1. chescaleigh: Sh*t black girls do on the radio #chescaleigh #shitwhitegirlssaytoblackgirls (Taken with instagram)

    chescaleigh:

    Sh*t black girls do on the radio #chescaleigh #shitwhitegirlssaytoblackgirls (Taken with instagram)

  2. THE ACCIDENTAL MASTERPIECE I had no intentions of painting a self and non self portrait based off such a cheesy snapshot (I’m making faces, pointing at my daughter who’s smirking behind her sippy cup) but a good friend suggested I should because it’d make a great colorpartyfuntimesuperpiece.  And it did!  I LOVE this painting.  Love. It.  Like it’s my favorite painting I’ve ever done.  Hence the title of this post (as for the piece itself, Devon just calls it “mommy and debby” - she can’t pronounce Devon - and she names all my pieces, my favorite title being “two mommies” for the piece where there are, well, two of me….kids just keep it simple) My daughter is so lucky; she’ll grow up having so many portraits of her.  If anything, they’ll serve as proof that I do (or at least did - ha!) love her when she’s being a snide teenager in a decade or so, wailing that I hate her and I RUIN EVERYTHING (as what goes around comes around, my mom likes to say….she’s so delighted I have a daughter). She’s just so stupefyingly beautiful, like the camera, the pen, and paint were all invented and just awaiting her arrival here on earth. Yeah, yeah, everybody says that about their kids, but c’mon, have you seen this lil’ bish?  Breathtaking.  In the good way. Not the Seinfeld way.

    THE ACCIDENTAL MASTERPIECE

    I had no intentions of painting a self and non self portrait based off such a cheesy snapshot (I’m making faces, pointing at my daughter who’s smirking behind her sippy cup) but a good friend suggested I should because it’d make a great colorpartyfuntimesuperpiece.  And it did!  I LOVE this painting.  Love. It.  Like it’s my favorite painting I’ve ever done.  Hence the title of this post (as for the piece itself, Devon just calls it “mommy and debby” - she can’t pronounce Devon - and she names all my pieces, my favorite title being “two mommies” for the piece where there are, well, two of me….kids just keep it simple)

    My daughter is so lucky; she’ll grow up having so many portraits of her.  If anything, they’ll serve as proof that I do (or at least did - ha!) love her when she’s being a snide teenager in a decade or so, wailing that I hate her and I RUIN EVERYTHING (as what goes around comes around, my mom likes to say….she’s so delighted I have a daughter).

    She’s just so stupefyingly beautiful, like the camera, the pen, and paint were all invented and just awaiting her arrival here on earth. Yeah, yeah, everybody says that about their kids, but c’mon, have you seen this lil’ bish?  Breathtaking.  In the good way. Not the Seinfeld way.

  3. ANYBODY WANT A LESSON?

    I haven’t been posting much lately because I’ve been super-duper busy.  The starving artist business is actually pretty good right now, as long as you’re the type of artist, like I am, who will paint anything.  Obviously portraits are my forte, but the last few weeks I’ve been doing these intentionally kitschy modern pin up girls as murals at a salon ‘round the way.  Another project off my beaten path is this series in which the client wishes to see different time periods and cultures portrayed.  So far I’ve done an “Aztec” piece and a “Roman” one.  I loves me a challenge.

    ANYWHO

    Anyone local interested in taking art lessons from me?  A few people have expressed interest, so I was trying to garner whether there was a larger group interested.  The lessons could be group or one on one and any subject/medium you’re interested in (except I don’t, eh, chisel marble…or cast bronze…none of that business). 

    INTERESTED? email me at palmer@portraitsbypalmer.com and let’s do this! Everybody loved art as a kid; why did so many of us just give up and move on? Time to get back to it!! 

  4. NARCISSA STRIKES AGAIN

    So I was whining recently about being all meh about my work.  This piece was supposed to be a fun little distraction and turned out to be a seriously frustrating painting.  At some point, its subpar-ness agonized me so that I called my sister Taylor and promised it to her.  She’ll take any of my work, whether I think it’s great or shitty (I was thinking at the time this fell into the latter category in a major way, but I’ve since made my peace with it, varnished the sucker, and decided to move on).  She said I really needed to cool it with the tortured artist schtick.  

    The process: I found a great long canvas with an unusual proportion and slapped some bright yellow around what I imagined to be my silhouette (it usually just goes without saying that my personal work will be a self-portrait, hence the narcissism reference).  I then started carving, and carving, and carving! roses from my seriously out-of-control origami paper collection.  I plastered them around the canvas and painted my face and upper body.  The composition just really, really irked me (and still does, to be honest; I’ve just done the best I could with what was a pretty slap-dash piece).  I went back and forth, painting and plastering, cutting more roses, plastering some more, painting, etc.  Eventually I hit some sort of “ok, that’s enough” point, and vioci - a gift for Taylor, my biggest fan/collector (her house is really probably the residence of the largest accumulation of my work from oh, middle school on).

    Enjoy, Taylor!

  5. chescaleigh: Look who’s on the front page of the South Florida Times! Holler! get it, chesca! (and by get it, I mean a house, back in south florida…)

    chescaleigh:

    Look who’s on the front page of the South Florida Times! Holler!

    get it, chesca! (and by get it, I mean a house, back in south florida…)

  6. I often say the hardest part of my job is that I get really excited about a piece but can’t post it online until the recipient gets it (whether it’s a surprise for the client’s loved one or the recipient is the client themselves - I want them to see it before everybody else does). Today I struck upon the creepiest part of my job: most days, someone who has never met me has me staring at, agonizing over, and slowly building an image of their face.  A lot of my clients thus far are friends, family, or acquaintances, but often the subjects of the portraits commissioned are not.  So it occurred to me it was just….weird…that some stranger (me) was out there painting a face while the owner of that face had NO IDEA.   Maybe I need to stop analyzing this shit and get back to work. *image source: I’m not so great as this web-sourcing business, so here’s how I’ll give this image credit: google “somebody’s watching me” and this will come up: http://eil.com/Gallery/234995b.jpg…but wait, I may have figured it out.  Oh hello, 2009!

    I often say the hardest part of my job is that I get really excited about a piece but can’t post it online until the recipient gets it (whether it’s a surprise for the client’s loved one or the recipient is the client themselves - I want them to see it before everybody else does).

    Today I struck upon the creepiest part of my job: most days, someone who has never met me has me staring at, agonizing over, and slowly building an image of their face.  A lot of my clients thus far are friends, family, or acquaintances, but often the subjects of the portraits commissioned are not.  So it occurred to me it was just….weird…that some stranger (me) was out there painting a face while the owner of that face had NO IDEA.  

    Maybe I need to stop analyzing this shit and get back to work.

    *image source: I’m not so great as this web-sourcing business, so here’s how I’ll give this image credit: google “somebody’s watching me” and this will come up: http://eil.com/Gallery/234995b.jpg…but wait, I may have figured it out.  Oh hello, 2009!

  7. A meh couple o’ days

    The last few days have seen me in my studio feeling, being, and yes, painting rather “meh.”

    These follow upon a spectacular week where I cranked out two portraits with eight total subjects and almost finished three more paintings with seven total subjects.  Then boom, a wall.  Today I tried to pull out of it by working on something personal (a self-portrait, natch), but that doesn’t seem to be going the way I want it to, either.  Le sigh.

    Hopefully my next posts will be about all my fabulously finished above-referenced rut paintings.

  8. KIA KIA BO BIA BANA BANA FO FIA Here is a portrait of one my dearest friends, Kia.  She gave me free reign to do the portrait she commissioned as a Fathers’ Day for her dad in any colors I liked.  NEON!  And I used origami paper again.  I just bought a new STACK of the stuff.  I’m totally addicted.

    KIA KIA BO BIA BANA BANA FO FIA

    Here is a portrait of one my dearest friends, Kia.  She gave me free reign to do the portrait she commissioned as a Fathers’ Day for her dad in any colors I liked.  NEON!  And I used origami paper again.  I just bought a new STACK of the stuff.  I’m totally addicted.

  9. THE SERIES, BABY

  10. »  Palmer Calabrese - ArtTakesLondon

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an artist's life

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