Creative Cogitation

One of my favorite fables is the one of the Scor­pion and the Frog. It basi­cally says some will be true to their nature no mat­ter how they are treated or what the con­se­quences are.   Vari­a­tions of the story swap a youth, man, kan­ga­roo or tur­tle in place of the frog, and/or a snake in the place of the scor­pion.  The tale? A scor­pion and a frog are at the shores of a river, when the scor­pion asks the frog to ferry him across the water. The frog is afraid the scor­pion will sting him, but the scor­pion assures him that he will not and they begin the jour­ney across river. In the mid­dle of the river the scor­pion stings the frog, and as the frog founders in the water he asks the scor­pion, “Why? Now we will both drown.” and the scor­pion sim­ply replies, “I am a scorpion.”

So the story came up in con­ver­sa­tion sev­eral times in one day and being true to my nature as an artist I got a cou­ple of ideas.  Aimee Davi­son, @onehundredjobs on twit­ter, asked, “Why don’t you paint it?” and so I did.

The first ver­sion, The Scor­pion & The Frog, is rather literal.

The Scor­pion & The Frog 14 x 11 inch acrylic paint­ing on water­color paper by Phoenix, AZ artist, Jake Beckman

There is a golden spi­ral in the back­ground, which coin­cides with the tip of the scorpion’s curl stinger.

One of my online art bud­dies, Dave Con­rey, told me on Face­book that he has a tat­too of a scor­pion on his back ref­er­enc­ing this fable.  As for me I think doing a paint­ing or two is enough.

The sec­ond ver­sion, Scor­pi­ons & Frogs, is a lit­tle more abstract.

Scor­pi­ons & Frogs, 14 x 11 inch acrylic on water­color paper, by Phoenix AZ Artist Jake Beckman

The pat­tern is a Pen­rose Sun, it is a tiling based on 2 tiles, in this case a scor­pion tile & a frog tile.  I have left two tiles blank.  One is pre­sum­ably from the escaped scor­pion in the image and it is up to the viewer to won­der where the frog got off to.

Both works are for sale.  Make me an offer.  I hope you like them. 

Yours in Art

Jake, Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all the art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use these images in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

Howdy My Fans.  Going to try giv­ing stuff away to find collectors-specifically 8x10 inch prints mat­ted to 11x14 inches.  Haven’t worked out the details yet.  Also think­ing of set­ting up stuff on FineArtAmerica.com as well.  Stay tuned.

Mean­while on of my MonOrchid Bunch (MOB) bud­dies, Kris­tine Bram­billa, took up roller derby in the guise of Raven’s Night.  This even­tu­ally leads her to start up Seven13Sk8, a roller derby proshop, in down­town Phoenix AZ.  Appar­ently the alter­na­tives are either quite a drive from the cen­ter of town, or online/mail order.  As with all such things, it is tak­ing longer than expected to get going and so she decided to throw open her doors to her fel­low MOB-sters.

I check out the space on First Fri­day last week.  It is a small­ish space, but more than enough room for 10 artists with mod­est sized pieces.  She has painted the walls black with glitter.

While I was there, I got to meet her busi­ness part­ners. One is another Roller Derby gal, Gracy Dah­mer AKA Amanda Queen, and the other is Free­dom Crump.  In addi­tion sev­eral other roller derby girls were there at the shops grand open­ing and they are a hoot.  After a few hours down­town with these lovely ladies,  I found myself turn­ing to thoughts of the upcom­ing show, binary birds, and roller derby.  The prod­uct is a dig­i­tal paint­ing, pic­tured below.

Unti­tled digia­rt­work by Jake Beck­man — Name This Paint­ing contest

You will notice there is no binary in the paint­ing yet.  That is because it is part of a Name This Paint­ing Con­test I decided to have.  The win­ner gets an 8x10 print of the paint­ing.  Since this work is dig­i­tal art, the print is con­sid­ered “Orig­i­nal Art” because the printed image is its final form, much like a photograph.

Any­way, this will be the 6th show for the MOB (we renamed our­selves the Mob, after the MonOrchid Mys­tery Gallery shut down) and this is our first gath­er­ing in 3 years.  I am very excited about the prospect.  The show will begin on Novem­ber 26th and runs through Decem­ber 10. The shop is slated to have hours, Tues­day through Sun­day and of course part of the sales of any art­work go to the shop.

So check out the Name This Paint­ing Con­test –maybe you  will win, and I hope to see you at the Mob’s reunion artshow in down­town Phoenix, AZ.

Jake
Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!
The artist has fed­er­ally copy­righted all art­work in this blog. The artist retains all repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights. You may not copy, re-distribute, imi­tate, derive OR oth­er­wise use this con­tent in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

While I Paint Just a Kiss

Occa­sion­ally I do a series of paint­ing in process pho­tos. To me it is enjoy­able to see how some­thing goes from an idea in my mind’s eye to con­vert­ing plain white can­vas into lay­ers of paint wrought with mean­ing. (more…)

I have talked about being present when the muse decides to hand me her fire.  I am sure some of you have no idea what  I mean by that.

Mostly it means sit­ting my stu­dio, art­ing, even when I am really not in the mood. I am an artist, and I have some things I cre­ate with­out need­ing that blind­ing flash of inspi­ra­tion the annoy­ing lit­tle fairy pro­vides; I know basic rules of com­po­si­tion and color, I can come up with a plan, and I can whip out that dog por­trait or what­ever with no prob­lem. (more…)

I am a painter.  I am very com­fort­able with the media I chose to work in, which has been acrylic paint­ing over the last decade or so.  That does not mean I do not know how to paint with oils, water­col­ors etc. merely that I have set­tled down to a medium that makes me happy. (more…)