The Art of Health

When I started painting at the age of ten in the atelier of The Huntington School of Fine Arts, I remember my teacher, Joe Mack, telling us that we couldn't sit.  Art was a whole body experience that had to be done standing up!

When I got to college I recall an assembly lecture for all artists regarding the health hazards of the artist.  Everything from toxic photography liquids to the dangers of turpentine fumes and the health risks of heavy metals such as cobolt, lead and cadmium for the painters.  I was nineteen at the time and took little heed of the warnings.  What they didn't teach us was the the long term physical damage of the arts.

As a forty-plus year old artist who has been painting for thirty of those years, I assumed that cancer and organ failure was to be my cause of death due to toxic exposure to paint.  Little did I know that my body would fail long before the paint ever got to me!

I have, for the past five years, endured excruciating chronic pain in the form of a herniated lumbar disk in my lower back.  The cause, as every orthopedist I've talked to claims, is being hunched over a drafting table and painting easel for the past thirty years. 

The long term physical effects to the artist are varied including carpel tunnel in your hands, myopia in your eyes due to straining over minute details, and as I have experienced, a bad back from bending over your work.  This is nothing new of course. In researching famous artists this is a condition that is quite common over the centuries.

Unfortunately for the freelance artist there is no Worker's Comp or Disability Insurance. you just have to suck it up and keep painting.  I only wish that that I had heeded my childhood teacher and continued to paint standing up.

Good Health and Good Luck.

WOC

Above:
"Self portrait"
William O'Connor

The Riddermark

The following is a series of images of a personal work.

"The Riddermark"

17"x48" oil on panel

©William O'Connor 2013

Enjoy.

WOC

Artist of the Month:Bruegel

http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/2013/08/artist-of-month-bruegel.html

Midgard Tales

The following is a series of work in progress images that I did for a commission from Kobold Quarterly....

Enjoy-

WOC

Making Choices

Someone much wiser than me once said, "To be an artist is to make choices."  Do I use oil or digital? Canvas or panel?  Horizontal or Vertical?  Abstract or figurative?  Cobolt Blue or Aquamarine?    Every brush stroke that  a painter makes is a little choice.

As a commercial artist I am constantly reminded that most of these choices are not up to me.  Illustration, concept art and commercial art are collaborative.  There are art directors, editors, authors, marketing directors and advertising considerations that are making choices with you. So it is very enjoyable when I am given the opportunity to make many of the choices myself.

It is about 3 months until Illuxcon in Allentown, PA.  An event that I look forward to every year.  Its a chance to spend time with a small group of dedicated painters and enthusiasts and share ideas and the work we've been doing for the past year and talk freely without the censoring presence of art directors looming around the corner.

Every year I like to do at least one painting for myself without the restrictions of the client.  This year however I thought I would recruit the help of you, my audience.  Usually, the public is the last to see my work, after its been notated, changed, color proofed and edited.  In this instance I'd like you to be the first to see it and to help me make the choices.

First, The Composition.  I have already made several choices at this point.  This is going to be an oil painting 17"x48", Why?  I like to work in odd formats, and to be honest, I have an empty frame that I sold the painting out of. (Choices.)

Below I have three concept sketches for three possible paintings.  I only have time in my schedule to do one.  Please leave a note suggesting which one you feel would make the best painting.  I'm not promising that I will adhere to the majority, but this could be fun.

As the painting progresses I will share color comps and WIP images to enlist your suggestions again as the painting develops.

Thanks in advance.

Enjoy.

WOC

The Oracle 

"This image was inspired directly from the photo reference. The ominous lighting reminded me of a Pyle or Sargent painting.  This painting would be very dark with a lot of tonal variations and texture, contrasting against the smooth skin of the figure.  Unfortunately this image is very similar in theme to another painting I completed earlier this year including a mythological nude with tree branches. I might be willing to present them as a set."

The Riddenmark

"Inspired by bonsai design this image depicts the windswept plains of Rohan from The Lord of the Rings.  I envision the golden fields of wheat shimmering in the dappled sun.  The winds of war stir the clouds.  The aged tree represents King Theodin, bent and worn, but not broken.  Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli look out across the plain."

Prospero and Miranda: from The Tempest

"This image has been hanging next to my easel for months taunting me.  I love the emotion and the tenderness.  As a father I'm drawn to the narrative.  Steel Grey storm clouds breaking as the storm abates, and fresh sunlight spills across the couple.  Every time I think I'm ready to start I become daunted by the level of work involved, and find something easier to do."






















©William O'Connor Studios

Muddy Colors

I am proud to announce that I have been invited to be a member of the Muddy Colors blog.  This site that shares the work and ideas of some of the industry's best artists and is one of the most insightful blogs on contemporary art today.

My Artist of the Month series will now be posted at this site, and I hope that you all will follow me and the other artists as we discuss our trade, craft and art.

Thank you.

WOC

Life Imitating Art: The Post Apocalypse

As millions dig out from the destruction of Hurricane Sandy, and begin to piece their world’s back together again, I am poignantly reminded of so many images that I’ve seen before.  Gas lines, food hoarding, a breakdown of the social order as the infrastructure of society goes out overnight.  As many heroic stories of first responders and life saving deeds are heralded, and the dark and awful stories of crime make it into the headlines, there are a million other stories, the stories of the day to day life that becomes the new Normal after a disaster.

I realized that these stories are the subject of an endless number of tales both contemporary and ancient that have been depicted in art for centuries, from Noah’s Arc, to the Decameron, to Road Warrior.  The stories of how fragile our social network is, and that we all live only one catastrophe away from loosing the fragile web of society that has been woven for millennia.  For most of these stories they were foretelling of some fictional future calamity such as the Second Coming or Nuclear Holocaust.

In the post 9/11 culture the concept of the Post Apocalypse Story was reinvented because we had all just lived through a horrible disaster.  Although 9/11 itself is rarely depicted metaphors for the sudden and horrific attack by an alien or outside force was dealt with in detail as the War on Terror was waged.  2005’s War of the Worlds starring Tom Cruise depicted in stark reality the impact of the destruction of our society would have raising issues of survival and responsibility to one’s morality over one’s family.  The award winning and critically acclaimed Battlestar Galactica which ran from 2004 until 2008 was another metaphor of all out war and destruction that placed the very fabric of society and morality into the crucible of the post apocalyptic world.

Today another type of post apocalyptic story runs through our culture as our disasters evolve.  Now it is not war or man-made (or alien-made) destruction that is wrought upon society but rather environmental disasters beyond our understanding or our control.  With Katrina in 2005 and the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008 our culture became threatened by mindless forces without reason or agenda.  The fear became not how to fight back, or to win, there was no way to win, the asteroid would not be diverted, the army wasn’t going to save the day, the bomb had already gone off.  Instead the story became how do we survive after?  How do we hold onto what is most important to us individually in a world where the future is unknowable and in the end, there is no safety net.

The popularity of shows like The Walking Dead premiering in 2010 and McCarthy’s 2006 novel The Road, are poignant commentaries of how we all try to survive in a world where randomness seems to be the only reliable constant in a culture where jobs, homes and whole seaboards can be wiped out without warning.  In the new post apocalyptic drama its not nuclear war or aliens or even zombies that threaten our survival, but  the creeping entropy of chaos that lurches ever closer to those we love.  In these stories we are able to explore what kind of people we want to be, and what kind of people we may become when the veneer of society is stripped away and we are left with the abyss of the unknown looming ahead of us, left to decide what is important.

Thank you

WOC