Recently I presented 20 slides of my work x 20 seconds per slide to a crowd of over 70 people at a PechaKucha night.  I was one of 9 presenters. What is PechaKucha (pronounced Pa-chach-ka?)   The presentation format was devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture. The first PechaKucha Night was held in Tokyo in their gallery, lounge, bar, club, creative kitchen SuperDeluxe in February 2003. Klein Dytham architecture still organize and support the global PechaKucha Night network and organise PechaKucha Night Tokyo. PechaKucha Nights are informal and fun gatherings where creative people get together and share their ideas, works, thoughts, holiday snaps - just about anything really, in the PechaKucha 20x20 format. There is no going back or going over your 20 seconds per slide so no one hogs the floor.  It's fast paced and fun to present and watch!! And with a 20 minute social drink intermission.

 PechaKucha Nights are now happening in over 230 cities around the world- not just Tokyo where artists have virtually no public spaces where people can show and share their work in relaxed way.   If you are an emeriging artist in the real world - where can you show it?  PechaKucha 20x20 is the perfect platform to show and share your work.

The key to a great presentation is to present something you love.   Most people use PechaKucha Night to present their latest creative projects or work. Some people share their passion and show their prized collections. I was fortunate enough to present at a PechaKucha in Portland  before I  presented to get a good feel of what it is all about. I have found that a good presentation is done 'off the cuff' not too rehearsed or scripted. You either know your own work or you don't.  Only you can give that 6 minute and 40 second 'elevator pitch' about your passion, your work.  Good PechaKucha presentation are the ones that uncover the unexpected, unexpected talent, unexpected ideas. I passed out 3D glasses and the last four slides of my work were of my 3D Astropaintings. Some PechaKuchas tell great stories about a series of art. Some are incredibly personal, some are incredibly funny, but all are very different making each PechaKucha Night like 'a box of chocolates'.  My love for astronomy and passion for painting were interwoven in my presentation.  I started with my grassroots beginnings as an artist with projects and commissions and progressed to my present day works.  Many people came up to me after and told me how high energy and how much they enjoyed my presentation.  It was nice to present on my "home turf" and get such an overwhelming response.  When one knows and feels passionate about one's work, one can unapprehesively strut one's work.  It ignites. I feel my word and work is getting out there!!

I spend more time thinking about a painting than I actually do painting it.  Today is one of those days...should I paint a landscape, still life, or action painting?  In the summer months it's easier for my brain to get percolating with the abundance of subjects out here in Maine to paint plein air and  for inspiration.  However, in the winter months I work from photographs or still life in my studio as I am snowbound.  We are in the process of a 3 day snowstorm and I am looking through my photographs for inspiration.


"Par 4 the Course" 3' x 4'  Acrylic on Canvas

I painted this out of my imagination using mostly a palette knife incorporating the impasto technique. I was longing for summer while buried knee deep in snow. It's been a harsh winter. I tell my students 'paint what you love' and that is exactly what I did this morning to get me out of the winter doldrums. This is my third painting of 2008.


Morning Cup 18" x 18" Acrylic On Canvas

My impression of that first morning cup. I so look forward to my morning cup of percolated coffee! This painting shows how I feel after drinking it...warm, refreshed, energized and ready to start my day!


Packard Farm Sunflowers - 24" x 24" Acrylic On Canvas SOLD

Each fall the owners of Packard Farm in Lisbon, Maine allow me to walk their sunflower fields and take pictures for my studies. I feel what it must have been like for Van Gogh to be in the presence of such beauty! Working from my photos in the dead of winter I chose to paint this study. I heavily applied the paint with a palette knife impasto style like Vincent Van Gogh.


Ring Nebula - 10" x 10" Acrylic on Canvas Astropainting Collection

I'm thinking I will paint another Astropainting today.  My canvases are primed and ready to go.  Sometimes these snowdays are nice to reflect on where I've been and which direction I would like to continue growing.

Now to get painting.............

"Ring Around Supernova" - 10" x 10" Acrylic on Canvas

In the 1960s, Peter Max created his Cosmic Art.  I've kicked it up a notch with my own cosmic art - 3D Astropaintings.  Like Max, I too would be an astronomer if not I were an artist.  I've joined an Astronomer's Club - Southern Maine Astronomers (SMA.)  We meet once a month and I am learning so much from the experts and fantastic guest lecturers - like John Wood,  the geologist who studied the moon's first moon rocks from one of the Apollo missions.   I consider myself  a beginner astronomer and often go out and look at the night sky with my telescope.  I've always been fascinated with the sky.

In my Astropainting Collection you will find paintings I have interpreted from images taken by the Hubble Telescope, www.hubblesite.org   It fascinates me that these images from the Hubble Telescope happened over 4 billion years ago and took that long for us to finally see. Images from the Hubble Telescope provide infinite inspiration and possibilities for new paintings.
I find these images abstract in nature and some remind me of the Russian Expressionist, Wassily Kandinsky's work.
 
  "Star Dust Disk" 16' x 20"Acrylic on Canvas

This series of 12 - 10" x 10" of galaxies, nebulae and the universe comes with 3D color eye-glasses for optimum viewing effect! I've use high intensity Day Glo saturated colors the complimentary colors POP! leaving after images and therefore creating a 3D effect.  Warm colors hover  and the cool colors recede.

"Planetary Nebula" 10" x 10" Acrylic on Canvas

 I am marketing my Astropaintings, prints and note cards with the 3D glasses.  I have started the copyright process and trying to get them into magazines.  I am showing them at the Southworth Planetarium next week  at  my SMA club meeting.  I hope to gain an audience for my unique novelty paintings.


"Planetary Nebula" 10" x 10" Acrylic on Canvas


"Close up of Helix Nebula" - 10" x 10" Acrylic on Canvas

*Choose any 3 paintings for $100.00 (one pair of viewing glasses.)
**Signed Limited Edition prints of 1000 of each painting are available for $15 ea. + S & H Certain specific astrophixed prints come with 3 D color mixing glasses. Note cards are available in pkg. of 3 for $12. + S & H.  Please specify which print and note card images  you would like.
 ***I am donating 10% of the proceeds of this series to the Southern Maine Astronomer's Club (SMA.) The SMA is a astronomy group that meets once a month and also does outreach programs to schools and the community, further educating others about our galaxy and beyond.

Live Long and Prosper. Happy New Year!!!

"Lunar Love" - 16" x 20" Acrylic on Canvas 2008 Gift to St. Mary's Hospital

One of my goals for the new decade ahead of us is to blog daily about my art and the art of others.
I question my goal because will anyone really read my blogs? I started blogging a little bit earlier a few days ago to get-the-ball-rolling and did receive a very nice comment from a reader, but I still wonder will anyone else read my posts? 

In this 21st century Conceptual Age is the age of Information Age waning? i.e. twitter, facebook, myspace and other social networks.  Are people growing tired of the lunacy of hearing what people have to say?  Is life becoming too intrusive? I teeter back and forth with these questions and it has been part of my hesitancy to blog about my art. That and TIME.  Who has time to blog? But if I waver, if my blogs make people take the time to look at my art then it's all worth it.  I am going to make an hour a day to try and see where it leads. When I hit the "send" button am I sending my blogs off to some super void in cyberspace or am I being heard?  Is there one big "overload" button waiting to descend up us in the new decade. Am I jumping aboard the blog scene too late?

If anything blogging will be a good way to chronicle my own art progress. Kind of like a rhetorical blog..talking to myself.  As artists we work in isolation and any feedback is welcome.  Good or bad. So, please feel free to comment! Good or bad, I'll take it.  I also question with painting everyday, working full time and being a mom will I have time to blog?  I am going to make it a effort that even if it is a short paragraph or a few sentences I will blog everyday.  Sometimes I have the time to read other people's blogs and find inspiration, quotes, reference and useful insight.  I hope that the people who are reading my blogs find that too.

Tonight is New Years Eve, the night of the Blue Moon and we are expecting to get clobbered with 2 - 3 feet of snow in Maine.  Maybe this "once in a blue moon" post will be that night that you read my blog and get hooked?  One never knows for sure!

Happy New Year - Live Long and Prosper.

Melinda
p.s. my next blog post will be about my new cosmic art - ASTROPAINTINGS!

"Lake Auburn" ( work in progress)  Dec. 30 &31, 2009 11" x 14" Acrylic on Canvas


As the sun sets on "Lake Auburn" - work in progress, so the sun sets on another year of painting. 
It's hard for me to fathom that I have painted over 180 paintings in just a two short years!  It was the year 2007 that I decided to take my painting in earnest and go commercial as an emerging artist.  Although I have been painting, teaching and doing art for all of my life it wasn't until I gained confidence as an artist on my first big commission - two twenty thousand gallon oil tanks in the TDBank/Bates Mill Complex in Lewiston, Maine.


TDBank Oil Tanks - Commission Bates Mill Complex July 2006

After the Bates Mill commission it was my dog Bruschi who awakened my passion to paint on canvas.  I was recovering from minor surgery and was bed ridden.  Bruschi was running around me wanting to go for his daily walk, full of energy.  I wanted to capture his energy, so I painted a portrait of him.  Eleven dog portraits later, I still remember the rush I got painting my dog's energy on canvas.  My style is decidedly expressionistic-impressionistic and it was at that moment - fast forward two years later, I paint what moves me.

"Bruschi" 18" x 18" Acrylic on Canvas Feb. 2007

In the year 2007 I painted my heart out after "Bruschi," mostly landscapes of my travels around New England. Mostly painted in my studio using my own photographs as reference. In 2007, my work started to click. I created this website and started to market my art.  I set up a studio in my basement.  Next, a friend, Nancy Clark introduced me into an art gallery - Turner Center For Art (now defunct) and it was there my work, "Inlet" was juried into a group show. It was then my passion to paint was reignited even further!  For my artist peers to accept my art was a wonderful boost.

"Inlet" 11" x 14" Acrylic On Canvas Oct. 2007

In the summer of 2008, my painting earned me a Maine Arts Teacher Fellowship to Umbria, Italy where I was most fortunate to paint in the hilltops of beautiful villages with other artists en plein aire.  Which started to the ball rolling for my painting plein air (painting outdoors) here in Maine during the summer of 2009.

Five solo shows later, ten group shows, many commissions and the sales of my art  my confidence has grown. I think the highlight of these past two years of shows was my duo show: THANKFUL  with my father, Daniel Silvia. You see, my father is an artist too. He is a retired civil engineer and world traveler. He fostered my love of art at a young age. And it is he who has begun to find inspiration through  my recent work.  We inspired each other.  It was my father who took me to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, bought me art supplies, encouraged me with art books and praise when I was six years old or as far back as I can remember.

"Lourdes Basilica, France" - Daniel Silvia 16" x 20" Pastel Pencil on Castein Paper 2009


I see "the sun setting on year 2009" not only as a benchmark or metaphor for the setting sun on the past two years of painting; but as for the future it brings of another day - for tomorrow, the sun also rises and a New Year of painting will begin.

"December Dawn" 16" x 20" Acrylic On Canvas, Dec. 2007

Sometimes it is nice to get out of the studio and gain inspiration from other artists. Today I toured a local artist, John Stass', Katahdin Studio Furniture (www.katahdin-online.com) located in The Hill Mill in Lewiston.  It was great to meet him, visit his studio and to see his exquisite handcrafted furniture.   As an artist, we sometime tend to work in isolation, so it was nice to chat it up with a fellow local artist.  His clients include: Melissa Etheridge, John Sebastian, Andy Griffith and other famous musicians.  His studio space was impressive with a spectacular showroom.  Interestingly, he ships his one-of-a-kind handcrafted furniture around the world and is starting up a venue in Denmark. I would love to rent studio space in one of the local mills like John.  We talked about our work, our community ties and business. I met his two employees, James and Brian. 


One dream of mine is to sublet with local artists floor space in one of the historical mills in Lewiston, like John.

John Stass is a very nice generous down-to-earth man and artist ( he paints too!)  who abundantly shares his insight and art with whomever asks. Being an artist has many perks, one being you sometimes get treated like royalty just for being an artist. Like the time I painted Mt. Katahdin and the park ranger gave me a special privileged parking spot and beautiful vista to paint it.  Today I felt, again, like I was treated like royalty and a welcomed guest in John's studio.  He let me take photos of  his displays and answered all my questions in a warm kind manner. Thank you John.  You inspired me.  I am going to pursue that dream of having a studio space in
a Mill someday and thanks for the contacts!

This street scene was painted in my studio using a photograph and a travel sketch as reference. I took this image during afternoon siesta in the small village of Casperia (one hour north of Rome, nestled in the Sabine Valley, known for its famous olive oil) was shut down. I was roaming the cobblestone streets taking in the views alone. It was an eerie feeling and very quiet. I was sketching and the smell of a woman’s perfume was wafting heavy in the hot very heady breeze. I would turn around and no one was there! Finally as I walked closer to the climbing jasmine and honeysuckle vines on funny tall small building the aromatic scent became more pungent; until I finally realized it was not a perfumed ghost but the flowers!

Casperia is a small village inhabited with 80 people during the winter and 300 people in the summer months. The streets offer magnificent mountainous views of olive groves. The village is 15-century set on a hill-top with cobblestone step-streets you have to climb. Cars are not permitted to drive through the narrow steep streets. The buildings are crooked and irregular as they are old European in structure. I purposely painted the roof-lines, windows and entries irregular to show this. The only vehicle I saw was a tractor with a hitch bumping up the cobblestone stairs delivering a couch to an apartment.