Quick update this week. So I did buy that Stars of the Lid album, Gravitational Pull Vs The Desire For An Aquatic Life. It’s good, but it is also the kind of album that you put on and then five minutes later you have to go and check your music player to make sure it’s actually playing. I do really like Stars of the Lid and have enjoyed every album of theirs I have listened to, but my favorite is still Music for Nitrous Oxide, their 1995 album featuring a sound clip of Data from Star Trek telling his cat to get down off the furniture.
I updated photos for some good good paintings this week:
I am happy to report that I have now finished updating all of the work for my iCanvas target portfolio. I signed a licensing contract with them a few weeks ago and that's why I've been pushing so hard to get these images updated. It's been a good exercise, and I feel like I've actually gotten better at taking these pictures since I started. I might even have to go back and re-take some from this batch, or at least re-visit some of the editing decisions.
It's really tricky to get a good picture of a painting, especially big paintings like Slow Dive and They Never Even Knew. It's really hard to avoid glare, especially if you're working in a constrained space where you're pretty limited to where you can place lights. I have been using speedlites for all of these recent images. I like them because you get a lot of control and you can use the white balance for flash photography and that's going to be pretty accurate. They are a pain though because they burn through AA batteries like crazy and they can be pretty finicky to get set up. I struggled for a couple years trying to get remote flash control working with the sort of built in system, but it is super flakey and requires that the camera's built in flash go off to trigger the external flashes, and that usually creates some glare in the photo. Some of these paintings I got photos for, then realized there was too much glare in the resulting images when I was editing, and had to go back and re-shoot them.
Anyway, now that this big push is done, I can actually get back to doing some painting in my studio. I do intend to keep working through the archive and getting more new photos. I also now intend to update some other spaces on the Internet like Saatchi Art and Singulart.
We are entering Holiday Small Works Show season! I'll be in at least two shows. Cambridge Art's Holiday Small Works Sale at Canal Gallery (650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge, MA), and Bromfield's Smallish Works Show. I have added both these shows to my Events page, as well as a very exciting show at Bromfield called Plus One where gallery members get to invite one non-member artist each to participate alongside the members. My plus one will be the fabulous artist Cicely Carew. We know each other from the Lesley MFA program and I've always wanted to do a show with her.
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading!