Beach Towel Art Show Opening November 16, 2018 - Venice Art Center, 5 to 7 pm
The challenge - take care of mom, AND be an artist.
My story begins like many artists - overcome adversity with creativity and imagination and new opportunities will abound. As a new full-time caretaker of my memory impaired, depression era mother and new housemate, I needed to find/create an art project, that I could do at home to create some income - while caring for mom’s increasing needs.
Inspired by Tropical Florida and Clyde Butcher - A Coloring Book leads to a Beach Towel Art Show.
Graphic design and fine art come together in this “one-thing-leads to-another” tale, that lead to this exhibition - Beach Towel Art Show by David K. Griffin. While encouraging a life-long artist friends to self-publish books, I decided to do one myself.
Influenced and inspired by my former employer - the great, local, fine art photographer, Clyde Butcher. (I designed two of his popular books) I decided to focus on the regions exotic floral and fauna. Like Clyde and many, I love the white sand beaches and swaying palms, manatees, dolphins, osprey and alligators that make Florida so unique and special. So, sixteen new images were created for my first self-published coloring book - Tropical Florida.
The Process
Original vector line drawings in Tropical Florida where created using Adobe Illustrator. After coloring each in Photoshop, (essentially making digital paintings) I was encouraged to reproduce the images with “on-demand” sublimation printing - and so beach towels seem like an appropriate match. I love combining my fine art and graphic design skills to make something creative and unique. To add value - these are limited edition, (only 50 in the series) “collectible” beach towels.
Additionally, painting on canvas, the old fashioned way, is a passion of mine. I use a variety of techniques including airbrush to make the original paintings that you see in this exhibit.
Red tide almost killed my blue waves.
I committed to this solo art show back in April - before the red tide and downtown construction all but killed the local economy. Imagine my chagrin - who’s going to want buy artsy beach towels and ocean scapes when going to the beach was such an awful experience. Undaunted, and in the spirit of “the show must go on,” and hoping that the air would clear, I persisted. I saw this as an opportunity to remind folks that caring for our environment is not only good for the planet, it’s key to the local creative economy. With that in mind, thanks for caring about both.
David K. Griffin
very nice david
We love all of your art. Miss you David.