AND I'm Back

After more than a three year hiatus from blogging I am back. I have only one follower so I don't think any one really missed me. Started a lot of new paintings. New technique, new and exciting results. stay tuned for more! check out http://www.etsy.com/shop/BlackOakStudio?ref=shop_sugg and tell all your friends. the hottest art on the market is here.

Natural pigments and paints

Yesterday I was doing a bit of yard work and came across an overgrown fire pit in my yard. I was intrigued and decided to excavate. I found old mardi gras beads, broken bottles a stump still rooted in the ground and a bunch of clam shells. Looks like someone had a stump burn and clam bake. A little further down I found a nice rich yellow red clay. Clay is one of the very first pigments used by man and I intend to process this clay into oil paint. Also ground shell was used as one of the first white pigments. I want to make some paintings entirely out of natural materials that I've collected. All I need now is to make some charcoal I will have yellow, white and black paint, enough to start some work. Stay tuned to see if this project go further.

Asheville

Living in Asheville, breathing in the delicious fall mountain air, walking down Broadway into downtown. The city is alive and thriving. It almost seems every one is an artist of some kind. Either visual artist or musicians the city is crawling with creativity, or at the very least attempts at creativity. I need to get painting again, I've been painting a little here and there but I have yet to throw myself into it like I have in the past. It may be because my studio (aka garage) is falling apart and is currently being fixed. It could be the I don't have any room in there because my housemates stuff is taking up most of the space. However excuses are just that, there is also room to work and create to thrive and express. I think apathy is the real reason. To paint without feedback is difficult, I need to find my niche, a group of people who I can meet with and talk about art and expression and push my ideas further as they come into contact with others ideas. To make contact, to conflict, to blend and to grow, a natural growth of ideas based out of community.
Anyways I don't know why I even write on this thing. It's not like anyone every fucking reads it.
~till next time
Noah

Fluidity of the Moment Photos

Fluidity of the moment


We are fluid creatures. Constantly changing. Constantly shifting.
All that really exists is the moment, which is a fluid changing structure. Beginning as a photographer I was fascinated by the ability of a camera to invent a fixed moment. Simply by setting the shutter speed I could compress anywhere between 1/500oth of a second to three hours into a single moment. However the single moment isn’t real it’s simply a recording of light. Painting is no different it takes gestures over time and presents them as one concise image.

The abstract expressionist attempted to express emotion rather than showing it pictorially. Each gesture, each stroke has a great release of emotion. It is released and expressed in the moment, but this does not mean it is recorded. We are fluid. Our emotions are always changing. Any painting created in this manner must express this fluidity.

Painting is a meditation that expels emotion and allows the mind to rest. This series does not attempt to express any emotion but rather celebrate life and being. Because these paintings take place over time they are a layering of many emotions as they are expressed and freed. Each painting represents a compression of time ranging from three months to one week. They are composed of multiple layers representing the process through which my mind settled from an emotional state to a meditative one.

Jackson Pollock says “ a method of painting is a natural growth out of a need.” My process has grown out of a need for meditation and expression. These paintings are reductive. They are limited around the horizontal and vertical axis. This has allowed for an intuitive composition process where one gesture or mark demands the next. Each gesture is a result of its predecessor creating a rhythmic flow during production; ultimately resulting in an atmospheric expression of the creation of a moment.


Noah Kalos

Tracks

I spent this summer up in Vermont working as a camp counselor. Kind of the usual for these last few years. I've always been interested in wilderness survival and this summer I took it to a new level. I worked to expand my awareness of nature and my awareness of myself and my limits. Ok so maybe I was reading a bit too much Tom Brown, but I gained a lot of new insight into myself and nature. I had a sort of life changing experience where I spent a night sleeping under a tree and in a pile of leaves through a severe thunderstorm. After that I thought I was gonna hitch hike across the country because I wanted to spend more time in the woods. After some thinking I decided to just move to Asheville NC, while this isn't as intense as hitch hiking I think I may actually have more opportunities to play in the woods and definitely get to know one area better. With the increase in my awareness of nature I grew a fascination with tracks and signs. Finding pushed down grass where deer had beaded down and then some scat became a thrill. seeing sticks displaced or leaves pushed where something had been evoke a sense of awe at the mystery of nature. I began to be fascinated by the things left behind and that which left them.
I see my paintings as tracks of my presence, as traces of what I've left behind. They show the tracks of my brushes pallet knives and razors. But what have others left behind, what mysteries can I find of animals and people and they're interaction in an urban environment. I hope that once I move to Asheville I can begin to incorporate traces and tracks of people and animals into my art to show the intersection between myself and the environment I find myself in. How can a found object move me to create, how can one trace move me to create new traces new images new work. I hope to allow my art to intersect with all that is around me and allow all that is around me to intersect with my art to produce a unified expression of self and place.

these ones are a bit better

Senior Show

fluidity of the moment