On 10th May 2015, a fire destroyed my art studio
I have had an idea for years. A simple database for all the art which artists create. Not just the finished works, but all the drawings, models, every scrap of paper. Last year a fire destroyed my studio and everything in it. Now I’ve done it. I’ve built oeuvre.gallery — web tools for research artists.
So I’m looking for people to test it. (Sign up, upload your art, write a blog post, have a good look around)
Let me know what you think.
On May 10th 2015 a fire swept through my studio destroying everything. Paintings, sculptures, sketchbooks, books about artists, paint, welding gear. Thousands of dollars worth of materials and equipment. Fifteen years of ideas, back catalogue, everything.
looking back over my art gives me both a sense of delight and a renewed focus
Sure, I had my website, and photos on my computer. But it would be great to have all my works, sketchbooks and ideas catalogued in one virtual place . To research and find patterns and new ideas to explore.
I have created oeuvre.gallery as a tool to record every dot, every line, every sketch. Day by day as you create you can save and log everything you do. Week by week, year by year, you will create your own catalogue raissonné*.
I know from my own experience that looking back over my art gives me both a sense of delight and a renewed focus for new directions.
oeuvre.gallery was an idea I’d had years before, while studying an MFA by distance learning. Putting everything together would allow me to see patterns, find lines of enquiry, take new forks in the road.
In the library of the Tapies Foundation in Barcelona, I spent hours poring over Catalogues Raissoné. Those monster books where every canvas, every sketch, every line and dot can be examined in chronological order.
You can see how Mondrian’s abstractions came out of his paintings of nature. How Ellsworth Kelly’s work developed themes and matured. How Picasso’s lovers affected his paintings.
We hope that oeuvre.gallery will also help artists to look back over their own work with the same feelings.
Take a look and let me know what you think. Upload 25 works of art, write a blog post or two, get a feel for the webtool we’ve created especially for research artists.
*Catalogue Raisonné ”Complete, systematic, and critical listings of all the known works of a single artist, providing comprehensive information, including provenance, for each work.” The Getty Research Institute Art & Architecture Thesaurus® Online
