Works in Progress, November 2011: Part Five

progress as of last night...

Welcome to this week's final installment of Works in Progress.  In my head you just heard that from a TV announcer.  Thought you should know.

This is the painting I've been working on the most this week.  I may even be getting a little obsessive about it. 

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about what it means until it's finished, but do want to point out that this piece is the first painting in which I'm combining my poured techniques, cartoon characters and the brushwork I started bringing back into my work in Moonlit Room.  I can't think of any other way to express how good this feels other than to simply finish the piece, so you can expect an update about this one relatively soon.

I want to take this opportunity to give a little shout out (that TV announcer you heard earlier is now a radio DJ, by the way) to Suzanne Schultz over at Canvas Fine Arts.  Suzanne is an artists' representative with whom I signed about a month or so ago.  I don't know if there's really a causal relationship between the two things, but since I've handed over the reins of promotion to her, I've been painting so much I can barely keep up with myself.  It's a very freeing feeling to know that there's someone working on getting my work seen so I can focus on art making.  She's already booked me at two shows and pointed me at a few contests to help build my CV, not to mention given me plenty of concrete, salient advice on how to move toward making an actual living as an artist.

Years ago, when I was last actively promoting the work myself, I often did shows under the name Vox Ominous, dressed as a vampire, complete with white contact lenses and pointy ears or as an evil clown.  I often wore stilts to be 8 feet tall and would make it interesting with a certain amount of drunkeness.  It was exhausting.  And ridiculous, really- the costumes and makeup had nothing to do with the art.  So yeah, it feels good to finally, once and for all, lay the fucking clown to rest.