Image for Sale Gallery Talk, Searching for Substance & the P-Diddy of Art

Above, please find some pics from the FPAC Gallery’s Artists Discussion for the Image for Sale show taken yesterday afternoon. Had a good crowd, many from Artists for Humanity, and great discussion about the works.

The pictures above are of Jeffrey P. Heyne, Sylvie Agudelo and yours truly.

Of course, as one of the artists/speakers it is always strange to discuss your visual art. There is this process of trying to get to something but not quite explaining it right. Basically, if you could explain it better you wouldn’t have had to paint the painting— or something like that. But it was great fun to be in the space again with so many people discussing the work and their responses.

Thank you to Jess Hyatt for the picture taking.

In other news, the buzz at the gallery yesterday was a review of the Image for Sale show by Boston Globe correspondent Cate McQuaid that appeared in Thursday’s newspaper.

I came home and looked it up online (http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2007/08/09/brilliant_drafting_shines_in_groszs_smaller_works/).

The small review, under “Image Consciousness” isn’t so kind to my work. The best line comes at the end:

“With so much glitz, even more substance is required.”

If you read between the lines, Cate McQuaid, in a few short strokes of the keyboard, has proclaimed me the P-Diddy of art. How can one not be reminded of the P-Diddy/Nas anthem “Hate me Now” at a moment like this?

In fairness, I think she was too harsh with Sylvie’s work, which is pretty wonderful.

Also, in fairness, she was very positive about Jeffrey’s— which is great work. So, she went at least 1 for 2.

As for me? I was tempted to give up painting forever, but as P-Diddy so eloquently puts it:

“You can hate me now / but I won’t stop now” (and of course the best part is when he says “can’t stop” “won’t stop” after each line)…

(see
http://617midway.blogspot.com/2007/05/music-video-nas-featuring-p-diddy-hate.html)

I am also reminded of the clip in the movie Singles where the band “Citizen Dick,” as headed by front man Matt Dillon and backed by Pearl Jam cameos, stumbles upon a review of their work.

See the clip from YouTube below.

"This weekend, we rock Portland."