A New Website!

Please visit my new website, http://www.diannemcnaughtonart.com/
I am back after a break with blogging and can’t wait to visit all your sites and find out what I have been missing! The only creative thing that I have done in the last three weeks is to create this new website for myself. Please have a look and tell me what you think. A friend gave me the link to this great site that helps you create your own site completely free of charge, http://www.synthasite.com/
I decided to buy my own domain for a small yearly amount. This is optional and you can get a synthasite domain completely free of charge. The site is managed by yourself and it is very easy to update whenever the need arises.
I have verified my site with google and there is one more step that I need to take with some help from a more experienced webmaster.
I would love to be able to sell paintings from my site and am still looking into this – Paypal does not work in South Africa, I can spend money with Paypal but not receive money. So if anyone out there can give me advice here, I would appreciate it. I have linked my other site, http://www.southafricanartists.com/ as my online shop for the while.

Brushspace.com, a site for artists

I am having such fun with a new artists' site, www.brushspace.com. Each artist is given a profile page where their art works and links to blogs and websites can be displayed. The artists then connect with each other by becoming a "follower" of the artists with work that they admire. Artists with the most followers are then featured on the home page in the top 100 list.
The site is growing every day and has about 900 members today from all over the world. I have found the standard of the work truely amazing.
Artists so often work in isolation. Comments are made regarding your paintings, here is a great vehicle for sharing your work and your opinions. I value the comments that other members take the time to write. The site offers messaging facilities that are public and private.
When I joined a few weeks ago, the site had a few glitches. I wrote to the site manager and was pleasantly surprised at his prompt replies and action. Thanks James for a great site!!

My husband and I spent eight months in Sharjah, The United Arab Emirates last year. I thoroughly enjoyed living in a different culture, meeting people who lived their lives in a way so very foreign to me. I was fascinated talking to women who were one of four wives, we had many questions for each other! As an artist, I struggled to find suitable subjects to paint, high-rise buildings sprung up like mushrooms on the flat desert sand, so close together, they blocked out the light. Almost nothing growing, just the odd palm tree encrusted with sand grew limply in the 44 degrees and 95% humidity. Frequent dust storms and humidity obliterated the sky for weeks. I felt trapped in air-conditioned rooms where a sensory deprivation set in - no music, nothing visually inspiring and nothing to smell or hear. I realised that I need to have a connection with what I am painting; because everything was so strange and alien to me, I couldn't find a subject to paint. I have painted in an abstract manner before, but I did not understand really what I was doing.

I started painting in a purely intuitive manner. I had no external inspiration and so was forced to look within myself for some sort of subject matter. I lay the outstretched canvas on the floor, squeezed out some acrylic paint and just played around with it on the canvas. My spirits were lifted just by splattering on the paint and moving it around in a sensory manner. The strange thing is, I didn't really believe that what I was doing was valid in any way. I wasn't painting with an end in sight, somehow it didn't matter, I was simply diverting my mind by doing something that I love. I continued to work on two pieces over the next few weeks and I would spend time just gazing at the paintings and images would appear. As I progressed, images would come and go - this process amazed and delighted me. I began to wonder if others would be able to respond in some way to my "doodling". The paintings, "Meditation" and "The Dance" are the two works completed in Sharjah. They have sent me on a new and exciting journey.