I was in the Tampa Tribune! Well, it's taken me a week to find a spare moment to mention it, but, yes, I was on the cover page of the business section plus most of page 3! The photos that accompany the tangible paper version aren't accessible online, but you'll get the gist of it:

http://www.tbo.com/news/money/MGB681S246F.html

Thanks to Dave Simanoff, a.k.a. Hero of Journalism, a.k.a. The Daily Dave, for the wonderful article!

It occurs to me that, in the course of blogging, I have compared:

(1) God to an artist, and
(2) artists to magicians, superheroes, and Tom Hanks.

I am either full of myself, or I just like to use my art as a metaphor to understand the inexplicable. Or both.

But there are greater questions at issue here.

I.e., does this mean that Tom Hanks is God?

Just a thought.

It turns out that Tampa Tribune writer Dave Simanoff attended the "Brazen Careerist" book-signing at Inkwood Books as well, and he heard me speak. He called me this week and asked if he could come to my studio and interview me for a story. It's mainly because I used to be an attorney.

See now, I knew going to law school would be good for something at some point....

Oh how I hated law.

Back when I worked at a law firm, and had to make the daily 7:30 am trek to my car, I seemed to share identical work hours with a girl who lived nearby, and we often waved to each other in that morning routine.

On the way to work one day, this acquaintance told me she worked in adoption, and she named the office: a corporate-looking place, located only two blocks away, that I'd passed every single day, for months.

Adoption. I immediately thought of, what else, pet adoption. A complete contrast to my own un-cuddly job. I said, with total sincerity: "How nice it must be, to work with animals."

Her eyes popped, her brows lowered, her mouth pursed. She glared at me. "I work,' she said cuttingly, "with CHILDREN!"

She stormed off before I could explain. And then she moved away. I love children. I do, really. Oh well... This is why I have to drink coffee in the morning.

I Met Penelope Trunk! And she is the friendliest "antisocial" blogger-turned-book-author you'll ever meet.

Look her up here: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/

I stumbled upon her blog about two weeks ago. Then, Monday, my friend Jenn pointed out that Penelope was visiting Tampa within a few hours for a book signing.

A number of people have complained about the fact that Penelope, who has ultimately achieved success by offering financial and career-related advice, has herself experienced plenty of difficulty in those very areas on her way up. I think her honesty is refreshing and inspiring, and I love her counter-intuitive (yet well-researched) advice. Just a few of my favorite items from Penelope Trunk:

You can put a number on happiness. It's a $40,000 annual salary.    (?!?!)

Perfectionism is completely at odds with achieving perfection.

Exercise boosts your IQ.

Also, she's funny. For more, you want to visit her website or blog, or buy her book! http://penelopetrunk.com/

What else can I tell you?


Well, I am really loving a new painting I've done in pastel.

This is a portrait of a house, rather than a person, but I feel like this house has all the personality of a human being.

I love how the trees' shadows work their way over everything. It unites every part of the picture.

And the composition pleases me, with its zigzagging lines drawing the eye all over the page. I can't wait to paint more homescapes!

I know Blue Man Group has been around for years, but I just saw it again recently, and was reminded: this show is brilliant conceptual art. It covers sooo many ideas, and with such an entertaining delivery. People obsess over race, over black, white, yellow, etc, so let's make these people blue. No such thing as blue people? Fine, they can be aliens, or whatever you like, so long as you have no preconceived ideas of what it means to be blue.... So thought-provoking... What is art? What makes a thing valuable? What does it mean to be creative/productive? What does it mean to be a consumer? How are we all connected? Then there's the fascinating element of how people change behavior in the midst of large groups. Mob mentality, but used in a good way, to open minds rather than to close them. All of this, plus it looks and sounds and feels like a party. Actually, it feels like you are five years old, at a phenomenal birthday party.

I saw the show about a week ago in Orlando. I had seen the show before, but was excited to see it again, because this time around I knew one of the performers! Richard Cravens, whom you can find here, is a Blue Man now! It was great to say hello to him at the end and get him to make one of his rare breaks from character to say hello back. He also shook my hand and left me with a blue-paint-y palm. But no worries, I'm familiar with having paint on my hands. :)

New Wonderful TV Interview - Channel 10 (CBS) this time! Reporter David Leonard interviewed me. David is a one-man-band, performing the roles of camera-man, lighting manager, director, story-writer, etc, all at once, and I was seriously impressed by his professionalism! The video and story came out yesterday, so here's the link, and you can see for yourself:

http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=56206

I love it!! He even interviewed my mom!! Warm fuzzy feelings :)

And I am just really glad and grateful that David saw a story in me, a story that could potentially interest and inspire other people.

What's the story? I hope you'll check out the news channel's report. In short, I made a rather unconventional leap from a safe, professional path, into the wilds of the great artistic unknown. Lots of time and money were invested into moving me through Duke, the University of Florida, and the Florida Bar. And the idea of disappointing my parents and family... weighed on me, to say the least.
But ultimately, they respected the fact that I could not define financial reward alone as "success," and would not feel real happiness until I at least made a go at following my dreams. I had to prove I had the ability to back up my dreams. And that's where the hard work came in. If this inspires anyone, I am happy.

Come to think of it, David has a job that's similar to mine: telling people's stories. I bet I would enjoy being that sort of reporter! This gives me an idea... I'd love to do a new kind of portrait: one that is not only visual, but includes a written component, a written snapshot of the person's life. A bit of biography. And this could be in the form of paper or CD, which could be stored in a slot that is cut into the frame. Or the words could be written on the back of the frame itself, or on the back of the canvas... Hmmm, food for thought.



Also, I joined the Junior League of Tampa this week. Really looking forward to the next year...


Comic strip: Bill Watterson's "Calvin & Hobbes."

Magic! Abracadabra! Presto-chango! More on that topic in a minute, but first a few updates:

On the news front, I am excited to have met Jackie Silver, who has a fascinating website about the secrets of "Aging Backwards"; one look at her testifies to her expertise: http://www.agingbackwards.com/. She has a recurring spot on NBC's Tampa morning show, Daytime, and she is talking to their producer about possibly having me on as a guest at some point. Yay! I love these opportunities!

I'm also set to have an ad and a brief editorial come out in the "New and Notable" section of Tampa Bay Illustrated's April issue. I tried to sneak in a bit of an engagement announcement for my sister there. Dr. Katie Gres is now engaged to the very wonderful Steven Gold! But they didn't publish that part...

My good friend Jim Kennedy loved his portrait of his daughter Bridget and the family treasure, Bing (see below)!



Speaking of the movies, I saw "The Illusionist" recently.

I enjoyed the puzzles of "The Illusionist," and I won't spoil any surprises for you. I will say I wonder if anyone else saw foreshadowing in Eisenheim's (Edward Norton's) trick where he shows Sophie (Jessica Biel) her mirror image? And I love Paul Giamatti in every role he disappears into. All of the magic tricks had me fascinated and confused, and I loved watching the writer's commentary and finding out some of the magician's secrets.

Here's where we get to the aforementioned main topic of my post!

The audience in a movie theater is not so different from the old-time audience for a magician. The actors are magicians, transforming into characters. And the plot of the story is itself the best trick. Some viewers (the Biel character sort of viewer) might get enormous enjoyment out of watching passively, with a complete suspension of disbelief. The Giamatti-type viewer might be working hard to figure out the plot ahead of the movie's conclusion, and loving both the thrill of solving the mystery and the delight of being mystified. The crown-prince (Rufus Sewell) type would sneer condescendingly at a movie for the transparency of its illusions, would feel personally insulted by any "unsolvable" aspect of a movie, and would therefore never watch any movie with any genuine delight.

I've said before, in my biography on my website, that I feel a sort of magic in the art that I create. In the completion of a painting, there's a certain moment when the pigment and the composition come together, ready to burst off the page, and I feel like doing a happy dance around my easel, thumping my chest and raising my hands to the sky. Picture something like Tom Hanks on "Cast Away," exulting, "I have made FIRE!! Look what I have created!!" I hope none of my viewers are the prince/Sewell type.

And I love that one of the super "powers" on NBC's "Heroes" belongs to a magically prophetic artist. The Isaac Mendez character (Santiago Cabrera) seems to fall under a spell, into a trance, with a milky-white glaze over his eyes, and the art that results seems to come not from him, but through him, as if he is a channel for the electricity of an all-knowing intelligence. He falls out of the spell and is astonished at his future-predicting creation.

Ha! If I could have any super power, I think I'd prefer the ability to fly... :D

How Picasso explained the afterlife to me:

Note: I have searched everywhere for the painting that I describe below, which was part of a traveling collection. I can't find it anywhere on the web. Maybe I have the name wrong, or maybe it's not catalogued. Picasso created over 22,000 works, including sketches, so I know it's out there somewhere. The Picasso pieces you see accompanying this post are: Joueur de Diaule Assis (1958) (below left) and Acrobat (1930) (below right).

I was 21 and studying abroad in Paris when I learned that my grandmother—-my mother's mother—-was dying. I was actually standing in the basement of the Musee Picasso when I got the phone call. I turned around, completely shocked and numb, and ran smack into a work of Picasso's entitled Le Joueur du Football, or “The Soccer Player.” It must be obscure: it was a very small artwork, depicting the player as an amoeba-like form, and in fact the form was only recognizable as a human figure because Picasso gave it five extremities (head, arms and legs) and dressed it in a soccer uniform.

Maybe I was in denial, and wanted to concentrate on something other than my grandmother's death, but I stood in front of this picture for a long time. There wasn't anything in the picture that seemed typical of Picasso: it was a roughly sketched, preliminary piece of work, relegated to a little-traveled corner of the Museum's basement.

As I stood staring at the picture, it occurred to me that the blob-like form resembled a paper cut-out doll. I imagined taking scissors and cutting along the outline of the figure. And I thought: if I then curled the extremities of the paper figure inward, the shape would change from two dimensions into a three-dimensional sphere, a ball. The head, arms, and legs of the soccer player were like connected jigsaw puzzle pieces that fit almost perfectly together, with only a very little overlap in the finished spherical form.

And this made sense to me: a soccer player that transforms into the soccer ball. Picasso invented cubism, and here he had found another way to show the transformation from two to three dimensions.

It made me think, how do I know I'm not a two-dimensional paper figure in a larger universe?

Maybe God is an artist, and what we call death is really the experience of being cut out of this paper life by The Artist's hand. I'd never really thought about the meaning of an afterlife before.

Now I envisioned my grandmother transforming and entering an unimaginable new dimension of unity and wholeness, a place where the focus would no longer be on the individual but on the universal, a place where the puzzle finally made sense... I thought of my life as being no more than an illustration of the game we want to play, and the afterlife as being the real, the authentic, the genuine experience of this virtual reality. A week later, I came home, and I was with her when she died: I saw her entire face relax into a sweet tranquility. I know she's part of something amazing out there in the next world.

Here's the link to my Channel 8 video (since I can't post it on this site): www.elisegres.com/bio/index.html

It's on the right, in the column beneath the photo...

The reference to Duke law is incorrect: I went to Duke University for undergrad and then to University of Florida for my law degree. And I talk reeeaaaaallllly slowly in the clip: but hey, I used to stutter as a kid! We're lucky I can talk in complete sentences! :-)

My interview with Gayle Guyardo aired on news channel 8 on Thursday, November 2, 2006, and I completely missed it! Fortunately, I am obtaining a copy from the station: I'll post the video as soon as I have the opportunity. What else? I still want to do the morning show with Ginger Gadsden, but think it would be best to wait several months and be able to display new artworks. I hope she'll still be interested!

Drawing and painting are, in the beginning, all about seeing. Seeing exactly what's in front of you, and seeing what's just underneath the surface if you look a little longer. It's amazing how much more you appreciate the beauty of a thing when you really see it and make the effort to recreate it.

It's oddly hard to see what's right in front of us, because from infancy we have grown up creating short-hand visual abbreviations, labels, symbols, for everything we see. Our pictorial labels simplify what we see. The shorthand for a face is a circle with two dots for eyes and a line for the mouth. Our shorthand for a chair looks like an "h"---and if asked to draw something more complicated, we draw a blank. Sit down, actually look at a face or chair, try to draw it, and the label gets in the way. Put simply, our labels categorize groups, but do not allow for differences in visual perspective: complexities get lost in the mix.

In the same way, we interact with people without seeing them: we label people with shorthand stereotypes and then get frustrated with the overly simplified view. Consider how Holden Caulfield complains about phonies; MTV offers us the "Real World"; and the media attacks James Frey for the fictionality of his so-called life story. We insist we want "reality." The problem is not that others are phony or fake or pretenders. The problem is that we telegraph the message that only a few acceptable slots exist for people to fit into.

Look underneath. Life, like art, is subjective, and it goes beyond what's on the surface. We're genetically predisposed to value beauty, to admire symmetry and color as a sign of health, for the prolongation of the human species. But beauty lies. And beauty lies in the eye of the beholder: an eye which can be trained.

Sometimes it's the inner eye that needs training. Be kind to yourself. Think of life as a series of blank canvases. Every moment is a blank canvas and a new opportunity. And as you go, you choose which of these moments, these artworks, you want to store in the portfolio of your memory. Life is not ONE blank canvas (with the awful potential for ruin), but a series, a portfolio, of a billion billion artworks. Paint over an old canvas with a new scene. Make it a comic strip...

Photo shown is my Self-Portrait, in oil paint (top of post). Cartoon: Gary Larson's "Far Side."

Elise in Wonderland (2)




The exciting developments continue.... News anchor Ginger Gadsden of Channel 10's "News This Morning" show is interested in having me do an interview. Writer Sean Lyons, of the lifestyle magazine "Everseen" in Punta Gorda, may be writing a story on me. And thanks to Alan Bridges, I met many wonderful people this weekend, including Amy Scherzer, the Tampa Tribune's education and society reporter, Aaron Fodiman, publisher of Tampa Bay Magazine, Bob and Martha Margolis, and Trish and Paul Melech, and so many others.

I am also currently working on a new oil painting for a client who must remain unnamed: he is commissioning the portrait for his family as a surprise Christmas gift...

My Television Debut has occurred.

Well, at least it's been taped, and should air in a couple of weeks. I couldn't have done it all without my grandmother and my architect mom, Leigh Wilson.

Maybe other people would take a blase approach to making a television appearance---personally, I was a nervous wreck! I think I got three hours of sleep last night, then over-caffeinated myself with Starbucks.

Evidence of my crazed state: after three changes of clothing, I didn't even realize I was wearing green shoes with my red shirt.

I have no idea how the debut will turn out, because they still have to piece together all the photos and videotape and soundbites to make a cohesive narrative. While they were taping me, I actually thought we were doing a preliminary run-through! So wish me good luck!

Tomorrow I will be in Orlando on business, and then I am going to Key West for a brief vacation. To those who have e-mailed me with interest in commissions and/or classes, please know I will be in touch with you soon!

Elise in Wonderland (1)...


My new article in the South Tampa Magazine comes out October 3rd, and I can't wait to drive over to the publisher's office and pick up my dozen copies.

My professional website is receiving a much-needed makeover, safely in the excellent hands of Eric Holler's Holler Design.

And on Wednesday morning, Gail Guyardo is bringing a TV crew from NBC's local channel 8 news to tape a feature article on yours truly!