An introductory post

Persistence: My first attempt at an oil painting its a year old & sold this summer, so I will have to do another!

FAQ:
What is Might Fly all about? And what kind of silly name is that? Who are you and why are you so cranky?  How come we only see your husband at shows?

I’m just trying to live the dream of being a not-so-starving artist.  I'm an absolute and total curmudgeon.

The name is a contraction of the phrase “pigs might fly” since I thought it was a rule of nature that there was no way to make a living as an artist without plummeting into the depressing world of nihilistic self-absorbed visual diatribes that attract the attention of the kind of people that give out public grant money.  I felt isolated and alone- art wasn’t what it was centuries, even decades ago- and I gave up painting and drawing. I stuck to doodling to pass the time.  What was the point of honing my talent to draw from life if the penultimate in realism was simply to deftly copy a photograph?

 Every art class I stepped into was a time-wasting exploration into ‘feelings’, ridiculous assignments with no possible objective outcome, and the ubiquitous copying of photographs. In general, there was a belittling of the idea that, while in reality I may never be as good as Rembrandt at his worst, and that was okay. I should still strive undaunted to be better than Rembrandt at his best.  Now if you have seen my work (and chances are that you have if you're reading this) you may be scratching your head at my mention of Rembrandt. You’re no art historian but you’re sure that adorable fuzzy things in whimsical situations are nowhere to be found in any of Rembrandt's paintings.

This is true: my illustrative work is an expression of my imagination- it’s my heart and soul, my “artistic voice”. It is highly influenced by my deep love of classical and modern Japanese art (I include the very best of anime here), the fantastic art of the neo-classical era, and everything from pin-up girls to art nouveau. These are the things that I poured over as a child and awakened my imagination. I tried for hours a day to turn the bland looking characters in my coloring books into beautiful Mucha’s with a finely sharpened black crayon clutched in my chubby fist.  So it is those things that I look back to when I am creating something to share with others. When I am learning, though, I learn for myself and myself alone. It is for my own personal satisfaction that I’ll paint a bowl of lemons or the cacophony of angles that comes from a haphazard stack of books. The lessons I learn in life drawing give my illustrations that much more depth.

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