Category Archives: Fine Art

Frank Arnold – Abstract Figurative Artist

By Marilyn Hurst

Frank Arnold - Looking-Manarnold1000Frank Arnold is an abstract figurative painter and sculptor. His work is haunting, bold, bright, and imbued with allegorical symbolism. It is also dark and pulls obliquely from his unconscious – abstract intellectualism personified.

Frank has also produced two books, the first, “Frank Arnold Speaks” is a bilingual, English and Spanish biography reflecting back on his youth as an adopted child, and on his life experiences and the impact it’s had on his artwork.

 

His second book, “Your Creative Imagination Unlocked,” is a collaborative with depth psychologist, Dr. Jim Manganiello. It’s an exploration of his own creative process with observations and hypotheses by Manganiello respective of Frank’s work as well as that of other abstract artists, Cy Twombly, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko and Banksy. His book explores the deeper mind and how art can be a path to rediscovery of creative imagination. Frank was born in Long Beach, California, raised in the San Joaquin Valley and now has galleries in California and Mexico.

Frank graciously shared his time with us, and his personal insight into the creative process.


When did you get into the fine arts and what inspired you to do so?

It all began for me with a love of color. As a child I won a flower arranging contest at the fair. I was so taken by all the colors and the possible combinations. I have to think that was the true starting point for me.  I got into fine art in school. That was back in the days where if you talked too much, give you more art classes. “Put Frankie in art class because he talks too much.” I was kind of board with school, but my daydreaming fed my creative side and I grew to love art.

Did you ever paint traditionally or figurative work, 
or did you plunge into abstraction right away?

I was classically trained in realism, both painting and drawing. What I found, aside from the fact that realism is a lot of hard work, is there are so many rules to follow. I wanted something to come from my soul. At first I was painting from my surface mind and it was all about me. As I began to work from my deeper mind, I began to feel something was coming to me from another place, something I call gifts from my soul. I can’t explain the source, but it guides me through my process.  The way I describe it is … I go to a place where no words are spoken, a place where there is no sound, no smell, even my sense of touch goes away. I am left in a bright place where things seem to be given to me. It’s a wonderful place where I feel I can do anything; a place that I am so grateful for because I can see.

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Why did you choose San Jose del Cabo Baja Mexico as one of your studios?

I have been in love with Mexico ever since I was a kid and people always think of it as an arty country. They love and respect art. There were only a few galleries in all of Los Cabos when I first came here. I felt pulled to the area for its beauty and the people and the sense of community. Now it’s become such an art Mecca for Mexico.

 

 

 

 

Has living in Cabo San Lucas changed your art expression from living in Fresno USA ?

As my art comes from within, I have to think it is affected by where I am. What keeps my interest is the work which I feel is coming from my soul, the deeper mind work over which I really have no control. I think so much of it is really messages for other people. I have seen this played out in my gallery so many times when viewers to react to the images. It’s humbling for me to see.

 Do you have one sentence that would define your philosophy in art?

If anyone’s art moves you for a moment, then it has done its job.

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Chris MacClure – IAD Founder, and Frank ArnoldChris MacClure and Frank Arnold

Join The Party

Guest Blog by Doriz Anderson

Doriz AndersonOver the years, at different milestones, I’ve often thought I had life figured out. A half-breath later however the inclination fell to the floor, and I had to start over. Each time thankfully, it was from an elevated place, on the shoulders of my mistakes and of those who have gone before me.

Crossing the threshold between my waking life and my unconscious, the part of our personalities that is always so secretive and well hidden, causes me to shudder, like when I accidentally fall asleep. You know the feeling. Your head jerks up almost imperceptibly and your eyes get big as the moon for just a split second as you try not to fall backwards into that swirling dream world.

 

When you fall in love with someone, you open yourself to vulnerability. 

When you fall in love with being an artist, vulnerability becomes your mantra.

Being an artist, a true artist means you have to reach deeper – some refer to it as connecting with your soul. I think of it a bit along those lines, but I’m more pragmatic. Yes, it is partially about connecting with my soul, but for me it’s more like connecting with the collective spirit – everyone’s soul, and it gives me goose bumps.

If you’re feeling it right now, and you get it, we just connected.

How does it happen?

Is it magic? Maybe, but no one has a definitive answer. The unknown is what makes life so interesting. For me though, my spirit is more tangible, and, like Carl Jung posits, my decisions are based on the experiences I’ve had and how I relate to the stimuli, whether it is sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, or intuition – my unconscious. What I feel is what I want you to feel when you see my paintings, but I know you can’t do it the same way because we haven’t had exactly the same lives and experiences. 

Everything we feel in our lives is relational. Allegorical mythology is partially about brushing shoulders in a wispy world where there are no words. Every now and then my work has been described in those terms, and it’s always humbling, especially when someone looks at my art and experiences a feeling they can’t describe – sometimes even moving them to being emotional.

I’m not elitist, not at all, but my art isn’t common or does it lend itself easily for casual viewing. It’s introspective, meditative. It’s not necessarily intellectual, but it does appeal to those who look deeper, or at least have an urge to look deeper – searching for answers when they don’t even know the question.

My vision is imbued in allegorical Feng Shui …
reflecting flowing energy, rhythm and grace.

I’m always intrigued when I can stand in a gallery and quietly watch someone look at one of my paintings for the first time. Occasionally, they just stand rooted, staring. My work is mostly abstract – so I wonder what they see. Surely it can’t be what I see, but sometimes, to my surprise they do, and they often feel compelled to tell me. In a time-warp way, we’re virtual  twins joined through thousands of years of relational experiences that forge our mythological and collective vision. It’s literally in our DNA. Sometimes too, art lovers simply like my play of chameleon-green against burnt-sienna. I’m good with it all.

If my vision completes your room, whether your dining area or the inner sanctum of your bedroom, or maybe a corporate boardroom or an institution’s public waiting space, that’s great. If it completes your personal and secret inner vision, wow, even better – everyone wins.

In a way, all art is performance art because of the emotion it elicits from the viewer, but one of the most common forms is cooking. Almost all of us do it every day, but not all of us treat it the same way as artist-chefs like Marilyn Pearson and Vikram Vij. Both of these incredible chefs create inspiring art pieces meant to be consumed not only with our mouths, but also slowly breathed in, and feasted upon with our eyes. Gastronomy, which literally means the “art and science of good eating” is so common we often take it for granted, but it is art, and a very intimate and sensual experience.

Join The Party
The IAD has joined forces this year with a group interested in furthering the arts, performance art specifically – Picasso meets Van Gogh in the world of living art.

Van Gogh Vodka and CHILLED magazine are sponsoring a contest for mixologists to create an inspiring cocktail, and when I saw some of the incredible drinks these avant-garde performance artists entered into the Art of the Cocktail contest it inspired me to create something too – the painting above!

I asked my family and friends what to call it
and they unanimously agreed, “Join the Party

If you’d like to see my “Picasso meets Van Gogh” inspiration, it’s hanging in an exquisite new gallery in White Rock. Follow my blog to find out where and when … cin cin!

Celebrate art and the spirit of life!

Thoughtfully,
Doriz

Abstract Artist & Guest Blogger

Blockchain & Art

Blockchain is the lover artists have been waiting for, but didn’t know.

2 of 2 in the Cryptocurrency Blockchain & Art series

by Maurice Cardinal

Blockchain supports cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many others, and offers artists a solution for the longstanding argument that the internet is an unsafe space, for copyright reasons mainly, to put original works of art online. It’s an argument many artists still make because for the most part they don’t understand how the internet works.  

Artists like to create art, but hate the selling factor so they take lesson after lesson about esoteric elements  like light, composition, color, contrast, texture, this-that-and-the-other-thing; and still their art sits on the floor of their basement or a closet. Technically they are excellent executioners, but no one knows of them in the real world … where it counts.

Frost350-02Thanks to galleries and auctions, and today also thanks to innovations like cryptocurrency, blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum and all that goes with it, art dabblers and real artists have equal access to buyers. Blockchain removes all the excuses artists use to avoid rejection. Artists are now standing bare for all of us to see. We still don’t know what you’re thinking, but we do know how you’re thinking.

Blockchain decentralizes the internet so no one person has power over you. It’s a pretty big deal when you consider that the traditional art world in some cases and respects keeps artists subservient. The relationship is usually healthy, but inherently it is designed to control the emotional disposition of the artist as well as the buyer. It’s not rocket science. It’s compliance based on elitism, similar to how the wine market operates, but at a much higher intellectual and economic level.

Blockchain uses strong cryptography and decentralized distribution to change how we sell everything, including and especially art of all types like paintings, photos, sculptures, music, and more.

Decentralization is the overlooked magic elixir. Decentralized distribution creates an inherent safety net. With blockchain, artists are no longer as dependent on others to promote their work.

All you need is your art, an Instagram account, a blog, and an e-wallet, and you can connect with prospects and sell your work for whatever price the market will bear. The rule of thumb is to price it accurately so it reflects your time and talent. If you choose, artists and galleries can now charge realistically higher prices with less fear of losing buyers because blockchain allows a buyer with meager funds to purchase just a “share” of the art as an investment even if the value of the piece is in the tens of thousands or more. Art can now reflect the true value of the artist. Today, more than one buyer can own the same piece just like owning stocks of IBM. Not only can they buy a part, or all of a work, buyers can display and show their friends too, even when they only own a share of the art. If buyers think an emerging artist is hot and has potential to get hotter they can now be part of the discovery excitement, and not only support the artist today, they can also reap value from their investment as the artist’s organic value increases over time.

Most artists don’t understand that galleries judiciously keep the number of artists they represent low in order to elevate the value of their roster. It’s based on artificial exclusivity and scarcity, as in “there are no other artists like this artist”. The perception of value is based on what a smart gallery owner can elicit from a buyer during a sales cycle.

Frost300LLong-02Have you ever wondered why many galleries don’t list the price of a work? It’s because when a prospect shows interest, a smart gallery client-relations host will have already subtly gauged the temperature of a potential buyer as they walked in the door. Hosts discreetly observe how the buyer is dressed, their demeanor, how intelligent they seem, and most of all, their level of interest. Just like poker players, buyers have “tells.” Gallery hosts are experts at reading body language in exactly the same way a high-level sales agent operates. The value isn’t solely based on the organic value of the art. It’s also based on what the buyer will pay, which sometimes elevates art into an elite market quite rapidly, especially in the digital marketing and blockchain era. 

Blockchain makes it feasible for an artist to sell a work for pennies if they choose, which isn’t something a gallery can do because they make their fee based on a commission. The higher the price of the work, the more profit a gallery will make. Blockchain however allows galleries and artists put a transparent organic value on the art that works for both the buyer and seller.

Part of the reason blockchain works is because there are very minimal transaction or agent fees, sometimes just pennies, i.e., you don’t have to pay for brick and mortar gallery space, PayPal or Visa charges, or online gallery ecommerce fees, plus, if your art is digital you won’t even have shipping fees. You get to keep almost every penny, which makes art affordable and easier for buyers to snap up when they see something they really like. All of a sudden the piece a buyer spontaneously falls in love with is attainable. Digital marketing is a powerful emotional sales supplement to everything artists and galleries are already doing. It represents a paradigm shift in the value and distribution  of art.

Frost600-02Blockchain is transparent, and everything you do is tracked, so over-inflating the price of your work  isn’t recommended. You need to be realistic because everyone can trace your steps, which is a good thing and in part how the ownership of your art is protected online. Digital and digitized art now has intrinsic value that can be easily protected and monitored.

Exclusivity is the key to commanding a higher price so the goal is to position the value of your art as an original piece or a limited “scarce” edition.

Blockchain is a win/win/win for artist, gallery and buyer.

Read the first post in this series …

Contact the author, Maurice Cardinal for more info regarding Blockchain Art

Cryptocurrency & Art

Blockchain Art – Preamble – 1 of 2 in the series

By Maurice Cardinal

If you don’t know what a blockchain is and how it impacts art, you’re not alone.

It’s hard to understand, but once you do, a brand new world opens up immediately.

Almost everyone has some type of artistic talent. With substantial practice, making art is relatively easy, and fun. It’s why so many people do it.

Selling art however is the hard part.

With all the information at our fingers, almost anyone today can be a “successful” artist if they also learn a few basic sales skills, but creative types usually don’t have that type of interest or drive.

Success as an artist means selling your work to support yourself. If you have to keep a day job, or a spouse supports you, you’re more of a dabbler, and that’s fine too, but if you’re serious about being an artist, you have to get serious about the full cycle from creation to selling.

This article is for devoted artists, those committed to creating art fulltime and having their work hang on the walls of others beyond family, friends, and therapy tea klatches.

The definition of a true artist is easier to understand when you compare it to other aspects of life, for example a teaching profession. If you are paid by a certified institution to teach a curriculum, you’re a teacher. If you teach your kid to toss a baseball or cook, well, you’re a parent. Same thing with art.

Statistically, most people today practice art for fun and meditative therapy, and for the calm or stimulation it brings.  A very few occasionally produce something a stranger would pay to display on their large screen TV or wall. Some also pick up a brush or a camera to satisfy a creative addiction. It’s all good, but it doesn’t define or qualify you as an artist.

MauriceC
Giant Joshua Mojave

Consider for a moment that a contemporary art gallery is the prototypical middleman, and similar in some respects to a dating site for lonely artists and skeptical buyers. In reality, one usually doesn’t get married after the first date, just as aspiring artists rarely grace gallery walls. It takes time to form a relationship. Space is reserved for the fulltime and elite artist who already sells his or her work.

Not all galleries are alike. Friendly, and transparent artist-owned studio galleries where artists collaboratively manage the space, and where they work and sell pieces in creative environments is a more welcoming experience for art buyers. 

Artists-owned studio galleries are great places to connect with artists and form long and productive relationships.

We can also buy art at fairs and auction houses, but again these spaces are exclusively reserved for fulltime elite artists in the here and now, or, who have long passed. The cost to buy in is exorbitantly high, however, the quality of art seen in these spaces isn’t always high, as is sometimes demonstrated by art that lacks soul and still sells for mega millions. Perception of beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and especially the beholder who looks at art as an investment.

As the internet blossomed websites presented artists with an opportunity to create one-on-one relationships with buyers similar to the dynamic experienced at artist-owned studio galleries. Progressive artists, especially millennials, embrace the internet and have tremendous success, but in true art therapy style, most still struggle in obscurity and shyly hide their works in their closets.

Social media popped up relatively recently and once again redefined the marketing landscape for artists. Once more, a small group capitalized on it and had incredible success, but most artists missed the opportunity, often incessantly complaining the market had gone flat. It hadn’t though. The art market moved and most artists failed to move with it.

Well here we are one more time; the cosmos, in less than a twenty year span, is offering up yet another incredible opportunity for artists and galleries. It’s a second bona fide paradigm shift in less than two decades greater than anything we’ve ever seen that helps artists not only sell their work, but also protect and make it even more readily available and accessible.

Want to learn about Blockchain & Art … scroll down or click here to keep reading

Contact the author, Maurice Cardinal for more info regarding Blockchain Art

Art Fairs in Vancouver

Art fairs are all the rage around the world, and growing rapidly.

As galleries continue to struggle to maintain their presence and evolve in an ever frenzied social media world, art fairs everywhere fill the growing hole left behind.

For some emerging artists art fairs offer the most effective way to have their work seen in public. Having a great web and social media presence is still critically important, but there is significant value in displaying your work in a space where art buyers can view it up close. Your work  also lives on in the art fairs catalog.

Art! Vancouver is a young and growing fair that gets better every year. It’s still not in the same league as other larger cities that have been doing it for a lot longer, but this year the fair had a great selection of artists and galleries. The diversity in types of art was impressive. The only criticism I heard from a few artists is that they had hoped for more traffic. Some sold work, but they felt they would have sold considerably more with higher traffic, and I have to agree. When I attended it was fairly sparse.

Art fair strategies need to be carefully planned when you consider a booth is in the $2,000 range, and you also need to invest in a substantial portfolio to display, plus there are several miscellaneous costs. At the end of the day a four day show could be amount to $5,000 investment, so it’s important to have a heavy flow of visitors walking by your booth in order to justify the expense.

I had a chance to speak with a few artists who displayed at Art! Vancouver.

Some sold work, like iRMA immediately below, while others were not so fortunate.

Irma&Debbie03-650

I Write, Therefore I Am

People choose to write for all kinds of reasons.

They are naturally drawn to words and to putting their thoughts
on paper in a creative way that flows naturally.

Like any other art form it is a release, a coping mechanism, a dream, a vision, or if you are like me, a calling you can’t give up even if you tried.

As an Expressive Arts Therapist I have seen how engaging in the arts can be transformative in both small and huge ways. Allowing yourself to flow into your imagination and just be wherever you need to go within the arts opens up avenues for self-assessment, which we sometimes can’t discover through other means. The beauty of this is you don’t have to be an artist or writer to do this kind of work.

But what if you are a writer? How does your writing change your life? What purpose in the greater scheme of things does your work have on the world around you? For some people writing is very personal. They write for themselves and it informs them of where they are now or acts as a kind of release, a coping mechanism in hard times. It can be therapeutic. For others it is a vehicle to make political statements, or to try to change the world. For some it is a means to help others to understand a personal situation that they might be going through themselves, such as mental illness, loss, identity crisis and to make a connection. For several it is the pure joy of just being able to express true love and beauty in the world, while for others it is all of these, a form of contemplation, explanation, examination and discovery. It is joy and heartache, revision and work and dedication. No matter where you are coming from, writing has the potential to take a difficult or horrific situation and to find transformative beauty.

For me, my writing is the driving force of my being. I started to write when I was 13. I began writing poetry, and short stories partly, although I did not know it at the time, to survive living with a mother who had mental illness. As I got older I continued to write poetry, but the reasons shifted. I could tell stories in a poetic way using narrative. I loved doing the research and seeing my characters come alive on the page. Like so many starting out their careers I believed I needed to write big – to tell the huge story that would change the world.

Now my poetry means something else to me. I live it every moment. I look at the world around me as a poetic playground. I see everything in metaphor. I get antsy when I can’t write for a while. I no longer look to write those huge themes, to capture the world with overwritten statements or clichés that signify nothing to anyone other than myself. I look instead for the simple important moments. I look to taking the mundane and make them unique. I look at ordinary people and places and always find the poetic in them. For me poetry is everywhere. I search for the beauty in an exchange, the heartache in a word, the wonderment in a story and I see how each of these moments have merit, and need to be shared. My poetry is with me all the time.

When I am writing a particular piece it will be with me long before I ever put pen to page. It is living inside of me taking up space, creating a life of its own, and when it is ready to be born I put these thoughts down on the page. Sometimes they come out complete. Other times I edit, I change, I leave it and come back later, but always it is something that I have lived with for some time in some way, thus I live poetically every moment. I can’t help it. It is how I think, how I breath, and likely will be how I die.

James Hillman describes in his book, ‘The Souls Code, In Search of Character and Calling” – Random House, 1996, that people who create share inexplicable innate drive.

Writing is also my calling, and what I was meant to do. It is what I will do, and engage in, and work on for the rest of my life. It took me years before I would tell people I was a writer. Now I never doubt it. It took years for me to go beyond saying it was “just” poetry. Now I know this is my world, my art, my being. It isn’t just poetry, it is how I breath, it is where I exist. It is my way of looking at the world and understanding the world. It is how I let others know my worldview and maybe help them see the world slightly differently.

Wherever you are in your creative journey is fine. You may do it for the love; you may do it as therapy, but whatever the reason, know why you do it.

Know the kind of dedication it takes to make it your life’s work, your passion, and if you discover you have that kind of drive, keep it alive. It might be enough for you to be a hobby artist, someone who writes for yourself and just for the fun of it. You may use it for therapy to help you get through some difficult times, or, you may dream of publishing one day.

Whatever your reason, you will find the time you need
to fit your way of life. It is how it works.

Dedication is more than saying you are a writer, it is the time and energy and life you choose to lead. It doesn’t work any other way. It just can’t.

__________________ . . . _______________________

Bonnie Nish is Executive Director of Pandora’s Collective Outreach Society.

Bonnie is widely published in places like The Ottawa Arts Review, The Danforth Review, Haunted Waters Press, Illness Crisis & Loss Journal Volume 24 and The Blue Print Review.

Bonnie’s first book of poetry “Love and Bones” was released by Karma Press in 2013.

Bonnie has a Masters in Arts Education from Simon Fraser University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Language and Literacy Education at UBC.

Her most recent book “Concussion and Mild TBI: Not Just Another Headline” is an anthology of concussion related stories, and was published by Lash and Associates in August 2016.

Bonnie is a certified Expressive Arts Therapist with a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies from the Vancouver Expressive Arts Therapy School. She has worked extensively with youth and adults in high-risk situations. Bonnie has conducted writing and expressive arts workshops for over 20 years across North America.

WODistinction


For her contribution to the Vancouver literary community Bonnie was nominated for the 2015 YWCA Women of Distinction Award in Arts, Culture and Design.

BonnieNish.ca

 

Thank you Bonnie for contributing this Guest Blog!
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