John Storrow

 For me, marketing and trying to sell Art has always felt like when you’re a kid and your mother says “Eat your vegetables so you can be healthy!” . What I really want to do is go play, create, or make things. It feels like there are two distinct realms. The Art world of people and being popular and recognized, and the creating world of ideas, pencils, pens, brushes, and paint. It’s a tired old struggle, but yes I would love to just find a way to get my creations on to somebody else’s wall besides my own. After the day job and everything else, I guess it makes sense to use my precious remaining time wisely, and put all my focus on the specifics of what I’m creating. That’s probably the right priority. But why to I dread Art marketing? Perhaps simply being, and creating, is not and shouldn’t be an act of seeking to become popular. I’ve never cared a hoot about being popular. (Or maybe……) I think I’m over thinking…

  I have been thinking about the confluence of imagined ideas, and ideas that come from direct observation. For the above recent painting of a faucet, I worked very hard to observe and record the sensual shiny curves of the faucet handles. I had a specific job to do and I showed up, I gave it a shot. I could feel the physical three dimensional weightiness of the faucet using my memory. The process of painting was almost purely sculptural.  Compare that to the above imagined idea (picture) titled “Portrait of a rhinoceros” The process of creation for that one was also purely sculptural. The weightiness of the forms, the sense of scale, the three dimensional nature of the piece of sculpture as it exists two dimensionally.  I’ve been doing a lot of things in the last few years that are very much from direct observation of things in the world as they really are. Things that have autobiographical meaning. I took a picture of that sink faucet in the Gulu Gulu cafe in Salem Ma o...

  I put together a 42 page google slide show with pictures and text. It explains the evolution of my creative process since the mid 1990’s. In order to get over my inhibitions about creating it, I decided to just put things in my own words, and not let it become an exercise in professional writing. I put a lot of time into it, and I believe the process of doing the writing has brought clarity and focus. I now have a useful way to explain myself. Here’s the link- https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QS26dm3aI_AwZg7VAoHK_qRf0SSAiTssJCkd7YfrRUs/edit Cheers

  At my day job in the Museum I some times guard access to the parking lot and the ramp that trucks use to go to the loading dock. I keep a row of traffic cones there to help me prevent the wrong vehicles from entering. Some times a truck will back its way in and accidentally crush one or two cones. The painting on the left is one of those cones, and it shows its crushed orange plastic features in bright sunlight. The smaller painting on the right is a cone that I discovered next to the trash room in my building. It appears to be standing watch, making sure all is well in the trash room. (“Traffic cone” (x2) 16 x 20, 9 x 12, oil on canvas)

Years ago I dreamed of building a canoe but I didn’t have any money for supplies so I made a wooden piggy bank which depicted in this Painting. Actual title: “The trajectory of what comes from the wooden piggy bank” 11 x14, oil on canvas, 2023 Link to this painting on Etsy.com> https://johnstorrowpaintings.etsy.com/listing/1730130267

 One day recently, I was guarding the parking lot which I like to do because I can watch the red tail hawks circling in the thermal updrafts high above the asphalt. I shouldn’t be doing that because you never know when some dark sinister vehicle might get by me and park illegally near the loading dock. Anyway, there was this plastic shopping bag that was blowing and twirling in the wind all over the place about eighty feet up. Suddenly it went SPLAT! And got caught at the very tippy top of a tall light post. I was amazed because what are the mathematical statistical chances for that to happen? For a moment I thought what if it stays there forever? Also, nobody uses these bags anymore so it it was extra rare for that reason. Then the wind caught it the other way and it was gone.

  While I was at work, even though I’m not supposed to, I got down on my hands and knees and I photographed this door stop, then when I got home I made this drawing. There is beauty everywhere. I hope when I finish the painted version, which I already started, that it will convey the poetry of things that aren’t noticed because they’re small and ubiquitous. They don’t do anything to grab your attention, these tiny insignificant things, which is the opposite of what you’re supposed to do in art, if you want to be noticed, get famous, or have a career. I’m going to stick with this door stop anyway, and make a painting of it.