Although I completed Week Twelve’s project over a week after it should have been done and with a concept that was not originally mine, I am still happy with the results.

I think the concept of simplicity can be seen in the painting. The idea that when all distractions and colours are removed and what remains is a simple object is something that I think often gets taken for granted. Too often we forget about the basics and get caught up in the bells and whistles of everything we do.

As for the completed of the project itself, well, I eventually got to it, but it took a while. I was having two problems with the project, first was coming up with a concept for the painting itself. Lately my mind has been occupied with everything but creative thoughts and as such I was at a roadblock for an entire week. Second, as I have mentioned before, the simple fact that school has occupied the majority of my time for a 4-week period and as such, has had a real impact on my project completion.

With that said, although I might not like the fact that 100% of this project was not mine, I think some very good work has come from building upon the work of others. Whether or not this work is one of those is up for each individual to decide.

To be fully honest with myself I got to this project rather late, but considering the week of teaching I had I was a little surprised that I got to it as soon as I did.

Week Twelve’s project was one where I decided to illustrate the concept of simplicity by way of a painting. I had a couple of things in mind when I started but the difficult part was putting the thoughts into motion.

In the end I decided to re-produce another artist’s representation of simplicity since I liked it so much and thought it illustrated the concept very well. However, I decided to make a couple of design changes that I felt helped to convey the concept even better.

The following is how I decided to illustrate the concept of simplicity.

This is just a little note to all of you who are following my Fifty-Two Weeks project.

Over the coming weeks I will be on a “posting hiatus” of sorts and will not be updating this site as often as I have over the past months.  Although I am completing my projects on schedule, finding the extra time to post about them is proving to be the difficult part.  I hope that next weekend, a long 4 day weekend for myself, will allow me to get caught up, but for now I am not making any promises, to myself or anyone else.

I am continuing to document my projects in my notebook, so don’t worry, with time you will be all caught up.

So for at least this week (but perhaps for the next 3 weeks) I will not be as active in posting as I would like to be but as soon as April 16th, 2010 comes I will be back into posting every little portion of my projects.

Take a moment and let me know what you think of my projects thus far.

“The Lot“, produced by Robot on the Rampage Productions was screened at the Fringe 62 Hour Film Contest last week. Although it didn’t win any awards it was awarded a honorable mention for best use of the “4 elements”.

Working on and producing “The Lot” was a great experience and I must thank the group of individuals I worked with to create it.

If you have yet to see “The Lot” make sure to CLICK THIS LINK to check it out. It only takes 10 minutes.

I think last week’s project on it’s own explains for itself my inspiration for doing the project. For more info check out my reflection on the project as well.

But if you are looking for something more, I’ve always loved writing personal letter and sending them via “snail-mail”, so I guess this is one reason why I chose to do this project.

Looking past the fact that I consider last week’s project to be a complete failure, there are a couple of things that I want to say about the project.

Although I chose to write a letter to a friend from my past that inspired me to be more creative, there were a number of individuals who I could have written a letter to as well.

I thought of writing one to past teachers of mine that I admire and have great respect for. I also thought of writing to some family members to let them know why I admire them, because sadly that type of thing does not get said enough in my family. Then there are the people whom I interact with on a regular basis that I admire for a variety of reasons.

In the end I had to “settle” on just one person to write a letter to for this project, just to keep it manageable and that person happened to be Amy.

With that said, there really isn’t any excuse why I can’t or shouldn’t write similar letter to more people more often. Not only does writing such a letter make me feel better on the inside, but I am sure that others would enjoy receive them, I know I would.

On that note, there really isn’t any reason why others¹ can’t do something similar. I am sure there is someone you admire, that has inspired you or that you want to say Thank You to, and what better way to do it than in a letter.

One things to note: An important piece of this project was to mail the letter via “snail mail” rather than email as doing so makes it much more of a personal gesture in my opinion.

A next step would be to send a handwritten letter, but in my case no person would be able to read it, so that’s a “ go-go” for me.

1. YOU! [↩]

Wow!

Complete Failure. I didn’t start thinking of a project for last week until Friday night, didn’t start working on it until Saturday, and didn’t finish it until moment ago, on Monday night!

I am not going to try and say anything to redeem myself this time, I just didn’t put the time and/or effort into Fifty-Two Weeks this year.¹

Rather than not completing a project and lose any momentum that I may have built up, I decided to select one of the easier projects from my list.

So for last week I decided to take a few hours to write a letter so someone that I really respect and admire. I plan on mailing the letter to them via good ole’ snail mail.

So here it goes.

Amy.

I don’t really know where I should start with this letter. I guess I could start with a “Hello!” or “How Have You Been?” but beyond that there is so much more I want to say.

I hope that life is treating you well and that you are following your dreams and passions. I have no doubt that you are following every one of them and that they are taking you towards great destinations, for as long as I have known, you were always the type to go after what you wanted and if it didn’t exist you would make it so it did exist in the end.

This is the reason I am writing you today.

Recently (over the past 1-2 years) I have been on a personal quest (if you want to call it that) to reclaim my creativity, to find where I lost it along the way and to get back into a creative state that was once very familiar to myself.

Personally I feel that I have made more progress in the past 6 months as a person and as an artist than I have in all previous years. I’ve been trying more and more to step outside my comfort zone and try new things that push my limits and challenge my abilities as an all around person. Doing so has helped me in so many ways that if I were to start listing them I would get lost and off the point of this letter.

I wanted to write to you, Amy, to let you know that you have had a great impact and influence on my work, my creativity and me in general. You might think that sounds a little odd considering we haven’t spoken in sometime, since we worked together, but it is true.

I still remember the conversations we use to have while working together, when we would talk about the projects you were working on and the projects that I should have been working on. As I said on those nights when we would talk at work rather than actually work, I had stopped drawing, painting and doing anything creative in general, but after more and more of our conversations I started to realized that not doing anything creative was doing far more harm than good. I remember very clearly that one of those nights, on returning home from work, I sat down and painted and then shipped part of it off to you. Although it was something very simplistic, it for me pointed in the right direction.

Every time I start a new project or finish one that I never though I would, I always have a thought of you in the back of my mind. The way that you talked about work artwork and how you felt when you were completing it always amazed me, and because of this I always wanted to complete more art myself.

I remember going to the BealART show a couple of years just to see your work. I was blown away when I found out that you just weren’t limiting yourself to one medium but branched out into a variety of them. I think this is important as it helps an individual to gain a better (and different) perspective on their own artwork as well as that of others’.

Overall the point of this letter is to let you know that you inspired me a few years ago to find the artist within me, who at the time I lost, and you inspired me to expose myself to a wide variety of things that are outside of my comfort zone. I very much admired the way you went about completing your pieces of art and the passion you had for them and I always hoped that I may have the same passion one day.

More than anything I wanted to say Thank You for inspiring me.

I hope all of the best for you, now and in your future endeavors.

Cheers,

Kevin

1. Note: In the coming weeks I will need to complete projects that are not as involved or time demanding. When I started Fifty-Two Weeks it didn’t occur to me that I could be teaching for a month long block in March/April, as such I am going to have little extra time over the coming weeks, so rather than fail again I want to make sure that at least for the coming week’s my goals are achievable for the amount of time I have. Starting in May I hope to complete some more involved and community focused projects. [↩]