My Year in the Paint

As I write this it is early on New Year’s Eve day – a time to look back on 2012 to review accomplishments and lessons learned. In this first part I will focus on painting side of my art.

2012 was a year of major change of life direction for me. It was the year I “retired” from my 9-5 (realistically more like 8-6+) job to devote myself full time to my art. I achieved some of my goals for the year but others are still works in progress. The first order of business before I would get into serious art making was to get the business side of this endeavor in place.

After years of treating my art business as a sole proprietorship I decided it was time to formalize it. I set up an incorporated business and went the route of incorporating federally (to  make it easy to put some big future dreams in place). Along with the basic federal incorporation, there was the paperwork of registering the business name, registering the business provincially, getting GST registration, setting up a bank account and setting up an accounting system. No one said the art business would be all about creating art.

On March 1st I set up the  LinkedIn group: The Business of Being a Canadian Artist as a forum for Canadian artist to network and share information about the uniquely Canadian aspects of being in the art business (things such as Canadian taxes, regulations, grants etc.)

Bend in the North Saskatchewan River (Twitter Art Exhibit )

By spring I started back into painting and one of my activities at the time was creating a postcard painting to contribute to the 2nd Twitter Art Exhibit in Moss, Norway [see post].

I joined the SWCA (Society of Western Canadian Artists)  and in April was juried up to Active Status with this group. Later in the year I accepted the role of Program chair with SWCA for 2013.

In March I was accepted as a full member of the ASA (Alberta Society  of Artists). I subsequently made the trip down to Calgary in early May to attend the ASA’s Annual General Meeting and banquet where new members were introduced.

As spring arrived I got excited about getting back to plein air painting and worked on putting together gear that would enable me to head out painting on my mountain bike [see this blog post for more of the story]. Alas I did not end op doing that much in 2012 but there’s always next year.

Self-portrait with Trumpet

At this time of year I was studying the work of Gerhard Richter and tried my hand at a self-portrait in (one of) his style(s).

Harcourt Fundraiser donations

May was also the time of the Harcourt House fundraising silent auction. I donated a couple of small paintings to this event.

Pedway (in Harcourt House show)

In June, I participated  the Harcourt House members show with two of my paintings.

Overwhelmed (in SWCA Group show)

Also in June I  had a couple of my paintings in the SWCA group show at the Misericordia Hospital.

I was back at the Misericordia Hospital in July with a solo show  featuring 42 of my paintings (including abstracts and landscapes spanning my entire career). This exhibition ran from July 8 to August 18th. [see video of show]

In mid-July I participated in my first Whyte Avenue Art Walk. in my home city, Edmonton. [click here to see my Facebook photos from this event]. There was a fair bit of planning (and learning) involved with the logistics of participating in an outdoor fair. The event itself was interesting as I met all kinds of people who attended the event. I didn’t find the event that productive for sales or exposure but I do want to go back and do it again next year.

Storm Approaches (Studio work from Red Deer plein air)

The first week of August I was at Red Deer College for the Series 2012 “Color in the Landscape” course with Dave More. This was my second year in a row taking this course and it was just as enjoyable and valuable as it was the first time. I always enjoy taking a week-long course in the long-running summer arts Series put on by the college.

2012-08-01 (first of abstract series begun in Aug 2012)

In August I began a new series of larger (90 by 120 cm, 3’x4′) abstracts in acrylics, inspired by the work of American abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still.

In September it was back to plein air landscape painting, when I attended the Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA) painting workshop on Salt Spring Island (British Columbia, Canada). A series of blog posts describing that week begins here.

The latter part of 2012 were not particularly productive for painting but I did release a new calendar of my abstract paintings and in December I created the Abstract Expressionism community on Google+

The year ended with a small work (a mixed media – basically an ink drawing) for the 3rd Twitter Art Exhibit, to be held in Los Angeles in early 2013:

“Snowy Slope” for Twitter Art Exhibit 3

Watch for a subsequent post reviewing my photographic art activities in 2012.

2012/12/31 | Categories: painting, Randall Talbot | 3 Comments