March 01, 2005

Foolery: who's to judge

Recently I put a large painting in a hair salon/caf�/art gallery in Halifax. It is a very beautifully designed space and the artwork is enhanced by the high ceilings, large room and spare d�cor. My painting is a three panel piece, measuring five feet high and seven feet long, a mainly yellow/peach/flesh colored painting. I called it (as part of a series of three paneled pieces) Some Like It Blue, No. 2 and when people ask me about the title, as they inevitably do, I just say �It�s not Blue.�

I have some work there along with a few other artists. One of the other artists is the man who has been copying my paintings for quite a few years. I had spoken to him about it previously and he understood that I found this upsetting. (August 13 and 30, 2004 entries.) He had called me before the exhibit to ask if I was okay with his putting a painting in the same show as mine. I thought it would be a good idea to let people see both together so that they would see the (major) differences. I find his work thinner in every sense of the word, nothing like mine as far as I am concerned, but it seems that people don�t always notice. The painting he put in the exhibit is blue.

Friday night at the opening reception for the Rodin exhibit at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, I had an interesting conversation with a woman I have known for a long time. She was a practicing artist for many years but hasn�t done anything with it in quite a while, maybe even ten years. She mentioned that she had seen my work at Fred�s. And she especially liked my blue painting. At first I thought she was making a pun on the title, but then she said she liked this one better than the other one (of mine), I knew she had been fooled.

That�s what makes horse racing!

Posted by leya at March 1, 2005 07:04 PM