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Tonight my friend Shannon and I decided we would skip our weekly planned yoga class and head over to the Lexington Art League for an ARTalk. Tonight’s artist was Phillip March Jones (I love that his middle name is March) and his presentation was fascinating and inspiring and witty!

ARTalks are regular events were an artist is invited to speak about their work and its evolution and the processes they use. First off, Jones’s journals intrigue me. Many of his thoughts and drawings in the journals become larger paintings but the journals themselves are little works of art. And he has SO MANY journals. He is constantly writing and drawing in them. Second, his exploration with medium and techniques was really interesting. It was great to hear his thoughts behind the works and how those thoughts evolved. The one thing that he reminded me about the most was the need for a sense of exploration and play in creativity. He started a lot of his pieces just seeing how different elements (paint and beer in one painting) react to each other and he worked with the results. It was very liberating to hear him talk about that.

I came away from the talk tonight inspired and excited about my own art work. I often get caught up in the final results I want and don’t do enough playing and experimenting. I think it might be time to brush off the moleskin journal and art supplies and see what happens.

A couple of Jones’s journals from his website:

Read More about him on his mySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/phillipmarchjones

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