Author Archives: Mary Baker

Why do we Really Blog?

Why Blog? It’s a question that intrigues me.

1) Commercial reasons. People have figured out that blogging helps their websites in a number of ways to the point where blogging is now being abused and we now have splogging (spam-blogging). Bound to happen.

2) Opinions on all and sundry. Yes, of course.

3) Personal stuff for a variety of reasons. Absolutely.

4) Medium is easy and inexpensive to use. Even someone extremely un-techno-savvy can figure it out. (If I can, believe me, you can too.)

But why do we really blog?

So this is what is going around in my head about that question at the moment: In a fractured world, where families are scattered and often torn, maybe it’s a way for people to hope that someone witnesses their life.

I may be wrong, but I don’t think most people sit down at their computer and think, “Well, thousands of people are now going to read this post.” Most people think that maybe someone might read a post and are very surprised when a number of people do. I know I am.

Maybe blogging in its true sense, not its commercial use, is a way of connecting to a world that seems increasingly huge; a way of leaving a mark of some sort in a world, that because of the Internet, is obviously and overwhelmingly bigger than the street and neighborhood where we live.

Maybe blogging is an attempt to make the vast and impersonal Internet, personal; a way to try and gain some control over what is the increasingly uncontrollable (Google–8 billion pages and growing.)

An interesting question– “Why do we really blog?”

Art, Painting and Jigsaw Puzzles

When people come to me and ask me to teach them, or guide them (my verb) to paint and draw, one of the first things I do is tell them to do many hours of putting together jigsaw puzzles, either on the Web (jigzone.com) or at home. There is usually much huffing and groaning, but I say, “If you don’t want to do that, forgetta about it.”

So why jigsaw puzzles?

If you haven’t spent a lot of time painting or drawing, putting together jigsaw puzzles helps you start seeing thing as a collection of different shapes. You start to see objects as different combinations of circles, triangles, rectangles, instead of one unmanageable mass.

Putting together jigsaw puzzles too helps you understand that good painting takes time. And it also helps you get comfortable with the idea that when you start a painting you won’t know how it’s going to turn out. You will only know that out when all the “pieces” are put together.

Mary Baker

Art Blogs and Art Websites

I’ve thought long and hard about how my art blog should look. I know, I know, it looks like millions of other blogs from WordPress.

I wanted my art blog to look “generic” for several reasons.

I don’t want people to confuse my art blog with my art website. Hopefully if you’ve arrived here, with all this web-art-chit-chat, without a picture in sight, you’ll think, “Ah, ha, maybe I’ll go visit her art website, Mary Baker Art, and see what the heck she paints.”

I actually found that putting a painting up on the blog took away from the text, so I took the painting off.

And having the art blog look generic takes the pressure off. I agonize over my art website, but I feel much more relaxed adding to the art blog.

I will admit that I did fiddled around with all sorts of ways to personalize my art blog, and none of the designs are as good as the one by WordPress. So I decided if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Internet Art Review–Jacob Collins, Contemporary Realism

Jacob Collins, art work

I’ve been following Jacob Collins career for a while. The Classical Realists have claimed him, the Academic painters have claimed him, but as far as I’m concerned, Jacob Collins is a Contemporary Realist. The Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) lists his website under Contemporary Realism–works for me.

Although Jacob Collins has been trained as an academic painter, there seems to be a deep conscious or unconscious appreciation of the camera and Modern Art.

Take the still life called “Tangerine,” a small painting, but one of my favorites. The composition of this painting is a good example of Modernist composition, reminiscent of Matisse, Motherwell, Adolf Gottlieb, combined with realistic painting. Also the luminosity of the tangerine itself has a photographic quality. I think this is a good thing because it feels as if Jacob Collins is well aware of the culture around him.

In Jacob Collins’s self-portrait there is the tension of the different shapes of the frames and of the palette, a composition that could be right out of the abstract paintings of the 1920’s, 1960’s or a painter like Matisse. The cropping of different objects is a contemporary element. And Collins’s rendition of objects on a bulletin board, reminds me of the art work done by artist Steve Hawley in the 1980’s.

Along with the technical virtuosity, these elements give Jacob Collins’s art work their “zing.” These are not works of art done in the 1850’s, clearly these are Contemporary Realist paintings

Jacob Collins, website

A word (or two) about Jacob Collins’s website, since this is an Internet art review. The art website is classy, easy to navigate and loads quickly. The viewer quickly has an overview of Collins’s extreme artistic versatility.

As a Web visitor, however, I want to have information about Jacob Collins. Aside from the fact that search engines only index text and not gorgeous art images (and I would like lots of people to find Jacob Collins’s website), as a web viewer I want to “get to know” Jacob Collins.

It’s very hard as an artist to write about yourself, but written text helps endear the artist to the Web viewer, makes the artist seem accessible and is an invitation to the Web visitor to stop by the artist’s website more often.

The Ideal Second Job for an Artist

What’s the ideal second job for an artist?

I will admit that I do not know the answer to this question and it is a very important one. The ideal second job for an artist would be a job that doesn’t emotionally, psychologically, physically and artistically drain you, so that you can concentrate on your first job, your vocation–creating art! In fact, the really, really good ideal second job for an artist would be one that energizes the artist so that he or she can create even better works of art.

I thought all of you out there in Web-Blog-Land might be able to help answer this very important question.

If you would like to, please contact me (I don’t have comments on this blog, for a variety of reasons) and if I think your email is helpful I promise to post it and put a link to your website in the post.

(If you do email me, please but “second job” somewhere in the subject line. That way I’m sure to open your email.)

We’ll see what happens. Mary

Realistic Art–Drawing

“How do I learn to draw?”

So many people have asked me this question that it seemed to be a good idea to address “drawing” in this art blog. The best book I’ve ever used to teach people how to draw, and art schools and colleges all over the country use it, is Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards.

Betty Edwards has a number (not an overwhelming number) of exercises that trick the brain into seeing differently. (For example one exercise is drawing upside-down.) All the exercises are easy, fun and they work! They work really, really well. They can be done alone or in a big or small group. And if you follow the drawing exercises, amazingly enough, even if you “can’t draw a straight line,” you will be able to draw.

I’ve seen people who at the beginning of doing these drawing exercises can’t draw at all. Swear they will never be able to draw. Curse at the silliness of the drawing exercises. And at the end of the process they are totally amazed at the drawings they are able to produce. It’s pretty cool.

Mary Baker

Art, Problems and Solutions: What To Do If A Painting Just Won’t Work

When you are working on a painting and you get to the point where it is just not working, what in the world do you do?

Turn the painting upside-down

Turning a painting upside-down tricks the eye into seeing what you are working on in a completely different way. All of a sudden you will be able solve a problem that baffled you minutes before.

Hold the painting up to a mirror

Looking at a painting in a mirror works very much the same way as turning a painting upside-down does, only the results are even more dramatic. The problem is even more glaring and it is an enormous relief to see what is not working and to be able to figure out the solution.

Stop painting

If you’ve turned a painting upside down and held it up to a mirror and you still can’t figure out what the problem is–stop painting. You may need to stop painting for a few minutes, few hours, few days, months or even years. It depends on you and it depends on the painting.

The worse thing you can do is to keep working on the painting. It won’t solve the problem, you will become frustrated and the painting will become over-worked. It is a really good way to ruin a work of art.

There will come a point when you will know exactly what to do and can’t imagine why you never saw the solution before.

When I am working on a painting and I can’t find a solution to the problem, I always try to remember a phrase someone once told me which is: “If you don’t know what to do, do nothing.” A great piece of wisdom which always seems to work.

Art Scams–nifty email

Wow, just when I thought I’d seen every possibly art scam, I got this email from an art admirer.

Hello
I would love to inquire about some item which i saw on the web,they very lovely and would like to know if it can be sold to me for my new store in south africa,pls do let me know if it for sale ,i would be glad to get back to you with my choice of item and If you accept cashiers check as payment method
,pls advise strongly on this
Cheers
Wesley

And talk about chutzpah when it comes to art scams, this email wasn’t only sent to me, the human being on the other end of this art scam included 11 other recipients on the same email. (…and “Cheers Wesley”?? Oh good grief.)

Again, if you are an artist, go visit Bj.de Castro’s blog on art scams…run, run, run!

Keyword, “Realistic Painter”–Could “Art Work” be Next?

Looking at my stats for my art blog I realized that people were finding me through the keyword “realistic painter.” Wow. So I moseyed over to Google and typed in “realistic painter” and voila–Mary Baker Art was, I could hardly believe it–3rd! Good grief.

I tried “realistic painting”…in the top 8 no less, and “realistic paintings” in the top 18! Could “art work” be far behind? All of a sudden I was showing up in the top 20 for keywords I loved.

If I, a mere mortal, could pop up for my chosen keywords in the top 3 to 20,think what someone actually doing this full time and making gazillions of money could do.

I can see why greedy, ambitious, do anything SEOs (it took me a long time to figure out what the heck SEO is, if you don’t know, you’d better Google it) have fallen head over heals, gaga with the whole blog thing, (I was amazed to find that my articles published at EzineArticles.com were in “blogs” from Blog.Spot all over the Internet–I’m glad for artist all over that “Art” has become such a nifty keyword.) and why “splogging” is the new scourge of the Internet.

I watched as people found out ways to abuse “links.” Now they’ve found a way to abuse “content.” So Google and company are now trying to find ways to regulate all those abusive sploggers out there and when they do, I imagine my art blog with disappear when people go searching for “realistic painter.” But for the time being I’m enjoying it a lot! Keyword away!

Realistic Painting–Flowers

Rose
Oil on Paper
7” x 8”
Mary Baker © 2005

Up until three years ago it never occurred to me to paint flowers. I had painted landscapes for 15 years and had also done a more monochromatic series that I call the “Pod” series. (You can see a couple examples of the “Pod” series on my website. You can also see a lot of realistic flower paintings on my website too!)

I had gotten to the point where I was running out of landscape ideas (although landscape ideas are coming back in a major way) and after 9/11 people found the monochromatic Pod paintings, “cold” instead of “deep”.

So what to do? I wandered around my neighborhood and started to paint realistic flowers. It always seemed to me that it took a certain amount of chutzpah to paint flowers since Vincent and Georgia had already covered the territory, not to mention Heade…but what the heck, realistic flowers it was.

Once I started, I realized that although I had studied human anatomy in art school to paint realistic paintings, I had never studied “flower anatomy”…no botanist I.

I went to the Museum of Natural History in Boston where they have an awesome and extensive exhibit of glass flowers. I did massive research on the Internet on every type of flower or leaf I was going to realistically paint (if you go to Google Images, it’s just amazing what you get for let’s say “Morning Glory” or “Rose”). And then maybe the most helpful thing in painting realistic flowers was going around and snatching flowers in my neighborhood, keeping them whole or pulling them apart and pressing them between sheets of wax paper. That way I could see exactly how they were formed, making painting realistic flowers that much easier.

Art, Artists and Blogs–how Google indexed my art blog and apparently gave it a Page Rank of 5

Ok, I’m totally smitten by this whole blog art form thing.

Google actually indexed my blog fast, and gave my art blog, I think, a Page Rank of 5–I love this! Who wouldn’t love this?

The fact that Google actually indexed my artist’s blog quickly, I’ll admit, was not because of any great knowledge on my part. But, I’m happy to share what happened. Here it is:

I had been looking at different places to blog and my host happened to let me install WordPress. So I did. Using WordPress for my artist’s blog, my domain name was part of the art blog url–so I could make it “marybakerart.com/blog”.

Missy Chabot–Chabot Web Design, who does my artist’s website, put a link from the Home Page and the Site Map of Mary Baker Art.

I wasn’t sure if search engines would think that the art blog was part of my website, but I guess Google does, because, at the moment, under www.marybakerart.com a number of the blog pages are listed, including the art blog itself. In fact, now the website is listed in Google with lots of extra pages, even though my art blog has a whole different look and feel than my artist’s website! I mean, how cool is that!

Art–Contemporary Realism

Ok, so I really, really, really love Contemporary Realism, it’s my favorite, it works for me. Here’s why:

The Impressionists started it all!

As far as I’m concerned Contemporary Realism started with the Impressionists who rebelled against the established art world. Love that!

So, let’s take Degas. He got inspired by Japanese woodcuts, and “composition” took on a whole new meaning. The composition of Degas’s small painting, “The Rehearsal”, at the Fogg Art Museum, is as dynamic as the Modernist painting by Kenneth Noland (in the same Museum), an abstract painter who came into his own in the 60’s.

Let’s take Monet. All of a sudden he “got color”…no more dreary palettes for this guy. And on top of that, the late paintings by Monet are as abstract as any painting done by the Abstract Expressionists in the 1950’s. Talk about being “ahead of your time”. Wow!

Pop Art and Photo Realism

I loved Pop Art in the 60’s—full of irony, color, intellect and wit. (Yes, I’m from New York– irony, intellect and wit works for me!) And Photo Realism, which came next–beautifully executed paintings, borrowing heavily from photographs, shunning sentimentality and embracing detachment. Love it! Love it! Love it!

Contemporary Realism

After Photo Realism, came a loosely grouped of realist painters, which I will call Contemporary Realists. These painters borrow from ALL the traditions that have gone before them. Smart cookies!

Contemporary Realists incorporate the compelling compositions inspired by the Impressionists, the realism and craft of the academic painters, the gift of the camera and the extensive palette used in the 20th Century. Contemporary Realism reflects an ability to borrow from all that has been innovative and effective and to combine it into clear, beautiful and compelling works of art.

Call me crazy, but I don’t see how you can get much better than that!

Original art–the palette, painting shadows

The second thing I learned from Steve Hawley was how to paint shadows. I had always used a darker version of the color, which had never been very effective. Steve told me to use:

Burnt Umber
French Ultramarine Blue
Thalo Green
Alizarin Crimson

What he recommended was to mix either Thalo Green and Alizarin Crimson, or Burnt Umber and Ultramarine Blue and use it very lightly as a gaze for shadows. It has made an amazing difference in my painting, and I’ve seen it make an amazing difference in other people’s paintings as well.

Highly Creative People–Painting, the creative process

I like the way it was described in the write up in the New York Times on Highly Creative People, that Dr. Barron “worked in a way that seemed to be casual and without any particular focus”; but Dr. Barron, a highly creative person, obviously had a great deal of focus.

For me, the creative process is a mystery. I wake up in the morning, and I have no idea what my day will be like or which painting I’m going to work on that day.

I often don’t know until I walk into my studio, which of the many, usually 9-11 paintings, will get my attention.

And if someone came into my studio, they would think I was wandering around aimlessly, doing things that have nothing to do with painting.

Usually it takes about a year for a group of paintings to begin to take shape and show some cohesiveness. After all these years I am finally comfortable with the chaos of that process, because I have been amazed, again and again at what emerges from it. Eventually what emerges in a year and a half to two years, is twenty paintings that are a consistent body of work.

I wrote a piece on my own creative process on my website, called Creativity. It explains in more detail the cyclical nature of the painting process.

Art Scams–Swindlers scamming artists

People are actually trying to scam artists on the Web, and have been for a while. Here’s an email I received:

Subject: art work purchase

Good day to you.
I am so excited that I came across of your work on internet search, I am interested in purchasing some creative art works from you.

yellow roses
daylilly
blue morning glory

I will be happy to have these selected art works hanged in our new
home in South Africa. how much discounts are going to give?
As well, I want you to take out the shipping cost. I have been in touch with
A shipping agent that are shipping other house decoratives, We are
travelling from our UK home to our new apartment as soon as possible.

On Paying for the art works,I will be glad to pay with a Travellers
Check or Money orders in US funds that can be easily cashed at your
bank,Please let me know on how to pay for the art works.

I will await your advise on how to proceed. Have a wonderful day.

Take Care.
Debby

Too good to be true

When it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.

This person had been to my website and did list 3 actual paintings. However when I traced the IP address, which is in the header of an email, it was not from South Africa or their home in the UK, it was from Nigeria. I got the exact same email a week later from a “Susie” not a “Debby”.

There is an excellent blog by Bj. de Castro with lots of information on art scams from Nigeria. If you are an artist with a website, this blog is a must to check out.

Highly Creative People–Frank X. Barron

On October 13, 2002, I came across a write up in the New York Times of Frank X. Barron, known for his studies of highly creative people. When I have doubts about myself as an artist, I read it and it always makes me feel better, because– a) it makes me smile and– b) I feel like I’m not alone.

I’m passing it along to you:

Dr. Barron once described a highly creative person as “both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner than the average person”.

Dr. Barron found that highly creative people show high levels of ego-strength, a trait that allows them to channel their energy into creative work. They resist conformity and demonstrate a willingness to take risks.

And this is the part about highly creative people that I really like

Significant creative advances require a high tolerance for disorder and a preference for complexity, combined with the ability to extract order from chaos.

Dr. Barron’s own style reflected many of these characteristics. He worked in a way that might seem, if you hadn’t followed it for very long, to be casual and without any particular focus. But after a few years it became clear that there was an inner compass that guided him and continued to guide him for all of his life.

Original Art–painting tips, the pallette

One of the first things that happened when I studied with Steve Hawley, was that he gave me a basic painting palett that I had never used before. It radically changed how my paintings look. I’ve passed it on to a lot of people, and it always makes a huge difference. So here it is:

Basic Painting Palette

Burnt Umber
French Ultramarine Blue
Thalo Green
Alizarin Crimson
Burnt Sienna
Naples Yellow
Titanium White
Thalo yellow green

Original Art–art as a status symbol

I wrote an article, Why Buy Original Art, about how art enlivens an environment and enriches lives. That’s all true. However, one of the reasons people buy art is that art is a status symbol.

Having original art says that you are educated, cultured and can afford original art, especially really good original art like mine, which means you have money. It also says that you have “class”.

Having a Porsche, Ferrari, BMW, Audi, all are status symbols, but they don’t necessarily mean you have “class”.

Having a big house in a good neighborhood is a status symbol, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have “class”.

Belonging to a variety of clubs can be status symbols, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have “class”.

Having art is unique in imparting to others that you are of value. Art is something that people pass on from generation to generation. Art defines civilizations. Art tells people that you are not only educated, but also that you appreciate history and beauty. It is why when the early American tycoons built their fortunes, they went out and bought art, because it gave them “class”. Thank goodness they did, because today we can see Van Goghs, Monets, Renoirs in the great art museums all over the world.

There are only good reasons to buy original art, whether it is to nurture the soul, enliven your environment or to feel essential. Buying original art adds to the quality of life for everyone, yours as well as all the people around you.

Artists–Highly Sensitive Souls

When I found Jenna Avery’s article on Highly Sensitive Souls on the Internet it was such a relief. Jenna articulated things that I had felt for years as an artistic soul, but had felt that something must be wrong with me. After reading Jenna’s article and going to her website–Highly Sensitive Souls, I realized that all those things that I had felt were wrong with me, were actually good things, maybe even great things.

Sensitive artistic souls

Jenna’s article describes so beautifully what it is like to be an artistic soul. Artists do have powerful intuition and awareness; artists do have emotional passion, intensity and depth. As artists we are very observant of the subtleties of our environment and yes, to be an artist, it is necessary to be a visionary.

Artists do receive much more information from our surrounding than other people and can get easily overwhelmed. Artistic souls have an inner life that is just as complex as our outer life and private time alone really is necessary to feel replenished and rejuvenated.

For years I felt that I didn’t “fit in” with the people around me (sometimes I still feel that way!), and it was a wonderful feeling after reading Jenna’s article to know that I wasn’t alone, and that nothing was actually wrong with me.

Helping other people to understand what it is like being an artistic soul

Jenna gave me permission to print her article Highly Sensitive Souls on my website Mary Baker Art. People have told me that they have printed the article and given it to their husbands, their parents, their co-workers, their children and even their children’s teachers to articulate and explain to them who they are.

People have also printed the article and given it to fellow artists for encouragement, reassurance and motivation.

If you are an artistic soul you will probably enjoy Jenna Avery’s website, Highly Sensitive Souls. I think that you are in for an incredible treat!

New York Stories-submitting your art work to art galleries

It is very hard submitting your art work to art galleries. It is difficult to get rejection after rejection and to still have the energy and will to keep creating your art work. I figure for every 25 submissions I make, I am lucky to receive one positive response.

When my first New York gallery took me on, I discovered an amazing fact. The art gallery received 4,000 slides a year! That’s right 4,000 slides!

I tell young artists that if they get even a personal response from an art gallery saying that they liked the artist’s work, that that is huge; and to definitely follow up on that contact when they are submitting their next round of slides.

If an artist gets asked by an gallery to show them his or her art work, but the artist doesn’t get accepted to be a part of the gallery…that is also huge, and to definitely follow up on that contact as well. These are encouraging signs.

It takes a great deal of courage to submit art work to art galleries. And if you are an artist who is in the process of doing that–good for you!

Mary Baker Art–Blog

Paintings and Digital Images