Here's my new favorite song of the week:

Catchy huh? I love the hook on this. The lyrics make you wonder if there's a story behind the dark poetry. What's upsetting is that this song was for a brief moment on Spotify and then disappeared. Makes me have to jump to hoops to have it on my playlists. Among my favorites songs when driving are synthpop tracks, and I'll probably be following CHVRCHES to see what they come out with next.

Last Monday a few friends hit Zeitgeist in SF because they had Pliny the Younger on tap. I was excited to try it as it referred by many as the best beer in the world.

What sucked was that they ran out within 2 hours, and I was 20 minutes too late in arriving there. The rest of my friends got to try it thought, and I'll have to wait for my next opportunity since the brewery only makes this version 2 weeks out of the entire year. It's not devastating since it's only a matter of time and the brewery is right here. This is one of those extra things I really appreciate about living in the Bay Area.

Well I still had drinks and conversation with my friends at the bar anyway. Nickel mentioned his recent move to his apartment near the Mission with his new roommate. He was saying that part of feeling more "grown-up" is rotating his furniture and art decorations to nicer pieces rather than have things that a college grad would typically buy. We talked about finding original paintings sold in the area, and my friends were saying that they were considerably expensive even for art that didn't look that good. They also asked me if I would ever sell my art. I gave them the same response that I did when other people have asked me this before. I produce art for my own reasons. It's my passion, it's my time away from the hustle and grind of work and stress. It just didn't feel right for me to put a price tag on something I created from that passion. I feel it cheapens it somehow, that some meaning is taken away from it.

So thus far I've never sold any artwork I've ever created. Granted I have gotten prizes for pieces I've submitted into contests. A holiday card design for Coopers and Lybrand (before they became PricewaterhouseCoopers). Two designs for Oakland's Lunar New Year Art contests. Some years back I also designed the cover art for the first album from Khaled (a friend of a friend).

In striking an agreement as to how my painting was to be used for the album, I told Khaled that I didn't want to sell the work to him. I was perfectly fine with signing an agreement not to redistribute prints or pass the image on to some other person for commercial purposes. I did however want to maintain ownership of the original piece. Because it means something to me. It was the first time I crafted a painting using the styles and rhythms of a set of music to guide my brush. I couldn't give the product of that journey away, nor attach a price to that experience. He told me he can totally understand this. For him as a musician, his work is intended to be distributed to the masses. Much like that of a writer. His work is intended to be replicated and dispersed, so it's makes much more sense for that to be sold. With a painting however, you only have one. If you give that away, you give away the one truest form of your art creation. Why do we value live performances so much? It's very similar. We are closer to that art piece's original form.

It's been months since I picked up a paintbrush. There was a piece that I've had unfinished for over 4 years, from the days when I was learning how to work with oil. This was second oil painting I ever started, but only yesterday did I put the final touches on it to complete it.

It's a painting of gondola seen from across the waters of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Italy. It was an experimentation in getting the right textures for water ripples, the sky, and clouds. At this stage, I was happy with my use of lighting but not quite satisfied with the composition of colors. There are also hints of my style developing at this stage. I'm a fan of the impressionists, and have adopted more of their look over time. This piece was at a time when I was leaning more toward realism, and I remember being quite concerned about the shapes and colors matching the photo I was using as a guide. It took me several weeks painting and repainting over areas to get it close enough to likeness. Then in my next painting immediately after than, a little disgusted at how much time I sunk into my last piece, I whipped together another painting in one hour. Simply guided by my mood and letting the motions of the brush dictate themselves. Amazingly I was much happier with the outcome of that painting and decided never to concentrate too much on realism ever again.

The completed piece above was given to my friend for his housewarming gift yesterday. No charge.