Robert L Terrell Art Gallery

Here’s a favorite corner of my art gallery. It used to be my living room. But I’ve always been an artist, and why do I need a living room? I really answered this question for my own overly busy brain some art eons ago.

Per living arrangements, I need a certain level of of comfort and convenience. It’s a soft-target level low-ending at pup tent in the backyard (after my art has completely filled every home nook and all house crannies). The upper end of the target, scale (what have you) is, of course) would be to evict Generalissimo D from Mar-a-Lago.

But no eviction will be necessary … He’ll soon enough be on the big Vulcan Arc to Mars, with all the Red Staters! Y’all didn’t think I posted that photo of the biggie Haboob just for fun-sies did ya? I’m just getting people used to what their life will be like on MARS-a lago.

Ya see… I don’t want politics to interfere with my truly true love of making my art and website fun postings. And I think the big political tensions in the USA now seem to be possibly escalating into oppositional war. More and more, some folks seem to be turning  their politics into complete views of reality, philosophy, religion, etc.

I think the best solution to these building political and philosophical tensions may be to begin now to divide up by planetary political color!! The blue voters get Earth – the blue planet and the red voters get Mars – the red planet. I’m not sure who the independents and non-voters will get. They may finally HAVE to make a choice. It’s sort of a Sophie’s choice for some of them. But if I can make a suggestion, I believe that going with the blue voters and continuing to live on Earth (which has an atmosphere & water & food) might be something for the independents to consider 🙂 

Hey, I’m an artist, right? I think in color a lot, and it really only seems fair. If we separate the two opposing viewpoints by millions of miles, it’s sure to bring an era of Blue and Red Edens once again. Or, once…

What could be more fair than that??

And for now, please keep coming back to my blog! This is definitely not a political blog. I might go off on a political tear once in a blue moon is all. And by the way, the blue moons stay with the blue planet. Again, it’s my color thing. Don’t blame me for that! Yeah, also, we get Elvis’s version of Blue Moon of Kentucky (all versions of it by everybody). Singing Blue Moon of Kentucky will be absolutely FORBIDDEN on the Red Planet!!

But I didn’t answer the question really, did I? I mean about my soft-target art studio / living arrangement. That’s quite easy since I’ve been dreaming about it a day longer than forev-er 🙂

My Santa Fe Dream Studio & Artist’s Life

A wood floored studio in Santa Fe, with skylights, and all the classic architecture. About 30′ x 30′ should take care of my needs. Plus a woodshop out back. With heating in winter! Important – I want heating for Santa Fe winters. And an adjacent studio apartment. Of course I must have a gallery connection in Santa Fe, too. That’s an essential part of the Santa Fe package deal!

(the) Cave of Forgotten Snowmen

Charcoal & pastel painting on wood
2015 – 24″x60″

This is the Snowman charcoal drawing one. Yes, I blog-bloviated about it in my “Panoply” post. It’s my ode to the demise of snowmen 😦 Will they disappear forever? I’m not sure, but I hope not. Of course I don’t have to live way.. way up above the Arctic Circle. After I move there for a few decades I’ll repost. THEN we can see how nostalgic I remain about the Great White North with its ten feet of snow for months at a time. Or its soggy tundra and southern invaders fleeing fires, drought, floods, heat . . .

Maybe it’ll be a gentle warming, like chestnuts roasting on a open fire. This is Christmas Day <:>}

But I have a feeling I’d still feel the same, even if I didn’t, somehow. The earth’s climate seems to be a very flexible entity. It is wind after all. Wind and the windy people who get windy about it. Like I’m doing right now!! HA!

Oh, I make light of something that’s important to me. And worse, it’s important to my inner self, that eternally youthful self in me. Now that’s a sad thing to be doing. But it’s a protection from the coming waves of warm and warmer that I fear. More than cold.

More than cold.

I console myself by remembering one important fact about this charcoal-pastel drawing:

(the) Cave of Forgotten Snowmen is a visual experience

It’s reason #1 when I’m asked why I create them. I never set out to try to change, or save the world with my artwork,

 

 

Panoply (drop your guard)

wall sculpture-painting – synthetic polymer paint on wood
1998 – 20″x24x6″(deep)

Ah! Panoply! We hardly knew ye 😦 But you have a nice home with my friend an ex-coworker at TTUSOA. I guess that’s not the name of that art school now. Somebody, quick! Hand me an Acronymosaurus!! Ha! Well, don’t care to go there. I love this wall sculpture and I want to dream nostalgic about it.

Panoply has a lot going on, face to face. But it has as much or more going on around the corner(s). Unfortunately I let those photos get lost in the e-zone. My bad, really, e-bad on me!

I may not be able to repair that loss. Anyway, Panoply was the first appearance of “The Snowmen.” I am not sure I quite appreciated what they were all about at that time – almost ten years before I drew & painted “The Cave of Lost Snowmen.”

Did I know I was beginning to paint environmental “global warming” art? I don’t quite think so. But my deep soul did. And now it’s quite important with Generalissimo Bozo having hijacked the Oval Office and being all busy as a busted brain bumble bee trying to deny the reality of the death of “The Snowmen.”

I cannot sit back and do nothing at all. I know I can do little. So I must retrieve the edge photos of this artwork – they show the first appearance of King Snowman I …

The Snowmen help keep the earth on track and in its orbit!!

Cave of Forgotten Snowmen

Mondo Abstracto

wall sculpture – synthetic polymer paint on wood
6.5″x12″.5″(deep) 1985

I’ve always loved this diminutive wall sculpture 🙂 which is NOT diminutive in my artist eyes & mind!! It never did sell down in Houston. The little creature traveled with me a couple of times to different states, and finally I sold it to a friend of mine – doctor’s wife, for her husband’s birthday. That sort of sale is always a scary thing for me.

A lot of times I’ve experienced an enthusiastic spouse but the other spouse wasn’t enthusiastic at all. And if the enthusiastic spouse be female, “occasionally” it has appeared (like a big truck) that hubbo was a bit more than unenthusiastic, if you be getting my drift.

Well I don’t want to drift along like an iceberg – ready to ram the Titanic of marriage voyages . . . yikes. Still, being an artist trying to sell his or her art follows a simple formula that was succinctly explained to me by my most excellent artist friend (both artist & friend) Ron K Smith many long years ago down in Houston, TX.

Believe them (public art buyers) when the check is in your hand!

This simple statement runs counter to many folks romantic idea of what it’s like to be an artist. I’ve heard both ends of the spectrum actually. There isn’t a lot of middle ground and Ron’s handy art measuring guide is very useful, as it does lie firmly in the middle ground of artist reality (a place that seems to be getting harder ‘n harder to locate for everybody).

But before I break out into song (which sometimes happens when I begin to ‘n so watch out people!! You saw that ‘n in the previous paragraph. I did, too, and went all mental uh oh. Song-bloggin’ is a scary place to be with me…. I’ll move on with my bloggy bloviatin’ blather. See, the ‘ns are multiplyin’ haha My wordy word words are the lesser of two or three e-evils when you’re surfin’ the interwebs 🙂

SO, the glamour of being an artist is (partial fun list): full of a lot of alone time – painting, sculpting, printing, priming, sanding, crating, uncrating, etc. Also, calling dis-interested gallery owners & entering shows (well I’ve been sho nuff lazy ’bout that – got me a good violin soundtrack goin’ now!! Yes, there’s plenty o’ rejection from galleries for most of us (but as Dean Andrew Martin says, “It’s a numbers game – Just keep entering.” That doesn’t seem to bother some artists. They just move on down the gallery row list. But some of us are sensitive artists like yours, too-ly! haha I don’t like no rejectins. Still, do it enought and it gets easier. Not sure it gets quite as glamorous as a job at the art supply store, though 🙂 Meet lots of artists there, male & female. Move to the big city, like Houston – Texas Art Supply has tons of folks buying their art supplies there. I worked there for 4 years. I met lots of art people. Not glamorous but could be fun for an isolato artist like me. Still . . .

For me, the most glamorous parts are those times (and not every day, when the pieces of the art jig-saw puzzle fall into place and I see something new &amp; amazing on my easel or wall! WOW! Often this is 3AM, 4AM, or 5AM. Almost always it’s when I’m totally alone! Just me, my brushes, and my cats!! That’s when I’ll often have my music turned way up and my ancient dancin’ feet going a mile a minute… Or, I’ll be sitting in my special art chair just gazing at what I just finished painting – wondering how that got painted exactly… and… wondering if I will be able to make such magic happen again. Because often I’m not too sure how it did happen anyway. But the wondering doesn’t drown out the feelings of awe at these times!

Yes, art IS GLAMOROUS!! But the general public misses most of it 😦 

Subatomic Bone-eaters

abstract painting – synthetic polymer paint on baltic birch plywood
20″x60″ – 2993

The bone-eaters evolve to a subatomic shell level (stealth visual, non-verbal). Slowly they circle their molecular wagons about the greatest artist of the premillenial 20th century century aka Pablo Picasso.

Their intel captured from the collected works of thousands of mind-numbing lectures at colleges, they make their move. But alas, the great master has made his move to the great beyond 🙂

Busy now, capturing the hearts and minds of astral angels and cherubs alike, he works feverishly at his crafts using brushes of pure light & delight. Still, the bone eaters will not give up.

Why oh why did not the historians and keepers of the art flame inform the bone eaters that the immense Pable P has no bones to pick in the hearafter??

This is truly intel of the first order. And order he shall !!!

Bone Eaters arrive at their (galactic) destination

 

Pandora’s Otter Box (can’t be closed!)

abstract painting – synthetic polymer paint on baltic birch plywood –
2003 – 20″x48″

A big struggle to make this painting work. The flat, solid shape, hard edge paintngs are not so easy as some people might think . THere’s no help from painterly effects at all. THe colors and values have to work by themselvs. it’s a lone reference for art – nearly but not quite.

I tried this piece vertically and horizontally in my mad artist struggle to make it work. And Melody (owner of this fine artwork, is displaying it horizontally, in an excellent location in her kitchen up in Seattle. Nice, Melody! I’ll add the picture once I locate it on my computer, El FInders Losers! haha

All my visual art demons have now been painted to light. And with them my inner stuffed animals. There is no turning back now. They’re loose and can’t be stuffed back into Pandora’s Otter Box… The world must now deal with some deep set distractions, I must say . . .

 

Gift of the Sun

Heliodor
(Gift of the Sun)
Wall Sculpture – synthetic polymer paint on wood
54″x102″x14″(deep)
1997

Heliodor is an awesome wall sculpture. Oh let me toot my own artist horn just a little bit. It’s a looming wall piece that has a definite physical presence in a room. I painted it before I got my job really going at TTU School of Art, so I wasn’t quite aware of ADA regulations regarding objects protruding from walls in public spaces. Well, this piece helped acquaint me with those regs due to its 14″ wall protrusion 🙂

It hasn’t been a problem really. I haven’t sold the artwork, thought I did hang it in my Reconnecting show at Goldesberry gallery back in 1997. The piece had a $9000 price tag on it then, which sounds like a lot (well it really is) but considering all the work I put into it, that’s not a big price.

The name Heliodor means “Gift of the Sun” and the piece is named after a crystal family – the Beryl family. I’ve always loved crystals, and Heliodor is the bright yellow Beryl crystal.

Now the wall sculpture graces my bedroom wall. It’s a little large for it, but I’ve had it mounted in there for many years and would miss it if it left for greener pastures. Not that I wouldn’t love to get $9000 for it. Actually I think that’s a little bit low.

My lifelong art mentor, Jim Howze saw the piece soon after I completed it in early 1998. He told me, “Well, I just got back from a trip to New York City and this is as good as anything I saw there!” That was quite the statement. He didn’t hold back his thoughts. I knew that about him If he didn’t like something he would let me know it. Once, back in art school he told me, “That piece makes something start going around and around in my stomach and I have to choke it off at the neck!” hahaha

He was so right about that nauseous artwork!! I was using a lot of greens shades in it. Some of them were in trouble 😦

And I am not directly sure about his statement about Heliodor. I haven’t been to New York City.. And I have no idea what he saw while there. I”m assuming he saw work by many of the recognized masters of 20th century art. I didn’t quiz him on it, but I just assumed who they might have been.

Jim Howze passed into the great beyond at the end of 2016 😦 He will be missed by many, certainly by me. He told me to call him Jim and not Professor Howze, so I did. But I always felt a little bit uncomfortable and phony doing it, because he always seemed to understand my art better than I did. My great mentor and friend, Jim.

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So WP art lovers, get busy saving your spare quarters. I probably won’t be making huge wall sculptures like Heliodor anymore. Get this one while it’s hot!! Isn’t that how you sell a huge artwork? One deluxe model wall sculpture. Buy it while the price is still reasonable.

It’s probably the last of its breed, I’m thinking. Twenty years ago I was up for producing these really heavy wall sculptures. Now, though, I’ve switched to canvas painting. It’s a great way to work, too, and my shoulder still gives me a little bit of love at the end of the day.

I almost forgot to mention the semi-hidden visual “story” in Heliodor. Why didn’t anybody say anything? Probably because not too many folks are up at 5:45am blogging full-tilt bloggie. So! Heliodor has a theme of the Greek myth of Icarus. If you look closely you can see him falling earthward after his wax and feather wings have failed. So how does that “fit” with Heliodor gift of the Sun? I don’t want to make that determination. This is highly visual art. The meaning rests in the visual 90+ percent. I could come up with some verbal connections I’m sure. But I want to keep it viaual. That’s my theme for this blog post, and my art-life in general. Until I post again with another visual theme motto 😉 hahah

(so, friends, did you just love my little conflation of Icarus experience &amp; art mentor? Thought I quite nearly pulled it off. Maybe next post trip!)

KEEP IT VISUAL

Pyrrhic Horse Trader

Pyrrhic Horse Trader
synthetic polymer and latex paint on canvas
1976
60″x96″

I hope to post large images from my website here, so that when someone clicks on the LARGE IMAGE link on an art thumbnail he or she will either come to a larger image here on this page, or to a blog with a spellbinding blog post written by l’il artist me… 🙂

The featured image is the first big a painting I ever produced, way back in 1976. I know it was that year because it was the Bicentennial Year, 1976 and I painted a sort-of Bicentennial painting.Back in the day we had no woodshop to speak of. I went to Handy Dan Lumber Store and picked out 2×2 lumber as straight as I could find for my stretcher frame. I think I did the actual frame building in the painting lab at school. It was summertime and the classes were quite small, as I recall, so there was a lot of room to spread out. With no woodshop I couldn’t cut a bevel on the wood, required to make sure the canvas didn’t leave a mark as you painted, on the front. So I bought quarter round and glued and tacked it to the front of the 2×2 sticks.

The 45 degree cuts for the corners I simply estimated and went for it. The whole thing was held together with nails! Talk about old school 🙂 haha And then, to strretch it, I didn’t even have a staple gun. I used tacks and a hammer. That took quite a long time. Now, my memory is getting fuzzy these daze. It wasn’t my first canvas to stretch. I might have bought a staple gun by then.

Actually I believe I had. It was so much easier and faster with a staple gun. I put some stars and stripes in it. This photo is not the final result. I did add some stars in the left side long blue stripe. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary but I was having a bit of trouble getting to a complete “FINISHED” place. That’s still a difficult place to find.

Some paintings are rather open-ended. You can paint on them for a loooong time. But no compressor and pneumatic tools. I have several now and they help so much.

Back then, though, I was a real artist, more than now, in that regard. I didn’t have a ton of money and I used some latex paint for gesso, too. That didn’t seem to be a problem either. It should have been according to strict conservation methods, and if the painting had survived it might have, but the painting had a different destiny awaiting.

A lot of people liked that painting. My good friend Sal Hernandez came in from working with grounds to just sit and look at it. I know he liked it. And I had another friend who seemed to like it. This was a high school friend who will remain nameless. Why? Well, in my youth I was prone to smoking entertaining herbs. So, I traded that painting to him for a quantity of hash. Yeah, I did.

Well, no I don’t feel guilty about it. I was 19 or so, and I sometimes did goofy stuff. That was one of the goofy things. But he did make a generous trade. And, I gotta tell you people, the next semester of college was my lost semester . . .

I spent a lot of time lying on my couch not doing too much of anything except smoking hash. It got me stoned as all get out. And as soon as I would recover I would smoke some more. I think I had a bit of an addiction for a few uhhhh how long was it? It’s kind of a blur.

I’m surprised I did as well in my classes as I did. I wasn’t taking all art classes just yet, as I recall. Somehow I survived that semester and didn’t flunk any classes. I think I dropped a class though.

This is a rather boring blogpost. It’s too bad because that painting looked really really good! i liked it, but sometimes my artist mind will trick me. I’ve thrown art away when I got into insane artist mode. Or traded it in questionable deal like the one I just described.

And there was one more thing, too. As some point I went over to my friend’s house. He had the painting outside against a wall. That was sort of sad to see, but it gets worse, at least for me. He had decided he didn’t like some parts of the painting, so he painted them out!! Yikes!!

I was not too happy about that, to say the least. But I was not too assertive at that time in my life (or any) so I didn’t say anything at all. But it bothered me, and so even after over 40 years here I am still bringing it up. Jeez.

Oh glamorous life of the artist I’ve led. That remains a difficult thing to recall, though. And, I plan on not recalling it too many more times. So, don’t plan on any trades. I want money! Of course the problem is, I don’t like to sell any of the art I’ve created. It’s never easy…