Ballesio (1860-1923)
Watercolor and pencil on paper
20-7/8 x 29-1/2 inches

The Entombment of Christ
Sisto Badalocchio (1585-1619)
Oil on canvas, 1610

DARWINISM can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals. On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot be human. That you and a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason for being as cruel as the tiger. It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you; it is a shorter way to imitate the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger reasonably — that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws. If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden.

From Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

(G.K. Chesterton on Amazon)

The Picture Seller
Jose Antolinez (1635-1675)
Oil on canvas
79-1/4 x 49-3/8

Pacific Fireworks
A.M. Otwell, 2008
Acrylic on Canvas
16 x 20 inches

Thanks to: God for everything, Jefferson for his encouragement and support, my parents who, among other things, drove me to Goat Rock and watched the sunset with me, Reba, Herb, and all the folks at WetCanvas for advice, comments, and criticism, Elizabeth for the canvas, Nora, Steve, and the kids for some of the paint, and all of you for stopping by!

Interior
Georg Nicolaj Achen
Oil on Canvas, 1901
25-3/4 x 19 inches

I changed the appearance of the blog a little today, including fixing some problems. The “older post” and “newer post” links at the bottom of the pages are no longer reversed, and I moved that Amazon banner that takes too long to load sometimes to the bottom of the page. (I can’t quite bring myself to get rid of it because it’s an automated widget that’s supposed to advertise things that my readers would like to see, and I enjoy checking to see what new and interesting things it comes up with!)

Anyway, if you notice any other problems with the site or have any suggestions about how I could make it easier to enjoy, please feel free to let me know in the comments!