Art Monthly - A Montana Artist's Journal

Did you hear about the move?

2010-04-30T17:04:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping that all of you who signed up for ArtMonthly notifications a number of months ago heard about my newly renovated ScottHaleFineArt.com website. If not, I wanted to notify you that I will no longer be running my blog through ArtMonthly, rather, my blog is now a part of the scotthalefineart.com website:

I want to direct this post specifically to you to invite you to sign up for notification of new blog posts at the new site. You may do it through entering your email address OR by clicking on the 'subscribe via RSS' button (or both). Both of these sign up areas are in the right sidebar of the site (toward the bottom):

Where's the Angling Art Section?

2009-10-10T07:13:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed, and...maybe not, but about a month ago I replaced the Angling Art section of the scotthalefineart.com website with a Mixed Media section, where I display my oil painting "corks" (see September 3rd Post). For the past month I have been working feverishly on a new website project related to the disappearance of the Angling Art. It's something I've been thinking about and musing over since sometime last summer. I was going to work on it in this past spring but like it always does, the summer show season takes precedence. The new project moved to the "wait until fall" category of the things to do list. So I set my sights on September, and, for the past 4 weeks, have been doing nothing but getting the new site online: ArtCreel.com.

ArtCreel.com - "Fine Art for Anglers" is the new home of my angling art / fish paintings. It is also the place to find excellent work from some of the most well-known cotemporary artists creating fly fishing art in the country. This includes veterans Al Barnes, Peter Corbin, and Joe Tomelleri along with some of the newer all-stars like AD Maddox and Derek DeYoung. I surfed across a guy in Wisconsin named John Koch and decided I had to have his incredible woodcut prints on ArtCreel as well. While there will be some more artists added to ArtCreel in the coming months, I'm trying to keep the focus on originality, variety, and fresh outlooks on the genre. The site went online this week - have a look!:

If you're wondering why I took on this project - I guess I wanted to create a place on the web that really focused on the niche genre of angling art. You may be interested in this kind of thing, or not, but if you have any fly fisherpeople in your life, let them know about ArtCreel.com - they will want to oogle! And if you draw their names in the family or office gift exchange for Christmas, you now have no worries about where to find the perfect gift.

Lara, my wife, will be helping me run the ArtCreel side of things now that the design and implementation of the site is done and we're live. That will allow me to get back to painting; so while I don't have any new painting adventures to report on this month, I will in November.

Procrastination and Cork

2009-09-03T21:19:00.000-07:00

Two quotes to start:

"You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." -Henry Ford

"Art comes into being in that abstract interval between a thought and reality, and no one - not even the artist who created it - can remeasure the influences that caused it." -Edgar A. Payne

When the Art Monthly blog was born in early July, it was my intent to post once or twice a month. Those of you who signed up through email or RSS feeds to automatically catch wind of new posts maybe wondered what happened to me in August. I have no alibis for my bloggerfailure and, in reference to myself, can only refer you to the first of the two quotes above. Note that I'll try to exhibit better consistency from here on out.

As for the second quote, it's one I keep coming back to over the last few years. When people ask where I get my inspiration from (or ideas, color schemes, etc.), Payne's observation personifies the answer I want to give: "I don't know exactly - I can't remeasure the influence that caused it". It's not a cop-out and its not being vague, smug or sophisticated. To me, this notion is what makes solid works of art so special - the idea that even the artist who creates an excellent work cannot duplicate it with the same feeling, force and success. Also - inspiration is fleeting and we must catch it and work with it when it hits us (where it came from is often quickly forgotten in the experimentation that follows). Edgar Payne was an early 20th century California-based painter whose landscapes and writings have influenced my work.

Earlier this Summer I began experimenting with a new way to "frame" oil paintings. When it all came together however, the result was not so much "differently framed paintings", but a new kind of mixed media work. The new work had its debut in the Park City Arts Festival in August, and the questions from the enthusiastic crowd began to fly: "where did you come up with this idea?", "how did you think of this?", and the like. It wasn't until I was actually finalizing these new works in the wee hours of the morning before the show that I realized this was really mixed media rather than just a new framing twist. Take a look:

"Still Standing" Oil and Cork over Frosted Plexiglass 12" x 12"

"Father and Son" Oil and Cork over Frosted Plexiglass 12" x 12"

"The Line Up" Oil and Cork over Frosted Plexiglass 12" x 12"

Looking back, I can't put a finger on where this idea developed. I knew that I wanted to try something new and at the same time, relate it to what I already do with my landscapes. If I had to give credit to something in my past for coming up with the idea of using exotic cork species, it would have to be seeing cork installed as wall tile and flooring in some of the commercial construction projects I used to manage a decade ago. The plexiglass just seemed to be the output I got from all of the mental experiementation I did once I got thinking "what would I put cork on?"

The results are not so much "oil paintings with a cork frame", but a mixture of oil and cork and frosted plexiglass that all work together in a completely new kind of art. The most interesting thing to me was that, just prior to mounting the cork, I realized that the cork surrounds I cut didn't fit the painting any old way. The markings and the character of the individual pieces of cork (as well as the color and species) affected the overall composition, and consequently, had to be rotated around the painting in order to find the right fit. Additionally, the cork surrounds are so individual in character, that they ended up being just as much a part of the whole as the painting in the center. I want people to notice the beauty of the cork as much as the painting inside. It's not about competition between a "frame and a painting", rather movement and visual interest.

In the end, it turns out that those who see this new work seem to love staring at it just as much as I enjoyed creating it, so the artist's enthusiasm lives on in the work and people are feeling it. These three "corks" as I have come to call them have all sold. But I have just updated my website to include ones that are still available. If you'd like to see some of the others - click here: Scott's Corks, or click the link to my website in the upper right corner of the blog.

Go ahead and post a comment if you'd like.
It's early September, and I must get outside!

PS - I have placed the Blog link on my website as promised in July's post. You can access the blog now directly from the website from the horizontal menu bar!

6 Years in and to "Big Sky"

2009-07-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Art Monthly - A place for me to share thoughts and wanderings as a painter.

For roughly a year I have been intending to get on the blog train. Prior to that, I was so turned off by the word "blog", I avoided any thought of creating my own. It sounds like some sort of annoying body noise that middle schoolers can make when teacher's got their back turned - "Honk", "Burrrrpp", "Blog"!

I discovered that "artmonthly" was still available with blogger.com - I was thrilled to snatch it up. It described perfectly what I was looking for and ... about how often I wanted to post. So the title of my journal is "Art Monthly - A Montana Artist's Journal". To reach my post, just bookmark:

www.artmonthly.blogspot.com.

If you would like to subscribe to automatically receive an e-mail when I publish new posts, you may do so by signing up in the top right column. Again, I'm only planning on one, maybe two posts a month so you won't be inundated! We're shooting for occasional cultural enrichment only here.

There is also a place to subscribe to feeds below the email sign-up prompt.

6 Years in and to Big Sky...

in...
Six Years ago we took the artist's leap, and relocated to Big Sky Country from the Great Northwest. It was a move we made to be closer to the places that inspire and inform my landscape paintings. While it was Summer, 2003 when we left Seattle, it doesn't seem like six years ago. Maybe all the time I've spent on the road between then and now exhibiting is deducted from my long term internal memory clock, and so the "feels like" time is 4 1/2 years or so. Regardless, we have relished our time here in Bozeman. It is so central to everything we appreciate about the Rocky Mountain West - the rivers, the mountains, family, seasons, sunshine, and trout. While we can't live everywhere in the West, we can get to all of the places we love within a day or so.

to...
Many of you who've been to Bozeman know that it is about an hour's drive to Big Sky (the ski resort town). I'm a little embarrassed to report that, until yesterday, I had never been to Big Sky proper. I've driven past the turn off to Big Sky on Hwy 191 a hundred times, and while I've shown work at galleries and shows in Big Sky, I've never actually driven the 5 extra miles to the Mountain Village, where the ski resort sits at the base of majestic Lone Peak. So, I planned a day of plein air painting that was to include my first trip to Big Sky/Lone Peak and then a drive down to Ennis, MT to paint along the Madison River. Pictured here is the aptly titled, "Six Years to Big Sky", a 6" x 8" plein air oil I completed on my trip. I haven't done plein air since last fall so it was good to get out again and back into practice.

Enjoy.

PS - the part about the trip to Ennis didn't happen as the local fly shop guy told me that winding road on my map from Big Sky to Ennis is private. That bit of info, plus our summer afternoon mountain showers were just the two excuses I needed to pack up the paints and pull on the waders. I fished the West Fork of the Gallatin and Gallatin Canyon with frequent success for 10-12 rainbows. I'm planning on getting to Ennis this afternoon for that other painting...

Also, yes, I will be adding a link from my website to artmonthly soon (soon being a relative in terms of weeks or months)!

PSS - This is my Saturday the 11th - morning update. Yesterday, I drove to Ennis to paint along the Madison River. I ended up finding this area called Ruby Creek with rock outcroppings jutting out of the hillside. The results:

"Ruby Creek Hills" 9"x12" Oil