The Blog
Warning: A tree-hugging, granola-eating, book-reading, Buddhist liberal posts here.
It's a New Year
5 January 2010, 17:00:00
Happy new year! Wishing all of you a great 2010. Whether 2009 was good for you or not, let's hope this one will be even better!This January, I'm Artist of the Month at Genreville, Publishers Weekly's speculative fiction publishing blog. Head there now to see my portraits of Genreville's authors, Rose Fox and Josh Jasper, and to learn about the process behind the two paintings!
Before the close of 2009, I really wasn't able to cap off the year with a large painting (somehow, it's been a thing in previous years) but December 2009 was still surprisingly productive what with the baby on board (now 2 and a half months old). Besides the portraits for Genreville, I also contributed to the Penny Experiment, with the painting Change is Coming. (Should anyone be surprised now at how I like to title my work?)
Thanks for visiting again! More changes and updates to the site are coming.
Small Addition, Big Changes
10 November 2009, 12:21:34
Firstborn daughter Anya Sophia Lundberg arrived October 15th, 2009, and you can guess that I've not been online or painting as much since! I'll still be trying to update the site whenever possible (you can see there are new paintings on the main page) but new commissions will be limited, and I'll only accept those with very generous deadlines!Upcoming changes to the site include having new categories, including one just for Prayer Trees and one for sketches.
Congratulations to Shaun Tan for winning the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist! It's well deserved--I'm an admirer!
This is a short post--but you can't blame me, can you? (I'm looking forward to the days when Anya will graduate from her 3-hour feeding cycle to longer ones.)
Take care of yourselves!
The World Fantasy Awards
5 August 2009, 21:34:00
I still don't quite know how to process this, but it was a shock to be notified this morning that I'm among the 2009 nominees for the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist. I'm among names such as Kinuko Y. Craft, Stephan Martinière, John Picacio and Shaun Tan and still can't comprehend what I'm doing there! This is not something I ever expected but clearly The Field Guide to Surreal Botany got me in there--and it wouldn't have been possible without the many writers, readers, reviews and well-wishers who supported the project. Thank you to all of you, and all of you who have supported me and my art over the years.It's an honour (pardon the cliche) and HUGE surprise just to be nominated, and I don't know how to express quite all the shock and gratitude I'm feeling. Thanks, you're all awesome.
Art Updates
16 July 2009, 13:41:00
Of course I've been back from vacation for a while, and have been working on art as well. The latest pieces are always in the thumbnails near the top of the News page. Do check out the ACEOs, and a new page I've set up about how I've found a quick new way of doing digital art: Check out Work in Progress: Dreadmire Chronicles.I'm not doing tours anymore (thank goodness), owing to the fact I'm now into the third trimester of my pregnancy. Which means I now have time (and energy) for art again--and there's already a queue! If you're curious and interested in having a picture done by me...contact me quick! I'll be trying to fit you in between August and mid-October, when I'll be due. After that, who knows what my life will be like!
On Vacation!
7 June 2009, 23:35:00
I am away June 8th to 11th. Behave!Art and Society
21 April 2009, 16:23:00
I've watched as well as participated in many art-related discussions/flame wars in my 13 years online. I'm not just talking about pictures either; but books, movies, games, you name it. Oftentimes the quickest, easiest discussions are just simple opinions on the quality of the work in question. But the bloodiest battles remain those that try to analyze the motivations behind a work (or its lack of clear motives), and/or the effect of the work on its audience. It should not be surprising (just human nature, perhaps) that more analysis is heaped upon creative works or genres that hit a nerve with me.Things that raise my ire: Racism. Sexism. Homophobia. Religious bigotry. Violence for beauty's sake. Passivity in the face of exploitation or the causing of suffering.
When I see these being tolerated, celebrated or even encouraged by any work in any medium, my hackles are raised. Even when the work is pure fantasy. My attitude isn't that these works should be censored, but they should be questioned and studied as a means of recognising (and then possibly dealing with) the problems in society that helped give it birth. (Also, I basically boycott the works--why should I financially reward something that I do not wish to see more of?)
So let me just make my stance clear: A deliberately made piece of Art doesn't just end at the picture's borders or at the book's covers. Art reflects society, or a part of society. (Great art challenges society to become better, in my humble opinion. "Guernica" is one of these.) You cannot remove a piece of art from the context of which it was made, and the context of how it will be viewed by its contemporaries. The art was shaped by an artist who was in turn influenced by his or her life, upbringing, values, sources of inspiration... all of which in whole or part will come from society, unless you're talking about a real outsider artist who was raised by wolves away from civilisation. And the new artwork in turn will impact society and other creative people in it.
It's the unspoken rule underlying the entire study of Art History.
To me this is simple, but recent events and thinking back to previous exchanges, I'm realizing that I've faced people arguing against this close relationship between art and society--especially when my criticism is directed at a work that someone else was defending. The defence of the work will frequently be based on its artistic/technical/entertainment merits. In the case of violent movies or computer games, the "catharsis" defence also comes up fairly often. (My argument against? Not to brush it aside, but to save words in my post, I recommend reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. The catharsis defence of violent media doesn't work with me because I think the effects of these media are more far-reaching and insidious and health-affecting than those defending them would believe.)
I don't know when or where exactly it started, but I can't, and for a long time, have not been able to see any painting, advertisement, movie, TV show as separate from the people/society that created it and the people who were intended to see it. You can't flip through a beauty magazine and tell me that you can't draw certain conclusions from it: That the epitome of female beauty is being thin, fair, and tall, with airbrushed skin and lots of it showing. Even if you argued that that objective is obviously not subscribed to by everyone, you still have to accept that that is the ideal being put out by magazine publishers and the majority of the fashion and beauty industry. And that it makes an impact on the people constantly bombarded by this ideal. Big bucks are shelled out for products to bring one closer to it, big bucks are shelled out to the models and photographers who can make women feel inadequate for not being it, big bucks are shelled out to distract women with the "shiny" and "pretty" and make-believe that hide the health and psychological (and environmental) costs of chasing this (completely artificial!) ideal.
Of course it isn't just women's magazines. Just try to apply this now to any or every piece of art you see. Your view of the world opens up. Every detail becomes important. Every piece of the puzzle. Art reflects society (or at the very least, the niche it came from)... and slowly but surely, art makes a difference on the society it is unleashed upon.
Creative people and artists have more power than most people give them credit for. Trouble is, I don't know if all realize the responsibility that comes with it. It can't just be about the egos or pleasing hormone-addled teenage boys or selling products that play on human insecurities. Well, that's not stopping some artists, but to me it's just not-great art.
And on the other hand, media consumers have power as well. What you choose to see, and pay for to see (fantasy/reality), I believe will in the end become what you see in your society.
For better or for worse.
Catching Up
31 March 2009, 09:47:00
First news update on this site for 2009, and in some ways I can't believe it's taken me this long. On the other hand, this has already been a very filled, busy and tiring year so far. The first two and a half months taken up by what felt like an unprecedented amount of education/touring work (a mentally and physically challenging job), then a current (and very welcome) slowdown in that department because I'm pregnant! (As it happened, all nicely according to a fortune-teller's prediction.) That's the biggest news, and a very nice excuse to sit down and get back to more desk work (and that to me includes art). The nature of the education/touring job was draining in the best of times; this year, unfortunately, I was definitely drowning under the load until recently.(Of course, as happens very often with jobs with high strain--sometimes when you get downtime, your body rebels immediately and gets sick, and that's been my situation so far. Combine this all with morning sickness, and just know that Janet's not been a very happy camper health- or schedule-wise.)
(Warning: technical site stuff ahead.) WordPress was removed from this site--I'm not a fan of WordPress' latest bells and whistles and while I would have preferred sticking with my older version of WP, it fell prey to hacking, and lately I've been losing patience with WP's vulnerabilities, old and new versions. There has been a spate of malicious code hacking going around non-WP sites recently as well--but relatively easy for me to fix. Anyway, my site is currently working but with a big hole where WP used to be; I'm just going to patch up my current CMS to cope. (End technical stuff.)
It's been a bit of a bummer watching the worldwide economic downturn affect millions of people, though from my personal point of view, this was a few years in the making. Speaking with various business people and vendors at conventions from 2004 to 2007, non-essential spending was already headed downhill in the US (for good and many reasons). If book vendors were hurting, I can't imagine the trend for independent artists and crafters. Well, I am in that lot, but actually being in a good place right now for completely non-art-related reasons, I'm not "hurting"... but I am sensitive to those who are, artists or not.
Anyway, this is my long-winded way of saying that I appreciate all of you who've supported my art over the years, whether with just your eyes, your words, or more! I hope you're weathering the downturn, doing well, staying healthy and all good stuff. The art on this site remains free to look at. ;) And new stuff is coming soon.
I'm on twitter as marrael. I'll add a feed here soon.
The Big Picture (2008)
24 December 2008, 00:43:39
Yeah, I always try to end years on a "high note" for art, and 2007 and 2008 really saw a dearth of big paintings because I was so busy on artwork for the Surreal Botany Field Guide, besides moving, the day job, and etc. In December, no matter what, I push everything aside to make a big picture. Here's this year's: The Peacock. (And here's a page about how it was done.)No, there's no meaning or rhyme or reason why I chose this idea to work on... I just wanted to do it because it was relatively easy amongst the ideas I've got lined up to paint...and I'm hoping 2009 will allow me to get to them! (I'm a bit doubtful, but optimistic.)
Hope you're enjoying this special time of the year, whatever you celebrate, and have a great 2009.
Science
20 December 2008, 00:11:56
I can't quite get over my disbelief that A Field Guide to Surreal Botany got reviewed in Science (December 19 2008 issue), and it looks positive, by the reports I've gotten. I am a science geek but since I don't do anything science-y now by any means, that just blows my mind.That said, I'm terribly shy with any public attention on my creative work (educational work though? not really), so don't mind me if I just crawl under a rock to hide from spotlights like this. Between us, Jason's the PR person.
Still, this is pretty cool.
Catching Up, and Artistic Epiphany
11 December 2008, 12:14:22
Freezing at MAAD December 2008!
Originally uploaded by marrael
Well, Jason's journey from Singapore to New York started 5 hours ago, and I'm alone now in the apartment hoping to have a productive 2 weeks ahead of me until he comes back. (Husbands are time-consuming distractions, yes they are.) I've got some tours to do, some deliveries to make, some programming projects, some long-ignored art projects, and maybe blogging along the way as well, because it's been a ridiculously busy time (and I'd like to catch up), and I'm not even a person who's particularly obsessed with Christmas.
The first weekend of every month, there's always MAAD, and for December 6-7 2008, I knew I wanted a booth to sell some cards, maybe prints, some gift bags, and our books, and we managed to do all of that, but it did take preparation, rounding up some old merch and printing up some new ones (finally!), then packing and hauling everything to Maxwell Road, with one new piece of furniture in tow this time--someone had abandoned a paint-splattered (slightly wobbly) foldable wooden table at our lift lobby on Saturday morning, and it was the perfect addition to our booth/table set-up, and we found it right when we needed it. Score!
So on Saturday morning, Jason and I set up in the Design Museum where the craft market happens... have to admit I was probably a little bit sleep-deprived after a harrowing night before--conducting a new (for me) walking tour through Chinatown with a TV crew trailing me, which had to wrap up earlier than expected because our walk was drenched by heavy heavy downpour after the first hour. Being wet I can more or less deal with, but having one's speaker-amplified voice drowned out by the sound of traffic and falling rain makes things kinda impossible, and as it happened, cameras don't like heavy rain either.
Anyway, back to MAAD, which is always loads of fun even when the crowd wanes from time to time. And there's always the music, which one can sing along with, or complain about. Then from 2pm to 7pm (Saturdays only) I sat with other members of OIC (the local illustrators' group) for Portrait Day. The frenzied painting session (pictures done within 15 minutes, one after another after another) is usually followed by a couple of hours of head-scratching wondering why some of my pieces sold (the ones I thought I screwed up) and others didn't (the ones I feel were my most successful).
Turns out it took a sculptor to solve the mystery. When Amy sells her lovely sculptures at MAAD, I can see it takes a lot of work and muscle to bring her heavy, numerous ceramic works to the market. Unsold merchandise, for a ceramic artist, is a literal pain to repack and cart home. Anyway, we were comparing unsold watercolour portraits with unsold ceramics (haha, yes, no comparison) and I lamented the unpredictability of selling portraits. And, for December 6th, my 3 best portraits that day were 3 out of the 5 I did not sell, and I was (pardon) drawing a blank as to why. Amy summed up customer behavior thus:
"You know why? They don't have your eye. You have an artistic eye, you know what looks good or bad. They don't, so they just like what they like!"
FLOORED. So simple.
Not even a need to think upon karma, which was the direction my musings had taken in the past!
Anyway, it was a very fun weekend, even with its busy moments, and the teeny bit of enlightenment made it all the better. Hee!