Saturday, April 25, 2009

Well Behaved Sunny and Pleasant


The last day for my show is tomorrow! Here is one of the bigger pieces. It is 3 feet by 4 feet on wood panel. This painting is about being a lady and being pulled together and lovely and nice and delicate and well-behaved. There are bugs on the dresses that signify the difficulties that can come about when one spends all ones energy developing the outside.

I don't know about being well-behaved sunny and pleasant, but I spend too much time wishing I was more girly and pulled together. I want to be one of those people who just looks cool and effortlessly stylish. It is dumb feeling this way as it diminishes the qualities I have that are not superficial. Putting too much weight on the outside is a bit dangerous.

5 comments:

The Gooch said...

Hi Martha, I went through your blog all the way back to day one. I wanted to comment on an old one that was about you feeling crappy about working commercially. Do you think differently about the title "illustrator" now? I know some of the people I am around frequently are really trying to hide their illustrator past as much as they can. I feel like that decision keeps the door between illustrator and artist closed. If you take away the meaning, doesn't "illustrator" sound so much more sophisticated than "artist"?

Martha Rich said...

Hey thanks for reading my blog. I think that post way back was more about how I was letting other people make me feel bad about being an illustrator not that I felt crappy about working commercially. It was more about how I didn't like that elitism. I love doing commercial art and I love doing gallery art! I am not trying to hide it. But these days it is funny how many of the people who poo poo'd illustration have asked me advice on getting commercial work. It is really so dumb and high schoolish. You know? Who cares what you call yourself? Just make art.

Andrea said...

Hiya,

I absolutely love all your work, but especially this painting. Beautiful! I'll check back to see your site redesign too, I've been working on mine..lord what a pain!

Coop said...

Hi Martha, I really like your work and hope that this interests you.

I am attempting to amass a large collection of portraits of Frankenstein's Monster in as many different styles and in as many different media as possible as an ongoing art project. The only stipulation is that the size is 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches (standard artist trading card size) and that each card has name, date, title and anything else you care to add on the back.

I welcome cards from both amateur and professional artists.

I will be leaving blank cards with instructions and mailing address in galleries, colleges, art shops, on buses, handing them out in the street and wherever else I can think of.

If you think you can spare the time to produce a little something, please send a portrait to:

A Patchwork Of Flesh
45 Silversea Drive
Westcliff on Sea
Essex
SS0 9XD
United Kingdom

Each card I receive will be uploaded at http://apatchworkofflesh.blogspot.com/ to produce an on-line gallery, I then hope to put on an exhibition of these cards in a gallery.

Anonymous said...

Hey Martha!
I saw your work at the Jesus gallery two weeks ago. You were my favourite :)
Love your work!
As a woman (girl?) I feel like I relate to some of your themes. I try to pretend that I don't care about all that stuff a lot but in the end I know that I do that I'm like, Fuck, they've got me too!!! (but I never let others know ;)