What inspires you?

I just applied the first layer of paint to a new painting tonight. For this piece I want to share with you a bit of what my creative process is and maintain a running dialog during this period.

I wish there was a formula of logic that I use to start a painting, but to be honest it is totally random.  This started Monday with the idea of having two paintings of the same subject matter…maybe even a mirrored image of something.

So Tuesday, I dragged out two 20in x 10in canvases out of the “art” closet and placed them on the easel. Blank, staring back at me.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I had a client at work that had a green flannel shirt on that had lines of red and yellow through it. It reminded me of the forms that Frank Lloyd Wright used in his designs. Which my mind took me to images of stained glass. I knew then that I wanted to create a painting that looked like a stained glass window.

Wednesday afternoon I did a Google search for stained glass windows was the next step.  Found parts of designs that I liked. But I did not connect with the circles used in them. They needed to be something different.

Because I like incorporating the four elements or four corners into my artwork. The stream of consciousness ran with the ideas of glass and light or sky…air and the fact of it being painted, so that turned into painted light. That light flowed like water as it floods an area so the next step was to add water, or a water theme… seashells that was the answer. The circles became scallops shells.

Wednesday night that imagery was drawn in on the canvas to get an idea of balance. And how and if it was going to work. Then tonight I started to under-paint the shells…  the process continues. It will dry for two day and then I can work on that area again.

As I get further along. I will post images. So the words will soon become an image for you to connect to.

I would like to think that the life of an artist is all about making “art”.

November for me has been all about the “stuff” that happens in the studio… not on the easel but on the computer and the desk, the business part of “art”… I am sad to say that it is not as fun as “creating” the art.  But it is equally as important. I have reworked my artist statement, and my artist Bio.  Created a CV and worked on preparing packets to send out applying for shows and competitions for upcoming year.  I realize that to most people this seems a simple thing…and for some it may be…. But for me it is very difficult.

To write about what I do and how I think about it and the creative process as manic and random that it is to me at times… in my mind it makes perfect total sense (most of the time) but when I try to put it down into words, sentences and then a paragraph, well it just does not work out that well for me.

I would love to be able to rejoice in the fact that I am able to multitask with the best of them and switch my brain’s focus at the drop of a hat and all is fabulous, but I can’t.

I was fortunate enough to be connected with a wonderfully talent woman who has given me something I was lacking… this was “TIME” and a few quiet moments of sanity… something that I was quickly running out of … sorry to everyone who had to deal with me.

As a Thank You for how much she has helped me let me do a little cross~artist plug!

Her name is Alice, and her company is called “Time Gifts”  Check her out she is truly amazing!  I mean seriously if she is able to help me focus and helped me get so much in one month… she has got to be really GOOD!

So November is almost gone and the new focus is December and to start to close out the year and prepare to move forward into a New Year of possibilities!

So things for “US” look forward to in the New Year:

• More quality time for me to create artwork
• More places for you to go and see my artwork
• I calmer and happier john-michael
• My artwork contributing a larger % to my overall income

Let the journey unravel to reveal itself…

This was originally publish in “Free Fest Monthly” March 1993

Tomorrow

Looking for the one to understand
Watching the years pass by.
Learning more each year.
Learning each year there is more to learn.

Hoping that one-day I can look into your eyes
Knowing what you are thinking
Wondering if deception has a home here?

You build the dream
Around a dream
Walking up one morn,
Realizing even sand castles
Get washed back to the sea.

So you share what you can
And learn to live with the thought
One day you will have to let go~
Until then I will enjoy
The here and now.
Letting tomorrow to take care of itself.

john-michael korpal

Deep breathe and relax… I can finally feel my shoulder releasing a bit. The past weeks, months have been intense, to many lists, very long lists and not enough time.  Many nights of work that when in the early hours of the morning, only to crawl out of bed in the morning and start all over again. I am proud of what I was able to achieve during this time. But it really pushed me pass my threshold.. Tonight I dropped off the donation for the tribal elder productions  event tomorrow evening. That was the last of my deadlines to fulfill, after dropping that off I treated myself to a hour looking at used books at the armadillos pillow and found several French books and one on Art. Then over to Starbucks for a Soy Mocha. It was nice to just enjoy the moment and not be stressed out about what needed to be done.

I am home now getting ready to read for a bit and then get a good nights rest, because more than likely the calm feeling that surrounds me tonight will be challenged tomorrow.

I may push myself more than I should but these moments that I am able to get everything done is exhilarating to me and it makes all the craziness worth it, because I have been able to prove to myself that I am sometimes able to do the impossible.

It reminds me that my limitations are only a place to jump off from and explore what the world has to teach me. It may make it often difficult for my loved ones and me. But if I don’t try how will I ever know how far I can go.

Work in progress 10-13-12

“Mandala”

24 inch diameter

Oil on re-purpose pressboard table top

This will be auctioned off on October 23 for a good friend’s fundraiser event .

Please click the link below to learn more.

Tribal Elder Productions

October 2011

October 2012

A year in my life…

I just finished up the Andersonville Arts Weekend. There was a great turn out and I think all had fun…myself included. This year I exhibited the “Twig Sculptures” and a new series named “Years___” that focused on a painted representation of a cross section of a cut tree stump. Exposing the rings that each year’s grow period creates.  This started to move my mind forward into the thought how things move in rings or cycles, a season, a year a life.

I was looking back at the pictures from last year compared to the ones from this years show. I was shocked at how different I looked, how much older I look.  This marks a year in time between shows. The things I learned, things I gained and things I lost. It was a huge mirror placed in from of me and I had a difficult time connecting me to the reflection in the mirror. I saw the reflection of someone old, worn down and tired. I posted on my Facebook page today. What is your dream…and what steps are you doing today to move forward into that dream? And then I was forced to answer it for myself. What am I doing to make my dream become real?

I had to make a list of what I have been working on and really look at how effective my steps have been. On some level they have been helpful, others are ideas that are outdated and never really worked in the first place but I am still clinging on to them in hope that they will help me someday… I know it wasted time and energy. But we all have things to work through. I need to spend more time on my artwork, evening if it does not pay my bills but it does feed my soul.

I am learning to let go of things that do not make me feel good about my self. I am tired of individuals that are unhappy and chose to do nothing to change that… and I understand that I have been there where I have been so depress that I could not crawl up to see the light of day I just did not have the energy. They are really no dress rehearsals for life why would you not want to do the best performance that you can. What do you have to lose?  I had a teacher years ago that told me it was always better to do what you felt in your heart then to look back in regret of a missed opportunity.

What I am having difficultly is that there seems not enough time in the day to do all that I would like. I just do not want to wake up someday an old man with nothing to show for it. I want to know that in my life that I made a difference and my life was used to the best of my abilities.

Flour + water makes paste

Flour+ water+ yeast+ salt + a new medium for me!

Sourdough bread-this is the third batch each one is getting better and better.

So I am guessing the phase “Take this art and eat it!”, is correct!

I can hear the sound of the chains on the swing set in the park squeak as someone is propelling higher and higher in the air. I do not know if it is a child or an adult. It reminds me of a time in my past when I was on a swing, headphones in my ears with music blasting in my ears as I increased my speed and my height wishing that I could let do of the chains and break into flight and be released from my earthy troubles. It was such a freeing moment, and although unrealistic the thoughts of such freedom made my sadness dissipate.

Motion has always been very significant for me the persistence of motion or the lack there of it. This has always informed me that I am moving forward in my life.

Lately, I have had the strange sensation that while riding my bike. That I am not the one in motion, but that I am on a stationary bike and that I am simply surround by a screen that my world is being projected upon. The only way I can express this is along the lines of an old b/w film where you view a scene with an individual driving in a car. You see the background of passing tree and other objects thru the car windows. But… the person is not moving, the car is not moving. There is only the background is moving and that is an illusion.

Last week was difficult and very confusing. I feel blocked and stuck in the mediocrity of what I have learned to call my life. I must move forward out of the grey.

So what do you see when you look at this house?

I have been living in my head for the last couple of weeks, not painting or writing and not even baking. Just watching as things pass before my eyes. Some of these make me very grateful that I am where I am in life and some make me crave for more. Remember, I said I have been living in my head. I do not expect any of this to make sense to those outside of my head.

The picture above is the house I spent most of my childhood or at least until I turned nine and we moved out to rural Granger. I took this picture in 2004 as the beginning of a work in progress that I am still working on.

The house is very different then I remember. It seems smaller and less wrathful. There were two trees in the front yard one on either side of the sidewalk; a white screen door and the shutters were black (they are green now). I wish I could go inside and see how things have changed. I remember there was pink tile in the bathroom and I remember always being afraid to go into that room. The strange double cabinet in the hallway that had a lock on it. I remember that my folk’s bedroom was purple.

I have stared at this photo for hours thinking and trying to connect all the dots. How did I get from there to here? Reliving each of the steps has been difficult and weird at best. Perception is altered between the eyes of a child and the eyes of an adult.

I think that is why I am feeling such a sense of disconnect. I couldn’t be the child that grew up in that house. The child that grew up in that house was scared and afraid of everything.  When I look at the photo everything looks so small and banal. But as a child it was huge and consuming to me and embodied memories of fear and unhappiness.  As children we only know of what surrounds us and that by default becomes how we gauge everything else in our world, until we learn different… if we ever learn.

I have observed that people follow a natural way that things “should” happen, high school, college, marriage, career, children… you get the idea. I never felt the need to follow those rules. I think the fact that I am “queer” might have something to do with it because the rules of “straight society” never seemed to include me. So, I had to make up my own goals and a new method to measure them.  I have also observed that most of life’s accomplishment one leads into the other.  Mine did not,  I  would finished one goal and then started working on another… and more times then not there was no logical connection to other than it was what I wanted to do at the time.

I must admit, I think this gave me a much more fuller life experience by following my own rules. It was not an easy path. There are many things that I learned on this path that I would have much rather read in a book.

But that is for another blog at another time.