Two and a half years of concentrated work and feeling the need to take stock... for the nth time!

I decided to adopt the way of the artist in the fall of 2007... and go all the way once and for all. I've been experimenting different techniques with acrylics up to now and, more than ever, I feel the need to branch out! Expressing beauty is important to me... but at the same time I'm attracted to the expression of power... sort of a need to shock a little and destabilize: I guess every piece of art is an auto portrait... and I've been known to be a "piece of art" myself at times!

Feedback from people is important and I have used every opportunity to obtain it at exhibitions or through soliciting opinions directly from friends or family members. This has been extremely useful to me. At times, I've seen myself trying to measure approval rates by analyzing facial twitches or other manifestations of body language (not everybody is an art lover or a lover of my art)! At other times, after a spontaneous comment, I rushed back to my studio to make necessary adjustments, thanking the person that volunteered it on the spot or shortly thereafter! I take this opportunity to thank everybody who contributed in this way.

In my continuous saga to progress as an artist, given the style (you may pronounce "shtyle"!) that I'm developing, my subjects and my way of seeing, there is a number of things that I still have to wrestle with in 2010:

• When working in series, certain paintings fit it perfectly within the ensemble that tells a coherent story but, by the same token, they can be totally misinterpreted or even confusing to the observer when taken out of context. I want to sell individual paintings, not series! Is ambiguity a trait that I should cultivate regardless?
• Should I charge double if my paintings can have two interpretations (joke)?
• Can the expression of raw power and beauty coexist in the same painting or is it just a matter of choosing one or the other for any given painting. Many powerful contemporary artists don't depict beauty, is this what I want?
• People's backgrounds and age brackets can determine the way a painting is interpreted. In my most recent series on Yoga, I found out to my surprise that the pictorial vocabulary, the cropping and colors that I used could lead to my art being viewed as "dark art" when taken out of context, which is not necessarily a bad thing given current trends... but is this what I want?
• The more I delve into contemporary art (my attraction) the more I distance myself from art lovers at large... do I want to end up in a museum (not likely anyway!) or do I want to be in people's homes? Can I survive or endure as an "acquired taste"?
• Even if I can develop an acceptable pictorial vocabulary, this does not negate the need to make coherent artistic statements that are in line with what I want to communicate, even if it's ambiguity!
• Should I just proceed with the task at hand and not consider any of the above. i.e., just paint?
  

So, it's with a little apprehension that I start 2010!

Note to self: "I think it's time to introduce lively colors!"