Water Under the Bridge Study 1

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Painting reflections as they're seen in the surface of moving water, is the act of creating a visual metaphor with layers and layers and layers of significance. This painting is a literal rendering of a photograph of my own shadow on the Pootatuck River, which qualifies the painting as being Realistic. If a viewer didn't know this, they might look at the painting and think it was some kind of an Abstract. Not trying to fool the eye or be clever, I'm simply fascinated in the many ways that we take innumerable bits of information on canvas, in our relationships, in the way we exist on world wide web, to build recognizable identities. Painting water has got to be one of the most apt ways of expressing this. As I've said before, and you may quote me, "There is nothing so fulfilling as expressing oneself well."

Having been a blogging artist for more than two years now, the whole process have become very integrated, a work of art in itself and quite an education. The creative workflow is generally: gather photo "sketches", conceive a project, paint while scribbling down notes, record the art digitally, write and refine the text, research facts, definitions, ideas and other's views, and then finally post the whole shebang to the blog, making sure to link other relevant websites to the text.

More time is spent on the management side of the business, promoting the blog itself through sites such as EBay, Technorati, GoogleAnalytics and Google Webmaster Tools, and the nitty-gritty of running the old fashioned brick-and-mortar studio: ordering supplies, preparing painting substrates, cutting mats, maintaining tools, packaging art, shipping, and documenting everything for posterity, provenance and perennial taxes.

And so, the innumerable bits of information, innumerable actions culminate to build an identity - an artist.

- Nancy Boudreau

After all my "blah, blah, blah" if you can still manage to share a comment, please do so! Also, it would be mightily helpful if you were to share this with others so that they too can contribute to the flow of ideas (and traffic on the website).

The above acrylic painting is about 5" x 7" done on gessoed mat board, housed in a cream-colored mat.