Author: Kyle Clements

Kyle Clements is a Toronto-based artist and nerd. During his thesis at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Kyle began working on his Urban Landscapes series, a body of work that aims to capture the energy and excitement of life in the fast-paced urban environment. After graduating from OCAD in 2006, Kyle spent a year living in Asia to gather source material and experience in a different kind or urban environment. His work is vibrant and colourful. Whether painting the harsh Northern landscape, or capturing the overwhelming buzz of life in the city, his acrylic paintings hover between representation and abstraction.

Artist’s Statement Hell

I’ve got a big show that I will be applying for in the near future.
I’ve known about this show for over a month, but I still haven’t sent in my application.
Why haven’t I sent in my application?

Well, the last few years, they’ve wanted some jpegs, and a copy of my CV, a list of my show history.
This time around, they aren’t interested in my history.

Oh no.

This time around, they want an artist’s statement.

Oh, artist’s statements, how I wish you did not exist. I have yet to come across a single artists who is thrilled at the prospect of writing an artist’s statement. Some artists hire others to write their statements for them, some hack something together last minute, and some over-think and over-work their statements to the point where they have a tangled incoherent mess of invented undictionaried words.
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The Painting Process: Captured on Video

As a painter, I’m very interested in the painting process.

Painting is what I do, and I have to go through a painting process to get the finished painting. Whole movements and styles of painting have been dedicated to the process of painting. As much as I love abstract expressionism, I really, really don’t like the term “process painting”. I don’t walk into a gallery to see the verb form of painting; I’m after nouns. I want to see a well-executed finished piece.

Eventually, I will post a rant about my dislike of the phrase “process painting”, but this is no that occasion. On this occasion, I will be talking about what I think is a much better way of capturing and exhibiting the process of painting. I will be talking about video.
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Focus on the Core of the Work

Sometimes, a single word can do more to focus my practice than weeks spent in the studio.

In a recent interview on 99 percent, Francis Ford Coppola talked about some things he has learned about cinema throughout his long career as one of Hollywood’s greatest directors.

“When you make a movie, always try to discover what the theme of the movie is in one or two words. Every time I made a film, I always knew what I thought the theme was, the core, in one word.”

Know the core of the work.
Keep this word in mind while working.
Be able to express the core in a single word when asked.

This was one of those ideas that didn’t really excite me so much as I was reading the interview, but the more I think about it, the more I think that this is a very, very important point.
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The Importance of Failure

It’s easy to be discouraged by failure. It’s easy to do your best to avoid failure. But failure is a necessary part of learning. If you aren’t teetering on the verge of failure, you aren’t pushing yourself far enough.

When I sign up to do an art show, it’s often done a year in advance, I send in images of my older work, and when I’m accepted, I’m locked in, I have to produce a certain amount of new work that is similar to the examples that got me into the show. And when you sign yourself up for as many shows as I did last year, it’s a challenge to produce enough work for each of these shows. I had nine shows last year, many of them overlapped, meaning I had two full bodies of work on display simultaneously. I’m not a factory. I can’t just pump out X number of units each month. I like to give each piece the time and attention it deserves. Sometimes that only takes a few days, and sometimes it takes several months.

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Jack of All Trades, Master of None?

I’ve often heard the expression, “jack of all trades, master of none”. The idea behind this phrase is obvious enough: if I spend my time doing a little bit of everything, I may end up being versatile, but I will never, ever be truly great at any one thing. And if I want to be a great painter, I’d better drop the camera, the audio gear, the camping, the website work, the writing, the wood work, the electronics, and everything else, and just paint.

I’ve been told that if I make a business card, I should only put ‘painter’, and leave out the “photo, video, sound” part. If I make a website for my paintings, I should avoid even mentioning that I also do photography. If I really want to pursue photography, then I should make up a fake name and make a new website for just my photography. I shouldn’t let people know that I like to do more than just one thing. I shouldn’t get distracted by doing more than one thing.

But, is this really good advice to follow? Does a wide focus spread across many fields eliminate the possibility of truly mastering any one of them, or does the knowledge gained in one discipline inform the decisions made in another?

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Painting with Light

As someone who is primarily a painter, some aspects of photography can be quite frustrating. In March of 2010, I had an idea for a photo shoot: take a bunch of multi-coloured LEDs, throw them around a snow covered forest, and take a bunch of pictures. The coloured light should bounce off the snow and create some interesting effects. This sounded like a cool idea.

The only problem was that I had this idea in March, after the winter snow had melted. I had to wait for winter to come again before I could try out this idea. When I’m painting, the time of year doesn’t matter so much. Winter scenes in summer, summer scenes in winter; if I can imagine it, I can paint it. This isn’t the case with photography. Photography is all about patience. I had to wait for nature to play along before I could try out this idea.

Two nights ago, I finally had my chance to head out on this photo shoot.

Brad had recently picked up a new camera, so I thought this could be a good opportunity for a ‘Brad vs. Kyle’ thing, introducing some friendly competition into the shoot.
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Website Updates

Hello all. I’ve got more boring technical information for you.

I’ve added a new section to this website. Remember the poll I had running a few months ago? (Technically, it’s still running right now.)

I’ve taken the most popular images, as voted by you, and put them in a new gallery that’s right out front. Clicking the image on my website’s main index page will take you to this gallery.

There are two forward and back buttons beside each image to navigate through the nine images in this new gallery.

Now, by best work is right up front, rather than being buried in menu three clicks away.

I’m Making a List, Appending it Twice

OK, I’ve got to admit it, this post has nothing to do with Christmas, its just a lame attempt on my part to use a catchy title to catch your attention.

As I mentioned before, in “Personal Development Time”, I’m taking some time off from painting to push myself further, to experiment, to explore, and hopefully, to come back with some new work that really blows away what has come before it.

This is a tricky time for an artist, because it is very easy to let this time off turn into a wasteful period where nothing gets accomplished. This happened to me once before. After Graduating University, I wanted to keep pushing my work further, even though it was in a really good place where it was. I pushed it quite far -in the wrong direction. It took nearly two years before I was able to get myself back on track. I don’t want to get derailed like that again.

One massive pitfall that must be avoided at all costs is getting yourself stuck in research mode. Research mode is a very easy place to get stuck, because research is easy, it’s safe; there is no risk of failure, and no end in sight. There is always something else to read; always another idea to absorb; always something new to learn. It feels like real work, so it’s very easy to stay in research mode and feel like you are not wasting time.

But you are.

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Staying Critical and Selling Stories

I find that artists are often drawn towards some very bad ideas; ideas that might seem beautiful or inspiring on the surface, but upon closer inspection are just a load of B.S.
For this reason, I try to stay critical of the new ideas I come across until I see some sort of real-world evidence to back it up. Anyone can have an idea. Any idea can be true or false.
In casual conversation, and in the art circles, some ideas are very popular, or easy to write about, or lead to good-sounding grant applications; but I don’t see popularity as a good reason to hold on to an idea. Testing an idea against nature, and having that idea confirmed by evidence is the only method I know of which ensures that a idea is not wrong.

“Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled” -Richard Feynman

The new idea that I have been mulling over in my head lately is from Seth Godin, and his ideas on marketing. The man is very charismatic, very entertaining. He has a way of explaining things simply and directly, with a certain irreverence towards the traditional way of doing things (sort of like the attitude Kevin Smith has when he describes his interactions with people in the movie industry). It’s the story of the beloved outsider who comes in, challenges the good old boys, and changes everything. He makes it all sound so easy, once you accept that you are going to have to do the work yourself.

This, of course, has my warning flags raised.
“Anyone who is this easy to like has to be wrong”, says the alarm bells in my head.
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