create – Moose Pants Studio

Photos, photos everywhere, and not a Belgian to be found…

Joanna Zeller Quentin / art, artist, Belgian, black and white, color, create, drawing, equine art, horse, horseback, horses, india ink, knife, mare, painting, Photography, scratchboard, watercolor /

It’s 1:00 in the morning, and I have been roused from my bed by a haunting vision of two Belgian mares standing in a meadow. Seriously. These two mares were the subject of a photo shoot back in the spring of 2010, and one of the bargains struck with the owner (before he allowed me to go slogging in knee high mud through his fields) was that I would send him a print of one of the paintings I would create featuring his two lovely horses. “Tempest” was actually inspired by this photo shoot – although it looks nothing like a calm, placid 15 year old Belgian mare contentedly nibbling at her hay. I hesitate to send him a print of one of his mares looking like a wild beastie from a Walter Farley novel.

(Here is the finished “Tempest”, btw. Turn it on it’s side and squint your eyes, and you can just see a quiet, elderly mare with a slight breeze ruffling her mane. Such is the magic of art.)

But, alas, the end of the year is fast approaching, and my plan of delivering a small painting to this gentlemen is in peril… because I can’t find the darn photographs. Here in my studio I have thousands of photos. Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of shots – mostly horses (followed by birds and then big cats and then everything else), all sorted and catalogued by subject. Want a rodeo scene? Check. Want a picture of kids with their ponies? Got it. Want a Saddlebred just stepping into the sunlight with a glittering ribbon pinned to her bridle? Here you go! Jumpers and dressage and reining and lungeing, I’ve got them all. All reference shots, and all mine. But 23 pictures of two mares, a field, an old man who would have fit perfectly in the last century puttering around his farmyard, sweet shots of plowed earth, broken cornstalks and rich, heavy, black Illinois topsoil? I have no idea where they went. And now it will drive me crazy.

It does, however, give me an excuse to pull open my heavy filing cabinet drawers, grab a handful of pictures, and dream. Here’s a painting, and here’s a painting, and here’s an etching, a drawing, a watercolor. In my hands I hold the promise of so much great art! Magical moments where the light and shadow have come together with the action and the sentiment and the pure equine form – and somewhere buried in all of that is exactly what I’m trying to say with my paintings and drawings. Look at this creature, this thing, this miracle, this wild, four legged spirit partnered with man to do amazing and athletic things. Look at him jump and race and run. Look at him cut cattle or execute a canter pirouette. Look at him safely cart children around the field or step into the show ring before thousands of spectators in a world class competitive setting. And look at the relationship forged between man and beast. We can guide a half ton animal around with a piece of leather. We can ask him to jump over 5′ fences. We can watch him separate cattle from the herd or chase a ball around while his rider swings a large stick in the air. We can put him in a starting gate, throw the doors open, and expect him to fly down a dirt track, striving to vanquish every other horse on the field.

Painting after painting after painting. Photograph after photograph after photograph. Idea after idea after idea, until finally the idea becomes inspiration, and the inspiration translates to the art.

The unglamorous side of art

Joanna Zeller Quentin / art, artist, create, creating, equine art, oil, painting /

Besides all the painting and the drawing and the showing, there’s the far more “unglamorous” side to the art business. There’s the shipping. There’s the ordering. There’s the updating of the website. And there’s the ever present, ever dreaded mailing list.
I did actually paint today. You know, for about an hour or so. Long enough to throw another layer of paint on the board, scrub it off, add another layer, scrub it off… you get the idea. At the end of that time, the painting had simultaneously advanced and started to pull apart, which I guess is how I paint. I stopped working on it with the idea/ excuse to let it “set up overnight”, which pretty much just allowed me to walk away from it this afternoon. Tomorrow is a new day, right?
Last night I organized photos. Tonight we updated the website. Tomorrow, well, there’s a mailing list to add to (shudder), more photos to organize (I’m trying out a new system as the whole “throw them in the filing cabinet” isn’t working anymore, as we have no more room!), paintings (and a drawing) to finish, and I still have to figure out what to do about this big stack of canvases by my desk. The house needs to be swept, the bathrooms cleaned, the laundry done… I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
How do other artists, heck, even other people who don’t create art, do it? I’d love to know.

Break’s over, baby

Joanna Zeller Quentin / art, artist, charcoal, create, creating, horse, horses, painting, sales /

Okay, okay. I admit it. I’ve been enjoying my two weeks off. Amid economic uncertainty and under much personal angst, I took my leave from my employer of four years. The time was right, ripe… perhaps overripe, with a distinct air of moldy about it. Meh. Had a couple of interviews, put out a resume or two, and kind of lazed around the house for the past two weeks.

Good news on a few fronts. I have kept my record of being offered every job I’ve applied for (two at the moment) AND it’s given me a chance to get back into the studio and actually do some art. Big shows are coming up- AAEA in particular- and that is hot on the heels of Muse I being accepted to the HITS Art on the Hudson extravaganza up in New York. It’s a big deal. The painting will be gallery hopping for a few months and then will be sold (hopefully) the same weekend as the new million dollar Grand Prix. Lots of exposure, lots of horse people, and hopefully lots of fun… if I get to go, and I hope to.

Back to the art. People who know me know that my studio is full of half finished pieces, and my head is full of even more that haven’t made it on to paper or canvas yet. I work on something, put it away, bring it back out, work on it some more, and then decide if it’s worth continuing or if it literally and figuratively belongs on the scrap pile. Some paintings don’t work out. They just don’t. And some of them come together brilliantly after a few months or even years. And don’t ask me how or why- I have no idea. One day I dig the thing out, look at it and think, “Ah! It wants…. purple! right there.” And, voila! done painting.

One of the nice things about commissions is that they usually have a set deadline- they HAVE to get done by X day or I don’t get paid and lose a customer. Same thing with shows. I tend to work to a show deadline, sometimes with several pieces at once, all vying for a spot on the entry form. Rarely these days do I do a piece just for fun. But that’s what I’ve been doing lately. No real pressure, no master plans, just ideas I’ve been kicking around in my head and want to get on paper. I’m trying to simplify- my art, my life, my everything. AE London (an artist who I admire greatly) talks about, “… the magic of deliberate mark making… the line itself can speak volumes.” And she’s right. Line, shape, form. The hardest thing in the world is to do a piece of art simply. The urge to overwork is overpowering. I have been accused of being “seduced by media” in the past, and so I’ve been very careful what I’ve been putting on the paper lately. Yesterday it was conte crayon. The day before, conte, charcoal and coffee. The day before that? Colored pencil. These may not be show pieces, and they may never be shown publicly or put in a portfolio or turned into prints. But they have been fun, and I’ve enjoyed the process of creating art, maybe more than I have in years.

Blogging- part one

Joanna Zeller Quentin / art, artist, create, creating, drawing, equine art, horse, painting, sales /

So, I haven’t written much on here, I know. Part of that is quite simple- this is a blog devoted to artwork (mostly my artwork) and the day to day struggles of being a painter and creating art- and I’ve been on a self imposed hiatus for the past few weeks. The main reason most of us get into art in the first place is because it is something we enjoy, and I just wasn’t enjoying myself. Between mailing out prints to customers (thank you!), organizing upcoming show deadlines and entries, and creating an excel spreadsheet with all inventory, prints, originals, sales, prices, etc- I was just wiped out. I finished a painting, worked my a$$ off to get it done, and then decided, out of respect for my already precarious sanity, that I needed to take a break.

Well, I’ve been thinking about art. Haven’t actually DONE any- yet- but I’ve been thinking about it. My husband is also a professional artist (animator) and he stays very busy, so there’s always art making going on in our house anyway- it’s impossible to get away from. But over the past week I’ve been getting little flashes of inspiration, moments where I think of a work in progress or one that I’ve wanted to start and go “aha!”. Then I remind myself that I am on a BREAK… and it goes away, kind of. A lot of it has been sitting in my head- the way I would depict a photo I took the other day- how it would look in graphite- how I would do it, etc.

So, all in all, I take that as a good thing. Art making is hard- no doubt about it. Making a living with it is even harder. And there is always the debate over commercialism vs art for art’s sake- something a potential customer may want vs what you are trying to say from the deepest pit of your heart and soul. Problem is, not a whole lot of people want your pain and anguish hanging above their couch. I paint what I love- what interests me, what I know, what strikes me as important to convey- and I’ve been pretty lucky in that I have an audience. Niche market, maybe, but a good one.

But I’m not quite ready to pick up the brush just yet. The fact that my mindset is changing though- from last month’s exhaustion borne”I never want to create a piece of art again” to “hmmm- that might be a really cool painting” gives me hope. Heck, maybe in another two weeks I’ll even pick up a pencil again. Maybe.