Am I…complicated enough to be here?

What a start, right?  Well I do want to get back to this space more often, so I think questions like these are important!  Frank and I ventured out into the bitter cold tonight to attend an art show for a fellow capoeirista and artist friend of ours, Jason Lamacraft .  It was pretty neat – held downtown at Standard nightclub (which I didn’t know existed until we were standing in front of it) and held by a collective called Raw Artists.  About twenty minutes before we were slated to leave I thought to double check the venue and caught the notice regarding dress code: cocktail attire.  Oh.  I worked from home today.  My entire outfit was Lululemon.  My hair (my unwashed hair…) was in a pony tail.  Somehow I managed to pull it together and go in there head held high.

This is where the fun starts.  The venue was all dark interiors and mood music.  No word of a lie, there was an alien in a glass box just undulating to the music in there, moving around its cage to sort of weird you out as you walked by.  I am still wondering if that was an exhibit or not.  Now, Jason’s work is some pretty incredible shtuff.  Frank bought a painting from him of the rapper Biggie – and it’s huge – six feet by three feet.  It has major presence and showcases his incredible skill with a palette knife – that’s what he uses to paint with.  He said he’d be happy to put me in contact with the coordinator of the show, there were other illustrators there, and all I could do was stammer out a not entirely confident “Oh – that would be nice…” response.

I walked through this venue, just teeming with art school grads, hipsters and older distinguished folk carrying their wine and hard alcohol with a purpose, staring at display after display of abstract and dark and in some cases downright weird art (one sort of decomposing torso thing…), and try to imagine myself as a part of the show.  Me, with my happy little fashion illustrations, and the newer pieces I’m getting into – charming architectural scenes.  I’ve thought it so many times before wandering through various art collectives – am I complicated enough to be here?  Art is so completely personal.  I’m still getting through my head and heart that I can only control what comes out of my imagination and onto paper, and once it’s done I have to let it go, off into the world, and they can decide what to do with it.  It’s funny, this complete insecurity I feel with my work.  And I’m 31 years old – I’m not exactly young and naive.

For Christmas my mom gave me these two wonderful books on drawing on location.  I discovered Urban Sketchers sometime last year and it really called to me.  That’s the sort of direction I want to head in.  And I’m learning I can actually draw pretty quickly when it feels informal – I seem to relax about it a lot more.  So here, safe little space on the internet, let me share some of my sketch book with you.  I’m trying to draw a little bit every day.  And the days that I work in the office, I really want to get out and sketch some stuff in the street – not an easy feat currently as the temperatures sit constantly between -10 and -20 degrees celsius.  Let’s just say I intend to become intimately acquainted with the Plus15 systems into and out of my building in all directions.