The Media Teacher

I watched a customer walk into a shop today and stand for a while waiting to be served before ultimately leaving. I felt bad for the fact that clients are what make your business and to lose just one in this economy is a sad state of a companys’ priorities. The respect for customers has gone with the idea of personalized service and actually listening to the consumers needs.

Again I believe that customers should not be seen as numbers that increase the bottom line and the more customers you have to advertise to the bigger your bottom line will be. I believe a business should personally know everyone on a database-what they need, why they are on the database and what they will need in the future. A customer knows when a company sees them as a profit margin or genuinely fills a need for that particular client.

One unhappy customer talking negatively about your business is enough to lose more potential business. I would rather direct them somewhere they can get what they need and leave them with a good thought of customer service rather than trying to sell them something they don’t need. The confidence you build will more than make up for the sale you may lose and confidence is one of the most important things to build and retain in clients.

Art Meets Poetry and Vice Versa


Inspiration for paintings versus writing comes from the same place in the brain and for me the stimulus is normally somewhat similar. The big difference is that words for me come from varied glimpses-on the way to work I can see multiple images and there is no specific reasoning or place or thought-the words create themselves and the images collected are weaved throughout a series of poems-no one would see the image or anything specific about the scene but all the elements appear either symbolically or even representational.

In painting, the images are captured often from multiple images and the atmosphere is derived from the initial image but also from intangible elements that are not necessarily seen in the initial inspiration. While painting or writing most of the work is without realization of the final product and the image creates itself. The less I am aware of the painting or the words the better the end product as I think at that point the subconscious takes over and the creation is almost reflex.

I am working toward bringing together two aspects of creativity that together I think will greatly improve my final work. First of all is the discipline of technique, I plan on reworking the initial image on several mediums and several sizes until I work out the final composition and the final product. I also intend to overlay a more meticulous approach to underpainting and over painting layers. In the past I have created complementary colors next to each that create the vibration and movement in oils-I plan on adding a technique where complementary colors form from the layers beneath them and the vibration of color will be achieved by the layers of paint visually creating their color combinations. The affect will be more intangible but it will be stronger and have more of an impact on the viewer.

The second aspect  I will bring to future paintings i words that inspire the painting or the painting that will inspire words. My next painting is “Love Lies Bleeding-it is a painting of a garden-the plant love lies bleeding is in the garden and there are morning glories climbing the fence and across the yard is the moon settling into the sky. I wrote the poem first and the image became out of the words that I wrote. Love lies bleeding is the plant but it is also an image of the garden and the melancholy of late evening-I want the viewer to feel the sadness of loss and the mysterious of the garden at night. I want the colors to be rich and vivid and the moon to be mysterious. I will post the poem and the painting when they are complete.
I plan on combining more words and images in the near future.

I’m starting a new painting course next weekend and I’m really excited. This time instead of a large painting with lots of detail where the intent is the movement and feeling of water-https://artbygordon.com/paintingcourse.html– this painting will be even a bit larger but much fewer details. This new painting will be about an effect of light passing through a leaf on the surface of water. The details are much fewer but the initial underpainting is even more crucial.

My first session will be to create the underpainting and description of how the overlayers will react with the under layer. I need to have the  light and colors beneath react with the over layers of paint. If it is overworked it will quickly lose the freshness and transparency of the light-not enough details and you will not be able to see that it is a leaf with light streaming through. Again the depth will not be as much a factor as the movement and feeling of the water.

I would have actually worked more with depth on the previous course but the main idea was to paint the feeling of the place and not complicate the course with changes in the values of the colors although I did explain the fact that colors change with distance but if I were to paint the image myself, much of the distance in the background would have been more blurred than detailed.- This is the difference also between working from a photograph and working from life or even memory. When you work from a photograph most of the image is in focus and the overall scene is flattened-the idea is the whole image clarity instead of focusing on the parts.

In the previous course I used a piece of paper with a square cut out of the  center-this was so the student would not be overwhelmed with details and could concentrate on the area she was reproducing. In this next course the focus will be more on the effect of the water and light and with the use of complementary colors-asking the question whether the light and color vibrate to the eye and if the colors have become to muted which would relate to being overworked. I intend to paint multiple very thin light layers of paint but the paint should never get too thick and some of the white of the canvas should show through the image. I will have this course layed out in steps the same as the previous course. I will also have updates of the course so stayed tuned. Thanks for listening please comment as to help me craft future writings for followers. Any input would be really helpful. Thanks

I have been seeing on linked-in some questions about creativity and I believe there are several aspects of creativity that have to do with different parts of the brain in the physical sense as well as an openness and willingness to connect with that part of the self. The act of creating images, words, etc. for me is an act of being absent for a while. If I know what I’m painting and think of what I am painting I tend to push paint around, it’s when I instinctually and usually quickly create a work of art, that’s when I feel like I have truelly touched that part of the brain.

In my experience, the right brain has its own connections and relations of words and objects that don’t necessarily have any comparison from a logical side. The motivation and feeling of creating art and writing is intangible and the work pretty much creates itself. The conscious side of the brain fights with the creative subconscious side and questions the comparisons which creates breaks in the creative process.
When I sit down to write, it usually is from many different snapshots of things from the day and the images and thoughts create paths in words-this is referred to as a trial web shift when the right brain kicks in adn takes over.

I collect images from places-it might be the way light hits the water or the way a field blows in the wind and when I paint all of these images come together from memory. I use photographs to support the images that I see but memory fills in the gaps. In the future I plan on getting more observation in before the act of painting and more drawn studies to emphasize more details.