jamison harper art

2009-11-22T15:51:00.000-06:00

The idea that influenced this creation is multi-leveled, so I hope that I can explain it clearly.

First, I feel that our society is becoming increasingly polarized and that this is epitomized in our political camps. Second, due to this polarization, ideals are increasingly scrutinized to become hyperbolic. The idea in hyperbole is then so far from reality, that between the two opposites, no common ground can be found. I find this sort of discourse within the political community especially divisive and ostracizing to those of us intended to be represented by these individuals. Representing this visually we have the figure being tossed about by the waves of this discourse. Each “side” represents the other as potentially fatal and clearly making the “wrong” decision would cause him to drown.

Third, faith. Outside of the political realm, there is a truth to this that exists in faith. The individual has the choice to accept the truth of the gospel, or be deceived into taking another path. This is broken down simply into sin and righteousness. The same techniques that cause political misguiding and confusion in the effort to sway one to a given side are just as prevalent in this battle as well. However, even though we are unable to stand fully on the side of righteousness, we are aware of its truth through Christ. Visually, I prefer to represent this in a more ambiguous way, but suffice it to say that the idea of sin versus righteousness is clearly involved in the thought process behind the work.

THE SHOW - this saturday

2009-10-01T10:25:00.003-05:00

i'm excited to show some new pieces in THE SHOW this saturday at woodrow hall with the birmingham art collective.

artwalk was a really fun experience for me, and i was honored to receive a judge's mention. it has been a bit of a whirlwind getting everything ready for this upcoming show, though, as there won't be much overlap in what i showed at artwalk. the emphasis for THE SHOW is pen & ink illustrative drawings and posters.

"walking city"

"walking city" -- as well as other posters and drawings -- will be for sale at the show.

hope to see you there!

walking house

2009-09-10T00:00:00.001-05:00

i've got the finishing touches done for Artwalk this weekend. the following print will be available for sale. hope to see you there!

walking house - 8" x 10"

Artwalk

2009-09-04T18:48:00.005-05:00

Artwalk will be September 11-12 this year, and I will have the pleasure of exhibiting some of my work there. I will be leaning more heavily on my fine art pieces but have embraced a healthy variety of styles to display. All of my work for Artwalk will be drawings and I will be showing at the Lindsey Office Furniture store on the Morris Avenue entrance. Walk in, and I will be sitting right there! I'd love to have some visitors! I will have a few prints of the drawing below available for sale...

Who am I again?

2009-08-15T12:17:00.003-05:00

As the date between posts well indicates, time has been a precious commodity to me lately. Who knew that having a child would take up so much time!

With that being said, I made an interesting connection in my time/work relationship with another artist of my namesake, Charley Harper.

From Charley Harper's An Illustrated Life

source: http://mmanion.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/charley-harper/

As if the beautiful, geometric simplicity and intricacy of his work wasn’t enough to draw me in, his personal history as an artist surely was. I was fascinated to discover that (much to the similarity of my recent projects) Charley Harper began his artistic career as a photo-realist. He struggled to make ends meet as a realist and continued to struggle with the best way to channel his efforts until being drafted into the army. In the army Charley describes learning to draw quickly in the trenches ducking the cover of enemy fire. Needless to say, he didn’t have the time to embark on detail rich, time consuming projects under such circumstances, and thus, his style evolved. He began to simplify his approach and adopted this evolution into his professional work once returning home. Viola!

So as Isaiah’s schedule prevents me from committing to time intensive projects, I, too, had begun to experiment with how to make projects fit my time constraints. Discovering that someone else working through similar circumstances achieved such great results was reassuring. However, I cannot boast the same level of success as Charley in my personal evolution! At least here is a picture from part of the process:

a poster for an upcoming handwritten letters show...

library excursion update

2009-06-22T18:19:00.004-05:00

So, my most recent check-outs from the library included a great book discussing the techniques of famous painters and David Hockney’s book exploring the use of lenses (to make more accurate renderings) by the old masters. Reading both of these books together dramatically shifted my appreciation for what painters were doing. Ultimately, it made me redefine my own definition of “artist” -- separating art from the business of art. Clearly, there are artists who approach art from the perspective of art as an evolving conversation, using it as a voice within this conversation; and there are artists who have a technical skill and use their skill to run a business. Van Gogh was an artist of the first nature, Bouguereau was of the second. What reading these books uncovered for me was the difference between the two.

Thinking about art as a dialogue, and understanding what motivates departures from established styles pulled on my own artistic leanings. I re-studied the work of the mannerism painters as they broke ranks from the renaissance masters. Their proportions were off, their colors were atypical, and they created their art more from their imaginations -- as opposed to the heavy modeling employed by their predecessors. So I broke ranks from my stuffy, detailed, labor intensive, high-rendered drawings and let my imagination take over!! I started sketching quick, gestural forms, carving figures out of the lines, exaggerating the figure!!… then working it back up… then adding some shading….then correcting the figure…then… WAIT. What am I doing?!

Welcome to the frustrations of my art director, Tammy. I get excited by art. I study painting and I dream of painting. I study mannerists and naturalists and want to throw technique out the window for the sheer JOY of art. I start combining all of these things and going crazy with IDEAS. But then when it comes back to the practical side of realizing these ideas… I fall back on what I am comfortable with. I like to draw. I do not LIKE to paint. And the idea of art vs. business comes to my mind. In my mind, art to be taken seriously must be done in paint. And although Tammy will re-assure me to the contrary, I realize I still haven’t convinced myself….yet.

prayer: a piece in the works from the aftermath of my latest library excursion

laurel and pete

2009-05-21T15:18:00.003-05:00

i'm excited about delivering this commissioned conte piece tonight...!

finishing projects, beginning new ones

2009-04-27T15:46:00.005-05:00

I have now finished the portrait of Tammy, submitted my application to Artwalk, and lined up my next three projects. I'm excited!

This piece was based on a photograph taken by the amazing Cary Norton.

chuck close

2009-04-27T09:11:00.006-05:00

With the initiation of this blog and diving into more time intensive art projects, I swung by the library to get some motivational reading material. I wikipedia-ed (?) an article on portraiture and compiled a list of artists to study and decided to start modern and work my way back.

First on my list was Chuck Close.

his 1968 self-portrait

I'm really still digesting Close's work even though I have been familiar with him for over ten years now. What is interesting here are probably the similarities (and great differences) in our work. I would say to the untrained art appreciator, that our styles and approaches are very similar, however our underlying motivation for portraits are polar opposites. Chuck Close was a revolutionary artist, not just for what he created, but for what he overcame. Personal disabilities throughout his life shaped how he painted. I have a great appreciation for what he was able to do in spite of those limitations. His approach however, stems more from a rebellion to the art of the day which happened to be during the peak of abstract expressionism. So how does one counter abstract expressionism... with realism, of course. The timing was right for him to re-introduce representational works, but what made him successful was his acutely academic reasoning behind it, and his ability to assimilate the natural progression of innovative artistic thought prevalent in that time to his approach. He wasn't simply painting realistic portraits to be contrarianistic, he was making a much more specific commentary on perceptions and interpretations of mechanical processes and the way they shape how we read visual images. This is related more specifically in his work to photography and the way it shapes our understanding of two dimensional data. This may sound boring, but it resonated affectionately with artists of the time.

his self-portrait 1997

I loosely quote one curator's response to Close: "He's so smart, why is he making these ridiculous paintings?" Academically speaking, Close had considered every element of his process, product, and how it should be interpreted and viewed so thoroughly, that he almost justified his own credibility despite what he may have produced. The fact that paintings with this amount of precision and on this scale had never been attempted before is secondary to how he decided to approach them to begin with.

In relationship to my own work, I feel that my interest started from a technical standpoint, and is evolving into one more interested in creating a successful portrait, ie making a portrait that the subject will appreciate. I'm trying hard to avoid things now such as, "Do I really look like that? Is my [body part] really that big, small, round, etc" and less interested in the reaction to the technical precision. I think my work is more successful when striving for high rendering, however that is more of the path (that works well for me) to get to a final result rather than an end result on its own.

Even though I may still have mixed reactions to his work, the goal of motivating me to continue my own work by researching Chuck Close was a success.

artwalk submission

2009-04-10T17:39:00.004-05:00

i'm submitting to artwalk for the first time ever. i'm even going to make the early deadline!

here are the pieces i'm submitting. two graphite pieces...

and one piece in conte.

here is the "artist statement" --

I once read an article discussing Jasper Johns' application of Formalism in his paintings. The article suggested that his reoccurring use of targets, or stencils, simply acted as a guide, allowing him to concentrate on the formal application of paint on a particular surface. I feel this sentiment resonates through my portraits as well. I scale an image into a premeasured area and freehand the details within that area to create my stencil. Then I begin the application of the medium -- the building and layering, crosshatching, smoothing, reworking and finishing.

My graphite pieces begin with a 3H or 2H pencil and are built by gradually layering in all gradients up to 6B. There are about fourteen different pencils that I regularly use on any given piece. Each pencil has its own purpose, whether it is to capture a tone or shadow or to create a different texture.

The conte pieces are explorations in light and dark. They also represent a contrasting approach to the graphite drawings. I enjoy the excessive weight of the line in conte and will usually work from the dark, saturated lines, blending them out into the lightest areas.

more to come when i have some more time...

an old sketch

2009-03-31T15:53:00.004-05:00

i found an old pen & ink (and red colored pencil) sketch. i call it "luke a like" because, unintentionally, it turned out looking like luke.

it's been a busy week, but i'm making progress on that photo-realistic piece. tammy and i are working towards the early artwalk deadline coming up in a couple of weeks.

workspace

2009-03-19T21:31:00.003-05:00

here's a snapshot of where i do most of my work: the art table. it's pretty much a table with some pencils and pens. this is also a peek at what i'm currently working on.

business cards

2009-03-18T12:52:00.003-05:00

my artistic director thought i should have some new business cards, so this is what we came up with.

the piece on the card is a pencil drawing of a friend from school. one of the pieces i'm working on right now is in this photo-realistic style -- looking forward to sharing that one soon.

most recent portrait

2009-03-17T21:58:00.003-05:00

here is a piece i did for a super nice person named callie -- a friend of a friend (shout out to melissa!). melissa works with flower magazine, and callie contributed an article which tells the story about her great-grandmother, a rose bush that has traveled with the family, and well, basically i got to be involved by making this drawing. cool.

after years of frustration and struggles with illustration, i have rekindled my interest in fine art and here, i suppose, is my first nod back to the "fine arts".

i guess there is really no way to separate illustration and fine art from my future posts as i am currently working on pieces in both styles... we'll see what gets finished first.

here's a shout-out to my artistic director, tammy, at theinklingnetwork.com.

welcome!

2009-03-17T01:21:00.000-05:00

thanks for stopping by my site. i've just set it up, so there's not much here yet. hopefully that will change very soon.

in the meantime, if you'd like to contact me about commissioned artwork, just shoot me an email at jamisonharper@gmail.com.

thanks!