03/02/2008 13:20:39

HI Gregory: The film professors were great! Thoughtful, challenging etc. I did a San Fran State 6 week intensive one summer. The animation teachers taught me how to draw also. It was the art school painting teacher who carried a razor in his pocket. That's why I ended up working in television. I knew decent people art teacher in college - it was just the art school that sucked.

Yesterday I was looking at colleges for my daughter. We were in a theatre department and one of the acting teachers gave his life story - about starving in London to do stage design. A friend offered him a teaching job in Chicago - but he had had such bad experiences with teachers that he refused. A few weeks later his friend convinced him that he didn't have to teach the way he was taught. That turned a big light bulb on for him. We ended up in Seattle after Stuart finished his engineering education.

I love these new paintings you put up. Nicely done!!  Barbara

03/01/2008 07:27:26

Really interesting title.  Enjoyed those.

02/29/2008 22:55:34

02/29/2008 21:45:50

Hello Gregory, Thanks for the visit to my gallery. Techno-gap is an interesting way to put it. Actually "Nightmare" is the title of one of Magic: The Gathering cards I did. So Nightmareartist was an obvious choice that the fans would recognize. 

02/29/2008 10:30:10

Glad to hear it! My films were super 8 - feasible for hiking Himalayan foothills and cost wise. I really liked the attitude of film. You set a goal and then scramble to reach it. I visited one of those little California art schools for a quarter.  Rigid teaching.No goal setting. Minimalism was admired - we were all to make derivative 'stripes but not flags.'  One teacher thought he could change my attitude if he just cut my work with a razor blade that he just happened to keep in his breast pocket. I nearly quit painting forever.  When I worked in TV,my boyfriend then- (husband now) looked through my paintings and said: You should just tranfer your goals to painting and we can get out of here. It was a great idea and we did it. The operative word in that sentence above was 'just.' That's the hard part.

02/29/2008 01:24:21

Hi, Gregory. Thanks for the inspiring comments regarding my work. Comparing me to Diego Rivera is a bit of an ego boost.

02/29/2008 01:10:38

HI Gregory. You asked me a lot of good questions on my page so I'll try to respond. So once you leave the formality of traditional landscapes and are left with just the paint - color and composition, where do you find a new structure? From other past traditions like surrealism or from some other place?  In trying to answer this, I realized that the structure of my thinking about the paintings comes from a lot of places - not just the usual suspects. In fact I realized that my paintings are fusion art, similar to fusion music. I learned my approach to color from some ancient craftsmen working in Katmandu, Nepal a century before it was open to western countries. I first researched and then shot a film about Nepali art while I was learning to paint. Some of my design work comes from other traditions also.

I have also taken the approach of creating a world, literally mapping out the characters and geography. My background was in film before painting and I structured the 'world' the way you would for a drama to take place there - so it would feel real. In that sense I am thinking about having people walk through these paintings. Thanks for making me think about all of this.  Barbara

 

02/28/2008 21:35:41

anthroposophy is my new favorite word! the place in the link looks interesting too but its very different from the continuing ed classes I am teaching, this seems alot more "all encompassing"

http://www.centerforanthroposophy.org/about/anthroposophy/