Jellyfish Wrangler

What a late post! This post should've been made a week ago. But because of my Master's I'm very busy. Hopefully, something will coming out of all this madness.

I am having a show with my friends in the theme of "The Side Show". The opening night was Nuit Blanche night, but the show goes on till Sunday. If you are happen to be around Queen and John street, please come take a look.

Here is more info:

2ndHalf Gallery
250 Queen West, Toronto, ON M5V 1Z7

Above work is called 'Jellyfish Wrangler'. It was many weeks of contemplation finally coming together.

I wasn't going to post the following image, but here it is:

I know, I know, it's a big headed girl with big eyes. My teacher at Sheridan, Joe Morse told us, "If you ever paint a big head girl with big eyes, I'll kill you. I will seek out and kill you." He meant the trend (maybe that trend is 3-4 years old now) of Mark Ryden style.

I felt guilty painting it, and that's probably why it didn't turn out as I intended (always find an excuse not to blame my feeble painting skills). I really wanted to paint a girl coming out of a cupcake, and usually, giving into your impulse is a right thing to do. In Jonah Lehrer's "How We Decided" book, our hunch/subconscious/gut feeling is actually a supercomputer. It access all the information without your awareness and gives you a gut feeling.

What am I talking about... So anyways, my 'supercomputer' failed for my Cupcake Girl painting but did okay for the Jellyfish Wrangler.

One last thing about The Side Show... Being in Master's is a strange thing. Other students are all mid-career professionals. Everyone has much more experience than I do. So I always feel intimidated, and it's impossible to fit in. Telling people about the show was a joke (maybe it was arrogant for me to even telling people about it. What can you do. I'm young, therefore stupid).

"I'm having a show with my friends on Queen Street..."

"Which gallery?"

"2ndHalf gallery"

"Never heard of it."

End of conversation.

Either this or nicely shutting me up about the show.

I came to realize that in the real art world, 'which gallery' is very important. I was vaguely aware of the different types of art galleries, but I wasn't aware (naive and dumb, I know) of gallery hierarchy. If your art work is not showing at the top serious galleries, then your art work is not worth seeing. There is a truth to that, but it hurts nonetheless. Would my 'lowly' illustration works ever show in top serious galleries? Probably not.

Sucks.