Art Blog - Jody Noelle Coughlin

I know. It's been quiet around my blog in the last while. I'll tell you why. It's because I've spent all summer crunching numbers, feelings, thoughts, hopes and dreams about my future. I've been a stay-at-home mom for almost ten years now and I've decided it's time to move on. Don't get me wrong, I love my kids. I love that I've had the opportunity to be home with them to watch them grow, change, learn, poop, pee, puke and all that stuff. It's been mostly great. I've been mostly broke. I knew it was time to move on but I didn't want to rush into anything. Anyone who knows me knows that I've had one heck of a time dealing with the issue (or non-issue) of never having stepped foot into an art program. I felt so out of the loop for so long in the art world… Continue reading… 5 comments

Don't be afraid of a little rejection. It'll do you good to know you're not wanted. Trust me! I tried a little experiment this month. I decided it was time to throw down the gauntlet (or whatever) and approach a few galleries in hopes that I might gain representation. I had been wanting to do this for a while now. Well, to be honest, I've been wanting to do this since I started painting, but I've known all along the timing wasn't right. In fact, it wasn't even in the ball-park of being right. Obviously. That was about six years ago when I first started painting. I wanted it all at first! I wanted shows and popularity and fame and fortune. As naive as I was, I was ravenously competitive in the beginning. My first show occurred six months after I first picked up a paint brush… Continue reading… 5 comments

It is a small world. It really is. I woke up this morning and opened my laptop to see what I could see. I found a bit of writing. I liked it. I shared it with friends. What I saw within this piece of writing was (seemingly) a heartfelt out-pouring of sheer frustration over an art show the writer (who is also an artist) witnessed recently. Alright. I like that. In fact, I loved that. As an artist himself he had something to say about the current art scene in New York City. Impressive. I go about my day. I run errands and I do a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I come home. I re-open my laptop. I see what has happened since I left. Another fellow artist I've met recently has a completely different perspective on the writing of the first artist… Continue reading… 1 comment

How do you know you are an artist? I'm not exactly the running authority in the world of art, per se. I am painfully aware of this. Sometimes, because I paint and draw (and most recently decided to try my hand at clay sculptures) I feel I am expected to know things I simply don't yet. I think it is a self-inflicted form of expectancy. It's true that I am harder on myself than I am on others for reasons I have yet to understand. I pick up tidbits of information here and there about art, but I am not a formally trained artist. I don't know a lot about art history. I don't know a lot about any one thing, in fact. I've gone it alone, mostly, since I started painting but someday, I plan to go to art school. In fact, next fall might be my year. I've got my fingers crossed… Continue reading… 8 comments

When I first joined artId.com, I was almost immediately challenged by another artist who seemed, by and large, much more experienced and knowledgeable about this whole thing called art than I will likely ever claim to be... He didn't seem to like my work and I really didn't like what he seemed to be trying to say to me about it. I evaded his remarks as best I could and I got rather defensive in return, to say the least. I didn't like what he was insinuating about my "art" because, at the time, it seemed like he was trying to tell me that all the elements of an innate ability are found within my work, but it seemed to me that he (more than anything else) thought my work lacked something… Continue reading… 9 comments