SANDY GARNETT ART BLOG

 My new collectors Tom and Donna came over last weekend and commissioned a small version of my 1998 Musicians painting.  This is the only painting that does not stand upright in the new studio I bought in CT almost 2 years ago, so viewers have to reposition themselves accordingly.

 As the Musicians was a breakthrough painting that never received the proper showing I like working with the picture again.  The original is 8x7 ft priced at 25k.

I’m circling the finish on some really nice little paintings.  I put the music on and let time go.  This is when I’m most powerful as a creator.  I zone out and it’s a dance with the dimensions of the paint on canvas.  Sounds funny?  Welcome to my world… if you can’t play this bloodsport for keeps you’re not selling work and you aren’t making a living at it.  I’ve got to leave the best of myself up there on the easel, hanging on that canvas which someone will cart off and live with, a piece of me often times I will never see again.  But that support is what it’s all about, my collectors coming out of the woodwork to blow wind in my sails.  I’ve got a small army at this point, and when one goes away for a spell a new one comes around and I start another dance.  My dance is honest and as an old friend of my father’s recently stated accurately, ‘You’re not beholden to anyone in your business’.  This is the best part of my world.  Back to the easel.

Working from my subject Miles, I created this figure, The Miles Figure, which will be made in bronze and disbursed into the existing Field of Figures sculptures.  This is where the project grows interesting.  I start trading new figures for old ones with collectors.  Eventually there will be 32 Field of Figure sculptures, and each sculpture will have 32 unique figures in it.  Each new collector sponsors the next figure, which is then distributed into all of the other sculptures.  It’s like a chess game with my collectors.  It’s just too much fun, the payoff for a well conceived plot to birth some original figurative sculpture.  Like many good things, this project has taken on a life of it’s own.

This Field of Figures will be mounted to the wall with plexi around it, lit from underneath.  I’m working on that this month.

I painted this portrait of Teddy  recently.  His mother commissioned it.  They liked my contemporary square heads.   I’ve got a series of etched portraits on granite and portraits on black canvas backgrounds that inspired the commission.  I’m getting after the art.  Yesterday delivered a drawing, today delivered a small painting,  and I’m circling the finish on two more pictures tomorrow.  I have a collector coming on the weekend to buy a Reconstruction, I deliver three paintings next week and pick up three more  fine art commissions.  It’s hot so I’ve got to stay on target.

People think my world is a way to pass the time.  My world is one of possibilities, which describes the hand that writes this thought.  My world is built on dreams that grow stronger every day, from the young one with a thought in his head and fire in his belly to a fine artist not giving two worlds about the next opinion.  There is no other way really.  And with every stroke of belief that passes me by I make the next best thing.  One’s audience starts with the silence of crickets and the chorus grows impossible to hear above, even on the local front.  In making one’s bones one must make the real stuff and do it as a gentleman for years.  I’m not used to accolades so I find this new phase interesting.  And with all the thoughts I will forever pour the resources into another way of seeing.  This is my existence, the art for life.

I cut a hole in my loft and recently dropped in a 3/8” tempered piece of glass.  There is a skylight above the glass, so the light shoots down into the kitchen, which used to be very dark and now is bright and cool looking.  Pictured is my first Turned Figure, Woman on Rocks of 1999 and 39th Street Twister VI, 2006.

I paint with old friends Phil and Kevan when I get a chance.  I’ve painted maybe 30 pictures in this format.  I have painted with Phil for 10 years then tried the same with Kevan maybe five years ago.  In the spring I got the three of us together to paint in the work studio I bought last year. 

Last night I painted The Bean Living Room pictured here.  It’s been awhile since we’ve painted.  It’s like an itch you want to scratch, to spend an evening painting with a friend whose work you respect, someone you can bs with, talk about life and art with.  A decade ago I started doing still lifes with Phil, then I began painting the room with Phil in the picture.  This series has evolved into some sort of spatial speed painting exercise where the goal is to come out of the evening with a completed painting.  I’ll put the structure of the room down traditionally then I’ll blow the picture out with color and line.  At first Phil couldn’t stand this as he wanted to see how I painted traditionally, yet over the years as with Kevan they have come to accept that I like the looseness and play of this style when painting a picture in one evening as I paint hyperrealism and traditional work all the time.  These paintings afford me the opportunity to explore spatial Reconstructions, or so I put it.  There are 174 paintings in this series of works started in 1997.  I’ll spend the rest of my life looking in on this way of making.

This painting is 30 x 36 inches wide for my collectors.  The price on this in 2006 is 3000.  I have a larger, cleaner image to email if someone is interested.  There is a hot spot in the image where light caught the photo too much.  These paintings always sell.  I like to paint NYC pictures this way, and I did a series of Florence paintings, maybe 15 in all, which all sold quickly. 

 

 

I sold another Field of Figures sculpture to my friend Theresa.  Thank you Theresa.  She and her husband own and operate a highly esteemed restaurant and Inn where my sculpture will be installed.  More on that later.  I took measurements and will design an ‘environment’ for my figures to live in that suits her space.  This is one of the coolest things about the Field of Figures project, the fact that each new collector sponsors a new figure and I can create new worlds for each edition.  Theresa’s sculpture will be mounted to a prominent wall and I will build lighting into the installation from below.

I am strongest when I am on an earlier schedule, eating well, working out, and my studio has work to be done.  There is always art to make, but a little demand sweetens the experience, churns the wheels.  Lately I’ve had so much going on I haven’t really known where to start.  When there is a lot of activity I spend a lot of time on administrative work as a one man show, which takes easel time away from me.  But inevitably I settle into the pocket, things cool off a bit and the answers are almost always found at the easel.  I use this term easel for my sculpture as well by the by.  I started as a painter and I think always like a painter, even when I’m sculpting.  The easel is a particular item that describes one’s activity, whereas ‘on the work bench’ for example does not clarify sculptor the way ‘on the wheel’ connotes ceramicist.  Anyway back to the easel.  I have ten paintings to deliver in the next three weeks.  This is unusual and explains my initial frantic reaction to the demand.  But the answers start to appear and one canvas answers questions that spills into the next.  Here is my zen state on the early schedule, where everything will work itself out.  I have to arrive at this state after a passage of activity, and once I’m here I do everything to stay in this state until the work is through me and out the door successfully.  This is my most powerful and what got me here.  Nothing can stop the art.  Happy Thanksgiving.

It’s a sad day to hear that Mr. Altman, one of Hollywood’s best directors with a style all his own including the brilliant 2006 ‘A Prairie Home Companion’, has passed away.  Hats off to you Mr. Altman.  You are an inspiration to all artists out there, and you did it your way.

At my open studio I had the good fortune of meeting Hans Neleman and Tessa Pimontel.  Hans is a well respected professional photographer and his wife Tessa Pimontel is a well respected fashion designer.  Hans has made his career behind the photographic lens with several important bodies of work along with many prestigious commercial gigs.  Tessa redesigned Kids Gap among other things and they are creative spirits to be reckoned with.  It’s nice to call them friends.