Don't Try. ~ Bukowski
*not forcing something.
I always had a lot of energy. My parents describe episodes of me at the kitchen table breathing in and out rapidly and upset about something, unable to calm down. This came often and with a lot of energy. My words combine when I write and thoughts pile up on top of each other. I realized that this was not all bad. I could do homework very fast in this state (accurately). When we got our first home computer (Commodore 64) I would ride my bike back and forth to the library to check out and type line from line the games that programmers would print. At that time, all areas of computer design were simple, accessible and easy to understand. This is where people made entire games by themselves, sim city for example. I was able to edit the graphics and the sound through the programming.
As I learned more and computers started to get more advanced. It was clear that it wouldn't be possible to be very very good at everything. I really had a hard time deciding between visual and audio, but I chose visual. I kept drawing and creating digital art for the next 40 years, ignoring but enjoying and sometimes incorporating music, but also leaving that pandoras box sealed.
My father would bring home large boxes of computer paper from work. The papers were for a printer so they had holes on the sides that you could easily tear off and the pages were connected so you could make large scenes. I spend summers filling out those pages. Working also on the computer by making interactive visual games by making the artwork out of typed characters arranged and animated. I drew on paper and on the computer though school, the Air Force dormitory, Globe College, as an Art Director for Hoffman Media Group in Minneapolis then working for myself doing freelance technical illustrations and children's books.
After that I rented an apartment for a year and just journal and painted. Searching for meaning in the hills my grandparents had come from, but there were much older spirits there. Not the natives or the native before the natives that didn't know of each other, long before the humans before the natives and the herds of buffalo, before the wooly mammoths and hunting sabertooth. The ground was exposed Basalt from when the earth attempted to tear but tore in other places leaving the great lakes.
Before the great lakes the opposite, an ancient mountain range, so large that the worn away sorted grains of quartz settled in large dunes across several states. This quartz sand was covered by a shallow ocean that covered the midwest. The sediment and weight of the water created a hard top to the quartz sandstone below and when the glaciers came and went, the rushing torrents of water headed towards the gulf left many epic large quartz sandstone cliffs and towers. like Chimney Rock in Hastings MN or the large bluffs of St. Paul, Red Wing and all along the Mississippi.
So I put this meaning and journaling into my own art with meaning. I went to two art shows in Minneapolis but sold none. I watched people from a distance, I saw someone seem interested, take my card, look closer and then put it back. Should I be disappointed, did I make it for her, no. This was all intended to be from my experience and meaning so the relatability is probably the intentionally missing part, IF THATS THE GOAL.
The success depends on the expected outcomes. Like setting up a new character, you cant have everything without losing focus in other areas. That said, I haven't sold much art and people don't seem very interested in it. But it's done and it's here and there is always the future (beyond me) possibility.
I think the basic goal of any artist, is to sustain and make as much room to create as possible. Weighing needs and wants with other responsibilities duties and the impact of unneeded luxuries.
So with that, I leave my visual arts world and am headed full speed into the world of audio.
My VR gallery, YouTube Channel, Blog, painting, drawing are still outlets but not the focus.
Check out my Soundcloud page in a few weeks for the NEW stuff. I had been producing music on my phone and then with SUNVOX on a 20 year old laptop. but now? Now it's coming off the back burner for the first time with my full attention and resources (desktop, computer, apps, mic, moog syth, etc..) Hopefully I will add components and software as I see what works and what doesn't.
Like my visual work, the audio will be experimental and the gems will form in the mix.
Life work of;
Authors
- William Shakespeare — ~2.5–3 million words; ~40 plays, ~160 poems/sonnets.
- Charles Dickens — ~20–25 million words; ~15 novels, hundreds of articles.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky — ~5–7 million words; ~11 novels, novellas, journalism.
- Mark Twain — ~10–12 million words; novels, essays, speeches, journalism.
- Franz Kafka — ~1–1.5 million words; novels, short stories, diaries, letters.
- George Orwell — ~4–5 million words; novels, essays, reportage.
- Jane Austen — ~750k–800k words; 6 novels
Artists
- Leonardo da Vinci — ~15–25 finished paintings; ~13,000 pages of notebooks/drawings.
- Michelangelo — ~300 sculptures/drawings; ~500+ architectural & design works
- Vincent van Gogh — ~2,100 works total; ~860 oil paintings, ~1,300 drawings.
- Pablo Picasso — ~45,000–50,000 works; paintings, prints, ceramics, sculpture.
- Rembrandt — ~600–700 works; paintings, drawings, etchings.
- Claude Monet — ~2,000–2,500 paintings; studies and series.
- Albrecht Dürer — ~1,000 works; paintings, engravings, woodcuts, drawings.
- Edward Hopper — ~400–450 works; paintings, drawings, prints.
