My motto here at Pyracantha Studios is: "100 Per Cent Quality Art and Art By-Products." This was made up for me by a good friend, now sadly departed from this life, who was a techie computer guy who wanted to learn drawing and painting. I think that he would have been fascinated by his artist friend who wanted to learn math, science, and technology. But he died in 1999, before my "conversion experience."

Let me explain about the difference between "art" and "art by-products." "Art" refers to original drawings, paintings, or other image work done by me for a client or for myself. "Art by-products" refers to preliminary sketches, color try-outs, extra bits that didn't fit in, and most of all, any copies of my art such as prints, color laser copies, digital images, or computer printouts. Just because it's an art by-product doesn't mean it isn't for money. In fact I have probably made as much money or even more from selling prints (by-products) as I have from selling originals (art).

Commercial art is somewhere between "art" and "art by-products." It is original work, done by hand, but it is often reproduced as ads. It is not sold as itself, nor put in shows or galleries. No one buys copies of it, at least usually. And often, even my best efforts are only temporary. Most of the work I do for Trader Joe's goes out of date and is taken down sooner or later, as foods go in and out of season. So is it art or art by-product? I don't define it. I am used to doing this ephemeral type of art now, at least at work.

But I save images of all my commercial work, so that even though the original sign may be thrown out or painted over, I have a record of everything. I cannot say that I have not been "productive" this last summer, because I certainly have done a lot of commercial work that I'm pleased with. It's just the studio work, the "art," that isn't going so well. This summer I created six large "billboards" which advertise Trader Joe's dairy products. The signs go over the dairy case and are visible across the whole store. My latest one is right on the border between "art" and "art by-product," or art and advertising. Though it has words and a logo, these elements are superimposed on a painting that is a tribute to the great nineteenth century "luminist" American landscape painters such as Thomas Cole or Frederic Church. Thus I have introduced elements of "art" into an environment of "art by-products."

Here's an image of my latest commercial work, titled "Organic Dairy Products." Acrylic on masonite, 48 inches by 33 inches.

But what about math, you might say? Have I reverted to color-addled art rather than hard-edged mathematics? Of course not. I am still doing math. I continue to do logarithm and exponent problems from the White Book. But they are getting boring, so I am going to move on into mathematical formulations for exponential growth and decay, as well as a review of series and progressions.

Posted at 2:26 am | link