Cedar Lee June 22nd, 2009

Robert Genn is a Canadian landscape painter who sends out a twice-weekly email newsletter to thousands of artists all around the world. He’s about 40 years older than me, so he has a lot of wisdom to rub off on me. His good attitudes about the practice of art and life in general have been such an inspiration to me since I subscribed to his letters a couple of years ago.

You can check out Robert Genn’s letters and subscribe to get them in your email at painterskeys.com.

In one of his recent letters, Robert Genn says, “Lone workers as we tend to be, the Twice-Weekly Letters may be simply a way to remind us we are not alone.” This observation got me thinking about how artists support each other and teach each other now in ways that weren’t possible before the Internet.

Another resource I like to tell people about is WetCanvas.com, the largest online discussion forum for artists. It’s a huge repository of information, and a great place to go to share with other artists about technique in every medium, art business practices, and anything you can think of that applies to artists. I spent a lot of time there a couple years ago. I’m not active on WetCanvas anymore, but occasionally I’ll go there when I have a question, and I always find answers.

Although Myspace has been in decline since Facebook became wildly popular this year, Myspace has allowed me to befriend many painters, sculptors, photographers, jewelers, potters, woodworkers, you name it, with staggering amounts of talent. The variety of incredible artwork to be found on Myspace will astound you–if you have time, go to my Myspace page, Myspace.com/CedarLee and browse through my friends list there. I’ve recently started meeting a lot of fellow artists on Facebook and Twitter too.

And there seems to be an infinite number of artists in the blogosphere–I’ve encountered so many amazing people by stumbling on their blogs or by them finding mine. There are simply too many artists out there freely sharing their work and their thoughts about art to ever keep up with.

Seeing all this creativity and the success of others definitely keeps me humble and inspired to be better. It’s good to know that for any problem I’m struggling with in my work or in my career, there are nice people out there who have experience and are generous with their time and knowledge if I get stuck.

At the same time, I get messages all the time from artists who watch my videos on YouTube or who came across my website and are looking for guidance. I remember how clueless I felt when I was just starting out, and knew little more than that I wanted to be an artist.  It’s surprisingly fulfilling–gives me a warm fuzzy feeling–every time I’m able to help someone out who needs encouragement or just needs to be pointed in a direction.

Some of my online acquaintances have even led to real friendships in the real world!

I’m not sure where I’m going with all this, but I figured people who are not part of this worldwide community of online artists may not know how much we lean on each other, so I wanted to call attention to the “brotherhood and sisterhood of artists.”  It’s one of the things I love most about my chosen profession.

I’ll never run out of things to learn and things to teach.  The willingness of artists to connect with each other makes a lot of things possible.

• General Ramblings About Art, Creativity, Philosophy , Information for Artists & Art Lovers , Social Networking
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Cedar Lee January 30th, 2009

If you’re on Facebook and haven’t seen it yet, I’ve finally gotten my Art By Cedar Facebook Fan Page up and running! If you enjoy my paintings of trees, flowers, and cosmic universe scenes, I invite you to visit the page and join: Click here.

Today I came across some musings I had written to myself in one of my journals:

Perfect confidence is a sign of the mediocre.  Talent comes not from some miraculous mysterious power but from an attitude of tenacity and strength.  It’s easy to give up when we fail.  Artists don’t give up–they do it again, but better–then again.  And again.  It’s a neverending process.  Good art is just a residual effect of being a good artist, which means never giving up–constantly questioning, reaching and striving.

I think I was warning myself never to become complacent, and reminding myself of the importance of hard work.

What do you think about this?  When it comes to a person’s success in whatever field of work s/he has chosen, (not limited to artistic endeavors) how important is natural talent or inclination vs. hard work and perseverance?  Do you think it takes equal amounts of both to do something well, or is one more important than the other?

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Cedar Lee November 7th, 2008

What is the meaning of art?  Click here to read my answer!

Also, 3 Things:

• First: I am competing for a major local arts award and I could use your vote!

The Baker Artists Awards celebrate Baltimore’s artists on the Web with an ongoing exhibition of its diverse artistic practice, and the Mary Sawyer Baker Prize will establish Baltimore’s reputation as a creatively rich and vital place to live with a civic commitment to value its individual artists.

Please take a minute to visit my work on the Baker Artist Awards web site. As a Baltimore artist, I am eligible to win the significant Mary Sawyers Baker Prize or maybe bragging rights as Baltimore’s Choice.  Please go to the site and sign up for an account so you can vote for me!  (Click “Vote for Cedar Lee” on the right of my profile page.)

Click:

http://www.bakerartistawards.org/nomination/view/cedar_lee

• Second: Don’t forget to get your 2009 Art By Cedar calendars! The Christmas decorations are up in the stores, which means the holiday shopping season is officially upon us. Calendars are both beautiful and practical, so they make nice gifts for family and friends…and my calendars are made in USA and support small business (mine!) So you can’t go wrong.

This year I have 2 options, “Cats & Dogs” and “Trees.” I ordered copies for myself and I assure you they are high quality and look great. The pages are thick and glossy and the colors are vivid. Last year’s calendars were cool, but these are definitely a step up!

Cats & Dogs

$19.99

Trees

$22.99

I can’t believe it’s November already. Before we know it, we’ll be in December with 2009 fast approaching!

• Third: I would just like to say that I’m looking forward to seeing what President-Elect Obama’s future administration will do for this country.  I hope and believe the future holds good things for us!

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Cedar Lee January 21st, 2008

I know I haven’t been keeping in touch the past couple of weeks–I’m just in a state of flux.

I’m thinking about maybe becoming a “daily painter.” There is a whole community of daily painters online–artists who complete a small painting each day and post a picture of it online for sale the same day. I don’t know if I could do this–I guess the idea isn’t so scary if I’m working on a small scale, so I might try it and see how it goes. It would be cool to have something new to show everyone every day. Right now it’s just an idea that I’m entertaining.

If I become a daily painter, I’ll have to make sure I still have time to simultaneously work on my larger paintings. Do you remember the 2 landscapes I did last month, on multiple panels? I’m continuing on that idea of multiple panels. I have lots of ideas but I need to work on actualizing the things floating around in my mind. I’m feeling generally challenged and frustrated, like I’m in a total rut. I’ve done this long enough to realize that my “rut” is probably a sign of artistic growth, and I need to push through to the other side, where my art will eventually be richer in meaning and more polished in execution.

We’re in the process of moving all our clothes, furniture, etc. out of the bedroom so we can paint the walls a steely blue, install new baseboards, outlets and switches. We’re considering knocking all the shelves out of our closets and replacing them with large wardrobes. I’m going to paint over the ceiling mural above our bed:

and maybe replace it with a cooler ceiling mural–I’m not sure yet.

We bought our house when I was 20–I was recently looking at pictures from the time when we had just moved in. It’s amazing how drastically our home has improved over the past 6 years. I’m glad we’re the type of people that take a hundred photographs of every mundane detail of our lives. It makes it really obvious how much progress happens through the simple passage of time. Sometimes I need that reminder that if I just keep working, good things will definitely happen.

For example, here is what my “studio” looked like in 2001. (I’m not kidding.)

And here is my studio today!

I’ve started my belly dancing classes and I’m kind of excited about it. I bought 2 jingly coin-belt hip scarves on eBay, one black and one crimson. They’re not here yet. I can’t say I’m anything close to graceful at this point, because we’ve only had one class and we’re just learning how to isolate certain muscle groups and control the movements of our ankles, knees, and hips. But even if I never get good at it, it’s still fun.

I’m making a list of galleries I want to check out as possibilities for new places to sell my work in the coming year.

We decided to take our dog to a holistic vet. He told us a lot of things that I already knew intuitively, but needed to hear from someone knowledgeable. Now I feel much more confident about taking good care of my dog. He advised us to change her diet, so now instead of dog food, she eats mostly free-range chicken, beans, rice and veggies. She eats better than a lot of people I know! We’ve only been doing this for a little more than a week. The vet says it will help her maintain a healthy weight, give her more energy and a shiny coat, improve her overall health and extend her life by years. She sure is happy at dinnertime these days.

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Cedar Lee July 30th, 2007

Here’s a new painting for you:
Sailboats at Sunset
18″ x 36″ Oil on Canvas

It’s at times like these I wish I were a better writer. I’ve been undergoing a transformation that is hard to describe. There is an amorphous blob of energy building…in my mind? my body? (somewhere, it’s hard to say…maybe in my spirit, whatever that is.) This blob of energy is hard to define, but I know I’ve never quite felt anything like it in my life, and I know it is an impetus to action. And I know I am definitely going to use it as soon as I figure out what to do with it.

Maybe it will come out through my artwork, or maybe in other areas of my life. Maybe I’m using it already just by talking about it. It is big and it is positive! Maybe what I’m describing is just HOPE, plain and simple.

If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s worth watching, and it touches on this thing that has been happening inside me:
(It’s a video, about 5 minutes long.)
http://theshiftmovie.com/index2.html

Also, if you have not seen the movie The U.S. vs. John Lennon, I recommend it. If you’re just a little bit older than me, you were there when John Lennon was alive. When he died, I was a 6-week-old fetus in the womb.

Ever since I was a teenager I have envied the previous generation for having things like John Lennon. When compared to the previous generation, I think my generation is just as angry about war and injustice and all the evil things we see and hear about, and I think we’re just as good and we want good changes to happen just as much.

The difference is, we have somehow been conditioned to believe there is nothing we can do, and we don’t seem to have many people like John Lennon to remind us that feelings of anger and futility just exacerbate the problem, and that channeling our energy constructively, even if it doesn’t result in direct change (which it can) is still a lot better than feeling hopeless all the time.

Feelings of hopelessness have been festering inside me for years, fueled every time I hear about or see lives destroyed for no reason, the environment damaged for greed, people in power stepping on everyone else to get ahead–and on a smaller, more localized level, people around me full of hatred, disgust and apathy, fighting with each other over petty differences.

Ignorance, violence, greed and hatred–nasty, terrible things are everywhere I look, and it’s easy to get into the habit of believing that I’m just an ordinary person and there’s nothing I can do about any of it. But I am now starting to believe that ordinary people can make real changes by doing ordinary things. These things can be as simple as changing our attitudes or encouraging others to be positive. It can be as simple as recognizing that you have a voice and deciding to use it.

Check out this website: http://www.gratefulness.org/p/worldpeace.cfm

I don’t know specifically how to help create world peace, preserve our Earth, and eliminate inequality, but I know that I want to, and I know I’m not alone. Maybe humanity is not doomed after all.

If none of this blog resonates with you, then I’m probably just doing a poor job of saying it, because this desire for change is so strong in me and so evident in a lot of the people I know.

You can do something positive today, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential. You have probably seen this before (it’s been emailed back and forth for the last decade) but it doesn’t hurt to read it again: The Global Village

• General Ramblings About Art, Creativity, Philosophy , New Works: Nature & Misc.
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Cedar Lee July 23rd, 2007

Ugh. Bleh. Today I am sick with a sore throat/cold and I have that weird sluggish feeling where my body is taken over and it’s like I’m detached from myself and observing everything from some distance. I don’t feel like doing anything but lying on the couch buried in a mound of blankets and pillows, watching movies all day while my Mama keeps the ginger tea and cinnamon toast coming. If only…

I am also sunburned at the moment so my skin is burning hot, which I think exacerbates that feverish detached feeling.

I went to the beach yesterday with friends…to Assateague Island. We saw wild ponies. We grilled chicken hot dogs, corn on the cob, and chunks of veggies and paneer (Indian cheese) on skewers. The waves on the beach were pretty raucous, and we got hammered by them something fierce when we braved the water. My dog was scared by the waves (with good reason) but still made many valiant attempts to take them on. I lay on the beach reading my novel in the sun for hours, which was lovely and relaxing and pleasant, but because I was kind of out of it from being sick, I forgot to apply sunscreen and got broiled.

My 26th birthday is tomorrow. I’m not celebrating it till this weekend though…my husband and some friends are taking me camping all weekend. I am really excited about that.

Then the weekend after, I am going whitewater rafting. And the week after that I’ll be going to the Outer Banks for a family reunion. I’m meeting with a new gallery next week. This summer is such a whirlwind that I can hardly keep it straight.

As far as my painting, I am working on a few themes at once right now. In order to stay at least somewhat focused/productive, I have made a very cursory list of things that inspire me. The idea is to remember to keep coming back to these things, thinking about them, and using them whenever I get stuck, which is quite often.

In no particular order:

The Sun, the Moon, the Stars
Dawn & Dusk: Night vs. Day
Changing Light
Growth: Upwards & Outwards
Birth, Death, Cycles
Flying & Things that Fly
Breath, Wind, Inhalation/Exhalation
Backlighting & Contrast
Clouds
Rolling Waves (in Air, Water, Foliage, & Topography)
Images of Abundance, Sexuality, Fertility, Fullness & Joy
Solitude
Feminine Mystery
Independence & Strength
Boldness & Audacity
Peace vs. Conflict
Storms
Circles
Spears & other Pointy Shapes
Sources of Life, Life Force (Energy/Mother Nature)
Emotive Color Schemes
Vastness

This is of course an extremely incomplete and not well-thought-out list, but I thought I would share it with you to give you a glimpse of where my art comes from and what makes me tick.

I have found that if I successfully focus on one or more of these themes while making a painting, from the planning stage until completion of the work, I can’t fail.

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Cedar Lee April 10th, 2007

Lots and lots of things are going on in my life right now. If you are one of the lucky people subscribed to my blog, you’ll have maybe noticed this. Here are a few of the things happening this week:

Finished another portrait commission: a beautiful red-headed lass by the name of Zoe Baumgartner Brown.

Zoe
16 x 12″ Acrylic on Canvas

We are making huge progress on our kitchen remodeling! The countertops were installed yesterday. We still have to hook up the plumbing, install new electric sockets, do all the tiling, baseboards, and other trim work, install a few more components on the cabinets, put shelves in the pantry, and other minor cosmetic things. Then we can set up the fridge and the range and start moving our dishes, food, small appliances, etc. back in! So there are still a few more weeks till we’re back to normal, but the end is in sight.
Click here to see photos!

We are throwing away our old sofa! It’s ancient, has been through a lot, and is really quite disgusting if you look closely. But I’m not one to waste, so I decided to take some of the old cushions and build a tiny dog sofa out of them for Clara. She loves it!

I know everyone thinks their own pets are cuter than everybody else’s, but come on, really. Clara’s cuteness can just be too much sometimes.

Just one more thing I want to share with you today. If you’re not an artist, this may help you understand some of what goes on inside us. I recently posed this question to some of my artist friends:

It seems to me that most of the time, getting to the point where I decide to paint and actually making myself START something is like, SO much harder than the actual painting part. Painting is easy once I start.

The exception to this rule would be when I’m in a creative frenzy and completely excited and inspired, in which case it’s easy to start painting….this does happen to me, but only occasionally.

It seems like I generally put as much or more effort into thinking/dreaming about what I’ll paint, and analyzing the possibilities, than I put into the part where I’m actually applying paint to the canvas.

Any of my painter friends ever feel this way too?

Here are a few of the responses I received:

Figuring out what to do, planning/sketching, takes just as long as really completing it! A lot of planning, time, and energy goes into the composition and details so it comes out looking polished in the end.

I sometimes find myself spending more time looking at what inspires me to paint than the actual process of painting. I have to kind of kick myself in the butt and tell myself to just get down to my studio and paint and stop thinking about everything I want to paint.
When I do get in the mode of painting though, everything is good and usually amazing things are happening. I just need to stay focused more on bodies of work and not jump around so much between so many mediums and things that interest me. I sometimes feel that I’m a young boy again and the world is my candy store. Completely overwhelming, in a good way though.

I keep a large file box of inspirational/reference pictures…magazine pictures, greeting cards, wrapping paper, old calendars, my own photos. When I am stuck I browse through my box and can usually find some element that will spark my interest. Most often I will find an element in several pictures that come together as a new concept. I am convinced the act of daily painting will ultimately bring out “our best” in painting. So, I have recently committed to the act of daily painting or drawing. (Most of which nobody will ever see.) The more I paint the easier it is to get started on the next …then LIFE throws me an interruption and I get all rusty and have to START again. I think that is the way it is supposed to be.

I spend hours and days stressing and beating myself up over starting a painting. For some reason it feels like the most difficult thing ever to just begin the damn painting. And it seems like at the most inconvenient times (like when I’m at work) is when I actually feel motivated enough to create something. It truly kills me, especially when I have nothing else to do and I feel like I should be spending all of my time creating art.

• General Ramblings About Art, Creativity, Philosophy , Home Improvement , New Works: Portraiture , Pets
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Cedar Lee January 26th, 2007

Here’s another portrait: Kenna. This one was challenging at times, but I think I’m pleased with it.

The reference photo:

The painting:

This painting is 16″ x 12″. I’ve been doing smaller portraits lately. (Which is probably a good thing, since I was getting out of hand, painting enormous heads on enormous canvases. In one of my portraits, the person’s face was 27″ tall. Sheesh.) But to go along with my shift towards sanity in portrait-painting, I had to get some tiny paintbrushes, of course. I have 5 new paintbrushes with nearly microscopic bristles, and I’m really excited about them.

My friend and mentor Ron Ogle, who has generously given me guidance for years, sent me this advice in an email:

Have you considered TONING your white canvases – with, say, 2 parts yellow ochre and one part ‘light red?’ -thereby, as did Rembrandt, establishing middle flesh tones – before painting- which helps one get an even skin tone and, with practice, makes for more efficient painting. [[As if you need to paint faster...]] Where the toned canvas is close enough to desired flesh color it is left unpainted…. [ SEE REMBRANDT. FOREVER LOOK TO REMBRANDT. ]

In the past, I have experimented with toning my canvas before painting, and with portraits especially, I have noticed that it can be helpful. I think I’m going to do that from now on, and I was thinking that if I could figure out a persons average skin tone and use that as my starting point, it’d help even more. Then I wouldn’t have to continually mix the same color.

I’m pretty good at color mixing, but even so, it’s can be really hard to get skin tones exactly right. People have all kinds of weird colors in their skin that you wouldn’t expect…lime green, neon blue, all shades of purple, yellow, cool gray, warm gray, you name it. If you take it just a little too far with one of these intense colors, you end up with mayhem: an otherwise beautiful woman with a bright orange blotch on her cheek, or an unsightly green moustache, or a sickly pallor to her skin. But if you get it just right, with that vivid color incorporated in a subtle way, you get magic. Like realism but just a little better.

I’ve been thinking that toning my canvas might allow me to incorporate such colors while still keeping them in check, as I’d have that nice even skin tone to compare other colors with as I paint.

So I’m painting my next portrait on a toned canvas:

People have expressed interest in seeing more photos of my studio. It is after all, where I spend most of my life lately, so I figured I would share this lovely view of the wall that holds my excellent shelves. They have been invaluable in helping me stay organized, and it it’s possible to feel something as strong as love for a shelf, I would say that I love them.

Notice also my lucky bamboo. It makes me happy daily. I am finding that simple little things like this incorporated in my studio make it a much nicer work environment.

• Art Studio , General Ramblings About Art, Creativity, Philosophy , New Works: Portraiture
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Cedar Lee January 16th, 2007

The Poets & Painters event on Saturday night was a success! I met a few other working painters in my area and made some new friends and valuable contacts. It was a night of poetry and music, and my senses were overloaded even during the parts when I was not painting on stage.

As for the painting part, I felt like I really had no idea what I was doing, but on the upside, this freed me to experiment. At times it was really challenging–how do you take a piece of music that is going so fast you can’t keep track of the lyrics, or a poem that covers very abstract ideas, and use that input as inspiration for a painting, as you are listening to it?

Me, listening hard:

Some of the time, visuals popped into my head as I listened to the performers, and I just went with that, attempting to paint what I saw in my head. Whenever I drew a blank, I just tried to paint how I was feeling, by use of certain colors or brushstrokes (for example, frenetic vs. calm energy, passion vs. sadness, etc.) I was working under time constraints–the rules said I had to start a new painting every time a new poem or song began, and this gave me literally less than 5 minutes to work on most of the paintings. This yielded some interesting results–some paintings that were very uncharacteristic of my usual style, and some that felt more like doodles to me than completed artworks.

But the crowd was really excited to see me paint.  I got lots of applause, which made my heart flutter! I sold 2 of the pieces I made that night, and all-in-all, it was a lot of fun. I will probably do it again.

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed this week. My husband has a cold, and I’ve been trying to keep him supplied with medicine, juice, soup and hugs. My dog threw up everything she ate yesterday and hasn’t eaten yet today, and I’m worried about her. I’ve got a huge pile of paperwork waiting on my desk, and I’m trying to keep up with getting orders for posters out quickly. I have 10 portrait commissions lined up at the moment, for which I am so truly grateful, but as you must know if you too are a busy person, being swamped with business sometimes makes you feel frazzled!

I am looking forward to the springtime!  I just can’t get it off my mind. I’m probably affected by spring fever more than anyone I know–I get it bad, starting at the beginning of winter, and lasting all through spring almost until summer. My dreams lately are filled with things like long days spent outdoors, warm breezes, twittering birds, and healthy little buds and shoots popping out of trees and dirt. Every year, the springtime jump-starts my creative energy, filling my mind with imagery and great ideas for paintings.

Every year, I never even realize quite how dead I was feeling all winter, until the springtime makes me feel like I’m coming back to life. Maybe you can relate? Maybe I’m just being melodramatic. *sigh* (Silly melodramatic artists!)

Here is a peek at what’s going on in my studio today:

• Art Career Happenings , Art Studio , General Ramblings About Art, Creativity, Philosophy , Life
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