Now that I've finally gotten around to having my own website up and running, it's got me thinking about what I look for in an artist's web page.Well of course there are the obvious things; load quickly, easy to use, clear categories, etc. And it has to be an artist whose work would make me want to go there in the first place. Clearly though, the playing field is not level. There are some artists who have a real knack for keeping their site interesting and fresh looking and some sites that make you wonder why the artist even bothers.
     I like websites that feature paintings, drawings, painting studies and even painting demos. I have always found the artistic process fascinating and I enjoy seeing an artists's work with "their hair down", so to speak. It takes courage for a painter to post drawings, and for me drawing is the keystone to understanding an artists work. Drawings can be mercurial and elemental and not at all like the artists paintings and yet still compelling. Painting demos are fun little over the shoulder glimpses of the artist at work.
     Scott Burdick (www.ScottBurdick.com) is an artist whose website is always fun to visit. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming, theres a lot to see, but it's very user friendly and it doesn't hit you over the head with ads for workshops or purchasing art. He clearly values drawing almost as much as painting and his work is archived going back over fifteen years. His demo page is supplanted with text explaining what he's doing or his thought process.
    Another website that i often visit is Bo Bartlett's.(www.Bobartlettart.com)
He has a lot of what Scott's site has (no demos though) but he also includes a very interesting "links " page. Links is one of the first things that I click on when I visit a site. For me it's a glimpse into the "personality" of the site. "whaddya like?, who do you know or recommend, whaddya read? etc. Bo has the type of career usually reserved for art stars with a more conceptual bent so it's interesting to read his take on things in his "reflections" page.
      Jacob Collins site (www.JacobCollinspaintings.com) is the king of the "just the facts ma'm" sites.Well organized, easy to use and beautifully photographed. He doesn't really offer much beyond that, I guess his feeling is that the work speaks for itself (it does), But still it would be nice if there was a little more insight into his thought process. He doesn't offer a links page really but one has come into being sort of by proxy. If you click on his "teaching " link and then the Grand Central Academy page it will bring you to a list of instructors with links and one link leads to another and so on.
      Aron Wiesenfeld (www.AronWiesenfeld.com) has one of the coolest artist websites going. Whoever designed his page is a genius. When you click on the "paintings" page for example, you get a row of thumbnails that instantly enlarge as you roll your cursor over them. Same thing with his drawings (which I prefer). Fast art for the "fast food generation".Well done!
      Tim Lowly (www.TimLowly.com) is the king of links. He has very generously donated a huge chunk of his net space to listing what must be over a hundred artists web pages with quick links and sometimes a thumbnail image. If you like representational art his links page is a must see. He also includes the same type of list relating to contemporary music."When does he get time to paint?".
  Other artist pages worth mentioning; Tony Ryder(www.TonyRyder.com) the best demo page-bar none, Kristine Diehl (www.kdiehl.com) good list of recommended art books, Jeffrey t. Larson (www.JeffreyTLarson.com) best menu page-slowly changing images, Juliette Aristedes (www.Aristidesarts.com) who loves classical realism more than Juliette?.
    What are things that I don't want to find on a website? Pop-ups first of all. If you can't afford the monthly fee don't have a website, plain and simple. Blurry images. A page filled with ads for traveling workshops or video demonstrations.( a small link is enough for those who are interested.) Grandiose statements; let history be the judge of your work. A page telling me how your religion has made your wonderful life possible and how theres even hope for me if I'd only see the light.
    As you can see I have a lot of things that I look for in a website that are missing from my own. (does that qualify as irony?, I can never be sure). In my defense I will say that this is a pay to play website that is a work in progress and that I hope eventually to have this webpage shaped up to my own standards. But even on this user friendly site it still involves a mind boggling  amount of work and so to those artists who do maintain their sites and make them such enjoyable places to visit I offer my sincere thanks.
    

     I guess when a viewer is looking at a still life painting they might be wondering what led the artist to paint those particular objects. They might assume that the artist threw together some objects and kept moving them around until something clicked. In my own work that happens ocassionally but not too often.
     The paintings that I make at the Atelier are of arrangements that are set up by my instructor. When I come into the studio at the beginning of a new quarter my approach is that of a hunter. Since the objects are already arranged I am looking for a composition or point of view that will inspire me. My instructor has a gift for choosing objects that go together in ways that aren't apparent to me at first but will prove meaningful over time. It's akin to painting a landscape in the sense that the objects and the arrangement are a given, it's the point of view and the perception of the light that will bring the painting together. My instructors choices and sensibility are quite different from my own which is good because it forces me to paint outside of my comfort zone; to think outside the box. One of the arrangements that rather suprised me was to find a fire engine red cooking pot placed on a rusty red cloth with a huge green bottle in the background. I thought "this can't work!". It turned out to be one of my better paintings.
      My own still life compositions usually come tohether in one of two ways. I have an idea in my head and I make a series of sketches. This could go on for weeks or even years. When I feel I have something that will work I then search for objects close to my original vision. Of course there will always be some change that takes place because reality rarely fits the mold of my little brainstorms.
     The other way that a painting will come together is that there will be an object that is very familiar to me and that I've had around for a while and it will catch me off guard; light falling on it at a particular time, juxtaposition with other objects, similarity to an object in a painting by one of my favorite artists, etc;, that will make me want to paint that object. One of my more recent paintings features a tall green vase with a weird hourglass shape. My wife picked it up somewhere and mentioned that she thought I should paint it. My immediate response was that it was hideous and I would never paint such a thing.( I was also probably a little worried about her getting Yoko Ono syndrome and showing up with a strange vase at the door of my studio every few weeks). Then I had got the idea that I wanted to paint a house of cards, but I couldn't find an object tall enough to fit in the composition without being too distracting. I had everything set up and for a goof I went and got that ugly vase and plopped it down and wouldn't you know it, it fit perfectly.(I hate it when my wife is right).
      Recently, my 22 year old son who has never expressed any interest in art whatsoever had finally been cornered into having to take an art history class in college. His project was to recreate a work of art. Being the "happy go lucky" kid that he is he was immediately attracted to the theme of memento moris(still life memorials to the passing of life) He chose a Dutch painting featuring a skull and candles etc: and he found objects that matched those, set up the lighting and made a photographic facsimile. He seemed to really enjoy the process and it was an opportunity for us to have lengthy discussions about painting. Anyways I thought that I would make him a memento mori of his own so I set up a skull in profile with a foreshortened gun laid on it's side in front  and a bugle mouthpiece placed next to a candle.(items that belonged to my father who passed away when I was quite young.) Although generally not my typical subject matter I did enjoy painting it and it was definitely morbid enough that my son was very pleased.
     Sometimes my still life paintings will have a theme because my competitive nature will force me, against my better judgement to paint a "theme" painting for entry into a juried show. I recently finished a series of paintings on the theme of "masks". Right now my brain is being addled with thoughts of how to paint the theme of "flowers and insects". I've been making crazy sketches from my imagination showing my poor wife wearing a wreath of flowers in her hair while smilingly proffering to the viewer a handful of bugs.