Triumvirate of Painters

Last night was kind of a first for Brenda and me. She had a female friend from work over last night and the two of them spent most of the night talking shop. Brenda knew that I would be bored out of my mind and didn't mind that I went to read in the bedroom. It was enough that I was there and I didn't need to be actively involved with her.

It sounds as if I was sent to my room for the night, but I really didn't mind. She had told me that her friend was coming over and I knew what they were going to do. I didn't feel like entertaining anyone, so reading was a great option for me. She even said that she knew that I needed my own time. Part of me would have liked to stay longer at my place to get some online time in for the night, but reading was fine. My only other real objection was that both of them talked loudly and made it hard for me to sleep when I got tired of reading.

I almost finished the Heart of Darkness last night, but I got sleepy and Marlowe couldn't keep me awake any longer. The rest of the journey up the river will have to wait until tonight. Mr. Kurtz will be waiting to tell me about the horror.

I've noticed that a large percentage of my reading audience comes from college domains. Now I realize that a large percentage of the web population falls into that category, but I have to wonder what I say that could appeal to someone still in college. I doubt that I ever had that much influence on people when I was in college. Maybe people just like to see someone struggle five years after the grind of the academic world.

Now that I think some more about it, I did have some influence within the small community of the art hub known as Stevens Point. Who needs Paris or New York when you can go to Stevens Point? During my final year I was either seen as a heavy in the department or a flake. Its hard to be a flake within the art community though. Of course I was one of the few whose hair was a natural shade and my body was free of any voluntary mutilations.

My degree is not in graphics, but the oldest form of printing, lithography. I know how to print using stone and metal. Many nights were spent sitting at a table drawing on a slab of limestone with a grease pencil in my hand. Lithography is years away from Photoshop. All of the color separation had to be done in my head not on a computer screen. There weren't any cute icons to click.

Primitive art is very rewarding though. The creative process seems far more magical than anything I have seen on a computer screen. All of the flaws of the creator are visible in the final creation.

Back to the topic of my brief period of influence in college, I was definitely one of a shrinking minority of people. The graphics people far outnumbered the fine arts people, so being one of the few people who actually liked to make art with a paintbrush instead of a mouse set me apart. Yes, I know that there are a number of graphics people who can do traditional art as well as computer generated art, but that was not case where I was years ago. Very few of the graphics people could draw let alone paint. Perspective was unimportant as long as they knew the names of dozens of fonts and what portfolio they would need to showcase their art.

Yes, my opinion is very jaded, because the girl I was seeing at the time could not draw, but she was fairly adept at computer graphics. I have no idea if she ever returned to the world of traditional art or not. She always said that she would, but I doubt it.

Oh, if anyone reading is a comic book reader, I want to do some name dropping here. I knew Brandon Peterson when he was nothing, because he went to Stevens Point at the same time that I did. I knew him before he had dreams of being Rob Liefeld or Todd McFarlane. The last I knew he was working for Image comics cranking out formulaic schlock. Do I sound bitter here?

In his defense, Brandon could do traditional art as well, but he was very much an illustrator as opposed to a fine artist. Then again this is just my opinion and I can split hairs for hours when it comes to art.

Okay, I have established the fact that I was fine arts person, but how was I influential? Well, before I found my own style of painting, there were really only three definitive painters within the department. Jane, Steve and Tim were the ruling class of painters.

Jane painted large paintings of her and her then boyfriend in very domestic settings. Soon these gave way to large paintings of her in the nude. Her head was bald as well for some reason. In reality she had very long hair.

Steve was also from the school of self portraits. That boy must have about two dozen paintings of himself with varying degrees of facial hair.

Rounding out the group was Tim with his Nazi paintings. Yes, I said Nazis. This poor soul was obsessed with Nazis. It didn't matter if they were on land or sea, he painted Nazis and their weapons of destruction.

Then I came along with my quasi Russian worker art deco style with primary color scheme paintings. Fragmentation was a popular adjective used in critiquing my work. I was building a structure and then fragmenting the space where it existed. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good to me.

My style seemed fresh and was a nice change of pace from what the painting instructor had been seeing from the triumvirate. I gave everyone something else to talk about and I would ask Tim over and over when was he a Nazi. It was fun and I learned a small amount about painting and what could be done with the medium. Then it all ended when I graduated. Sigh.

The last that I heard Jane was painting in Estonia, Tim was working with a professional artist somewhere in the mountain states and Steve was working in insurance.

I can proudly say that I own a few pieces that Steve made and I might have a piece by Jane, but I never did get a Nazi original from Tim. Damn.

If anyone is wondering what I did at work today, my response would be that I did very little. Actually I spent eighty percent of the day doing things that interested me and about twenty percent doing what is required of me. I really don't have the strength to pretend that I want to learn testing and certification. From what I see its mostly talking and very little else. Business agreements are made between the various networks and this holds very little incentive for me. My battle cry is teach me something that I can use.

Two hours of my day was spent watching my screen flicker as a program that I run on a weekly basis did its thing. I also read my latest issue of The New Yorker without any guilt. Topics included the trial of Ted Kaczynski, which I found very interesting. It seems that he did not want to plead insanity even though that it what his legal team advised him to do. Another article was about the political unrest in India, which I found a little dry. My favorite article this month had to be about Scott McNealy, the C.E.O. of Sun Microsystems.

God, I miss creative people.

Now that I look over the entry, I sound very nostaglic, but I am happy with who I am now just not with where I am. There is an important difference there.