BlogHer Art Auction & My Art

I am participating in the BlogHer 2010 Art Auction as a contributing artist. Each artist was given a blog post from 
one of the finalists of the Voices of the Year. I was given
 Jessica Bern of BernThis.com's 
blog post as the inspiration for the artwork. 
(The painting will be auctioned off
 - in a couple of weeks online -
to raise money for the Gulf Area.)
Here is a part of the post I was assigned.

"I wish there was a “Biggest Loser” for bloggers. 
I would love to have Jillian and Bob 
hanging around my house day after day yelling at me:


...WRITE!!! DO YOU WANT TO SUCCEED?!! DO YOU?!!! THIS ISN’T A GAME, THIS IS YOUR LIFE!!!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!!!

Every day, I’d go and get “weighed” in except I wouldn’t be judged by the pounds lossed but by my number of page views and how many people retweeted me on a daily basis."

There were several considerations I have when doing a project like this. 

First, the art composition has to connect with the content (Jessica's blog) while still being able to connect with others (art collectors.)

Then, the art has to be in the same vein as the article. This was interesting for me because Jessica is a humor blogger. I am not a humor painter. So it was a challenge. You can't force funny, it just doesn't work. And to force a funny painting is even tricker, especially so on your first time. So I didn't go there. Instead I went for playful, along the same line as funny.

And finally, I wanted to add my own genre to the artwork, which stories, symbols or secrets. Jessica supplied the story. 
And here is some of the symbolism -

Shannon Christensen's Write! oil on board

Let's start with Jessica herself. I didn't want to be too literal while including her but I definitely wanted to have her in there. So I went with her name as she does in her blog - Bern This. There is a match and the burned edge of the paper. She also uses bread on her website as her logomark so the burned edge of the paper is a bread shape.

Then there's Jillian and Bob from The Biggest Losers. I used plumb bob's to represent them - weighted, finding center, 'bob". Also, in the post there is reference to their personalities. For Jillian, Jessica wrote that she would "look me deep in the eyes and whisper in her therapy voice..." representing a calming influence. Which led me to leave her in a calm, motionless position. And she writes for Bob, "...he tends to express himself better physically..." so it made sense to me to put him in motion.

There are the numbers for the weight that goes down and the page views and retweets that go up. The numbers are all under 365 (except the year 2010) to represent the days of the year. The idea being that there needs to be a consistent, even daily, effort to writing or working on any goal. And the white numbers being the potential of the writing days ahead.

And the magnetic, refrigerator numbers and checkerboard pattern representing the playful, game-like, fun nature of humor writing about life.

There are other little things but the real secrets to this painting are the ones other's will 'read' into it and the view that they'll disclose. 


Feel free to share your secrets about the painting.

Update: Watch for the speed video of this painting coming soon.