Karen Desrosiers' Blog
Living the Artist's Life
About

I am a writer and artist attempting to live a creative life.  I've created this blog to share my experiences, daily struggles, and progress as I make my way through the worlds of freelance writer and starving artist.
Blogs I Like

Mira's List   Grants and resources

ECCA         Exeter Ceter for
Creative Arts

My Artful Life

Jay Reiter    Photographer

What Inspire's Me?

With Thanksgiving upon us, I've been thinking about what inspires me, because I think inspiration is a gift to be thankful for. 

I am inspired by those that went before me - my grandparents, my parents, artists, and writers. 

I am inspired by family and the connections that bind people together, for better or worse. 

I am inspired by the strength of color and texture, whether described in words or piled on a canvas in oil paints. 

I'm inspired by a sense of place and how people connect to a place, what you can learn about people from place. 

And I'm inspired by all things Irish and Celtic.


Posted by Karen at 7:30am November 26, 2009     {0 Comments}
Visual Writing

At a reading I did a few months ago, someone in the audience asked me how my being a visual artist changes and informs my writing.  An interesting and good question.  I answered it at the time, of course, but have been thinking about it ever since.  Is my being a visual artist related to my writing and how?

One obvious way in which my visual art influences my writing is in that I visualize everything I'm writing.  I paint the picture in my mind.  I can literally "see" the scene, and in theory could probably paint it on canvas if I chose to.  I am able to think in pictures, even when I'm making it all up in fiction.  Then all I have to do is put what I'm "seeing" into words.

My visual art relies heavily on color and texture - my oil paintings use strong colors and thickly, texturally applied paint.  One of the aspects of good fiction is when the author is able to evoke the senses through language.  When I'm writing, I visualize a scene in the way I would paint it, with color and texture, and enough detail so that I can bring all the sensory details to life in my mind.  I can smell the scene, taste it, feel it.  And once I have it all conjured up in my mind, all I have to do it paint it with words on my paper.

These were the immediate, obvious answers that came to me, when originally asked. But I discovered another whole layer to the relationship between my visual art and writing that is about processing the world and maintaining balance.  Through both I try to deal with the human experience, people, place, relationships.  My visual art tends to look more at place, and the relationship between place and the community that lives there.  I attempt to capture the character of a place, through it's color and texture, while trying to represent the personality and emotion of a place.  My writing tends to look at the relationships between people.  While my art is often full of bright color and joy, my writing deals with a lot of the negative aspects of life, the darker sides of relationships.  And therein lies the balance.

Neither my writing nor my painting are complete without the other.


Posted by Karen at 2:10pm November 27, 2009     {0 Comments}
Selecting Works

I've been participating in a number of group art shows recently, now that the season of the holiday art show is upon us, and I discovered a new dilema as an artist.  I've been really struggling with how to choose which pieces to put in a show.

I've tried choosing pieces based on which ones I thought had the best chance of selling.  The problem there... everyone has very different styles and tastes when it comes to picking art.  My favorite pieces are not necessarily everyone else's favorites, and the one's I'm not entirely satisfied with, other people love.  It seems impossible to select works for a show based on something so subjective as whether or not it will sell.

I considered selecting pieces based on how often they've already been shown.  It does seem to make sense to me to take the advantage of show or a new venue to showcase pieces that are new or have not been seen as often in an area. 

Unless, for some reason, I'm not entirely certain the newer, less seen work is as sellable for the area as some of the older pieces.

Are you beginning to see the cognitive circle I got my self into last weekend as I stared at six different paintings, unable to choose which two to enter into a show?  I'd settle on one, and just as I'd been narrowing in on the second, I'd start to rethink the first.  How do artists do it?  It's like trying to decide which of your six children to bring to the circus when you only have two tickets. 

In the end, I asked a couple of friends to choose for me.  Of course, they didn't agree on their recommendations either.  But between their recommendations and my own feelings I chose two and entered them into the show.  It's too late, of course, but I'm still rethinking it, wondering if I made the right choice.

The only solution, it seems, is to try and get more solo shows that will afford me enough space to hang all my work, so that I don't have to choose between them any more.  But that's a whole different problem!


Posted by Karen at 7:30am December 4, 2009     {0 Comments}