Busy Fall Season

Admittedly, I've been neglecting the blog a little bit. This Fall has been a jam packed season for me with four shows one right after the other.  The work above will be in my solo show at Modified Arts called "Amor fati" this November - Crash acrylic, ink and collaged materials on canvas, 36w x 60h inches.

I had two songs from two different bands come up in my Pandora cue and both were titled "Amor fati", so I looked it up and it was a perfect fit for how I've been feeling lately. The loose translation is "love of fate" the concept being that whether good or bad at the time - everything that has happened in your life has made you who you are and is therefore for the best. Considering you wouldn't be who you are if you had not had to live through those experiences.

That fits for me. While painting my abandoned desertscape paintings I really have tried to make sense of the events of my life, particularly my childhood. I have also dealt in those pieces with feelings of disconnect and how my memories feel like empty shells or abandoned buildings, because I can't really go back into that past and most of the people within those memories are now gone from this world.

I don't paint it to dwell in the past so much as to deal with my feelings and to achieve a deeper understanding of who I am. I also feel that the message is ultimately - to let the past go and be in the present and that the present is all you have. Once it's past all you can really do is apologize, forgive or release it. 
There's no going back to fix it and constantly bringing it to the forefront of your life only cobbles your present and stifles your future.

On to talking about Crash.  With this piece I wanted to create the sense of it being a memory. There are strong shadows to represent our mind's natural tendency to dualistically view the world as black or white, but at the same time there is this murky, distant/untouchable, dreamlike quality.

I was interviewed by a journalist for Sunset Magazine who is doing an issue devoted to Roosevelt Row and Downtown Phoenix the month of my show. My fingers are crossed that they'll use one of my images as well.

Empty Sentiment

Just finished "Empty Sentiment", acrylic, ink and collaged materials on canvas 15 x 60 inches on canvas. I started it back in March and it sorta spawned other work and then I did some other projects. I looped back around to it this week. I'm not sure I understand my creative process or if I should even try. Maybe, I should just work the way I do and not worry?

This is an abandoned station right at the tip of Arizona on the boarder with California. It's actually across the street of a former in-state customs checkpoint that's been converted to a border patrol station. It seems odd it's so far north.

I woke up this morning realizing how much the visual technology of my age is part of my work. I also was struck with how my peers and I have only scratched the surface of what is possible within this golden age of visual technological tools.

I'm not sure what the next step is, but I know that in some regards that I'm shackled by conservative norms and traditional thinking when it comes to art making. I studied both painting and intermedia back in college. In the end I decided that I was a painter at heart and communicated best through paint. With that said - I also felt as if intermedia-conceptual work although not tethered by object creation and materials was still governed by conventions. In short being unconventional and radical is still governed by a play book and a set of mental constructs. I always hear "think outside of the box", but ultimately our linear minds can only create new boxes to think within. 

Riverfront Property Somewhere Else

Just completed Riverfront Property Somewhere Else oil on canvas, 24h x 48w. It's based on a source photo I took along side Route 66 in California halfway between Kingman, AZ and Barstow, CA. My wife and I had gone up for the Rockabilly Festival up in Lake Havasu, AZ and decided to go exploring before coming home.

The title is based on the billboard, but as an aside it does seem like the grass is always greener somewhere else. In this case that may very well be true, but no matter where we are or how good we have it - inevitably it seems like we want what someone else has, because it's better than our lot in life.

In the desert works I've been playing around with the addition of monsoon skies. In the summer growing up in Phoenix the monsoon storms have been a big part of my life. They also have a wonderful double meaning. The storms during the summer are particularly turbulent, but at the same time with the destruction that they can bring they also bring life giving water to a parched landscape. There are very few moments in our lives that don't mark transitional periods, but sometimes in my life some years are more transitional than others.

Study for In a Lonely Place

Knocked out a study for In a Lonely Place last week. I'm still not completely content with her face, but this study has brought me much closer. I will be repainting that portion of the big piece starting tonight.

I have also been working on more abandoned/desertscapes. At the moment I'm working very hard not to pigeon hole myself. I have so many seemingly disparate ideas and directions at times, but it may simply be a case where I don't see the connections at this moment. In short, there is a connection, a thread that runs through everything and if I self-censor myself I'll never get to see it.

In other news! I will be part of a exhibit in October at the Tempe Center for the Arts called "Green and Gray".  More specifics to come, but I will have four large abandoned/desertscapes in the show.

Fraction

Finished Fraction, oil on canvas 12x12 inches on Thursday night. My first completed oil painting in 15 years. Thankfully, Gamblin's new solvents and mediums don't trigger my asthma as badly as traditional turpentine and damar varnish do. The drying time of alkyd resin is a little bit different, but the window for the drying time in comparison to acrylics is nice.

I don't think I will be abandoning the act of painting with acrylics, but it's nice to have options, depending on the piece.

I opted to do a detail from Preoccupation. It's interesting, but sharing my work on Instagram (@jhowardpaintings) has enlightened my process a bit. Due to the forced square format I often shoot details of works in progress rather than the full piece. Sometimes I actually like the details better than the whole piece.

Now that the show is up at Modified Arts - "Lost in Transition" October 17th to November 16th. I'm still busy in the studio, just taking some time to play with new medias and techniques. Need to have a little fun before I get back to work on the next major body of work.

A Day Like Any Other

Just a reminder tonight is the opening for my new exhibit at Modified Arts October 17th, 6-9 pm. Here's their website for more information www.modifiedarts.org 

Above is A Day Like Any Other, acrylic and collage on canvas 12 x 12 inches Monday morning. I've had a lot of fun painting these little square canvases. After working on that big 36 x 120 inch canvas that ironically feels rather small in the Modified Arts space with it's giant walls, it's nice to work on something with a different time table for completion.

This is fourth in a series of Phoenix cityscapes completed for the show. They're almost a small series in themselves.  When I painted Temporal many thought it was Phoenix last year and although it was San Francisco that particular intersection felt very Phoenix like with the bank and car dealerships with the more modern architecture. When I've painted these works I've used the same palette to much success.

With this piece and a few of the drawings with the mood and titles I have been drawn to the idea that a "ordinary" or "typical" day is something special. I feel like our society has been getting into a almost Disney/Hollywood mode where every day has to be great, spectacular, epic, and a technicolor experience of some sort. It's really an unhealthy premise to begin and end each of your days with. If everything has to be ultra eventful every moment - I think you miss the subtly and quiet beauty of life's more simple moments.

Lunch Hour: In Progress

A progress shot of Lunch Hour. Last night I was able to get a lot done with a nice monsoon storm. It cooled things down wonderfully and the really humid air  gave me a wonderful drying time window. The extra blending time was fantastic. 

This is the first piece of a series of works dealing with more intimate urban moments. Along with playing with extremely bright light. It's amazing how sunlight can be so bright that it washes everything out as well as causing details to be lost and forms to become abstracted.

A Worn Out Life in Progress

About midway through the first gas station painting A Worn Out Life, from my Benson to Lordsburg I-10 trip. This piece is 36x72 inches, so it's taking just a little while. This station was in Bowie, Arizona. I almost had the feeling that the rest of the town wasn't far behind this station. I have a feeling that most the population depends on the little bit of agriculture in the area. There were groves of pecan trees from the look of it.

I've been listening to Dakota Suite & Emanuele Errante a lot while painting this one, so I named the piece after one of their tracks. Well, the track that I've listened to repeatedly while working on the painting. It's fitting really when I look at this station. There were a few incarnations evident.  I could see several layers of Texaco graphics, followed with a layer or two of when the station became independent.  I could also tell that the pumps were replaced at some point, because they don't match the architecture of the building.  I omitted the background buildings, but it looked like the owner and station mechanics lived on site, so it's very likely this station was open 24hrs or at least had later hours than most. It's  amazing how much you can deduct from simply taking some time to look around at the little details.

I also had a sense that the station and surrounding buildings have been used by transients. At one point I climbed down into a wash beside the station to capture both the Texaco sign and the station in the same shot. I discovered hundreds of foot prints in the wash with discarded clothes and water bottles. Just beyond where I was standing was a tunnel that led underneath the freeway, so my thought is this is likely part of a route into the country from Mexico. That of course explained why the building's lights were still on.

Hunkering Down for the Long Haul

Sometimes I realize with some paintings that they're just going to take time and lots of it. That there is nothing to do, but hunker down on them for the long haul. I am also reminded of the importance of working on other works while performing the long haul works to keep loose and fresh. The Color Study for Cling has helped me figure out a color scheme that will work for Cling.  I'm greying things out a little more on the actual work. This morning I realized that I really do like the current pavement's color interaction with the main figures in the foreground, so as I'm putting in more color I'm muting it back down with grey tones. It's this balancing act with a piece with this much size and detail that really slows the production process down, but I have to remind myself that being an artist is about quality over quantity. That is somehow out of sync with how the rest of the world is today, but maybe artists have always been out of sync.

Later today I plan to get back to work on a few other paintings that have been on the easel for a while as well. I'm also going to be starting the next piece in the "Lost" series that focuses in on abandoned highway structures, gas stations, diners, and like alongside desert highways. I feel like hoping in the truck and going for a drive sometime this weekend to photograph more.  Maybe after breakfast with my mentor tomorrow.

I'm preparing work for two shows this Fall. I will be part of a group showing of Arizona artists at the Lanning Gallery in September and I will have a solo show at Modified Arts in October.

Lonely Outpost

Work continues on Outpost.  It's going very smoothly and setting up quickly.  As I'm working on the piece I'm thinking of how to go about how I could create the piece using silkscreen printing.  I think that my work would lend itself to being reproduced using silkscreen printing.  A few years back the idea crossed my mind and I produced a few works, but with the old studio I lacked the space and was trying to create a off-shoot of my work rather than simply reproducing the work in print. Now that I have the space I'm considering it again, but this time I'm going to focus on creating prints of the works in the same vein as what I'm creating on canvases in small runs.  It's taken forever for me to learn this lesson of not dividing my energies too much.  If the screen printing dovetails into my canvas work it will happen easily, but trying to create two divergent bodies of work does not.

I have also lined up the next several canvases after this one.  I'm breathing easy to be back in the swing of things and free of the creative block that was stifling my studio production.  I know that I will return to my urban environments, but for now I'm focusing on the lonely failed urban outposts of recent past.

The little thoughts that...

I finished Little Thoughts (above) and Always Caught in the Undertow (below) last night.  I find it interesting how different the mood of these two works are. Little Thoughts is very lucid and present in comparison to Always Caught in the Undertow's water logged state of consciousness.

   

It seems even more odd to me; when I consider the fact that they were both created simultaneously.  It's said that paintings reflect the artist's mood at the time.  I have no idea what to make of it if that's the case considering that these two works despite similar palettes are so different.

Little Thoughts was titled based on the fact that the skater waiting to cross the street is either double checking that his wallet is still there or skipping to the next song on his iPod while waiting for the light.  I suspect that it's skipping to the next song.  I know that it is very common for me to skip songs while waiting at lights when I'm riding and the back pockets work the best - at least before I purchased an iPod Touch.  Life seems to be filled with an endless supply of little thoughts that can sometimes influence our lives more than we think.

After finishing work on the others I bounced back to the Chinese market piece.  I haven't thought of a good title for this painting yet.  I have noted that there is a great deal more underpainting required for the night works.  It's really coming together nicely.  I'm glad that I caught more vignettes of city life during my last trip to San Francisco.  My focus has usually been on buildings and the movement of people on the sidewalks, excluding the interactions at market stalls and restaurants.  Maybe that's the change within my work I've been craving.  Simply a change of focus to capture the energy of the city in a different way.  I'm convinced that I will never be satisfied with whatever the current body of work on my easel is and will always endlessly strive to produce the next "big thing" never knowing what that could actually entail.

The Weight of the World

I finished The Weight of the World last night not long after my last post. It was one of those moments where I was working and I simply looked up and realized it was finished after I shored up the linens up above the figure.  I proceeded to start work in earnest on If I Only Could below.

With the speed in which this latest batch of paintings are flying off my easel I feel like I should take three months off from painting more often. It's  been like kinking up a hose for a few seconds and then letting go. I should finish If I Only Could this afternoon and I'll go ahead and start the next painting. I'm really in the zone right now, so I'm simply going to keep it going. I have three more works figured out, so I'll need to break this weekend and get going in the sketchbook and continue designing "The Unknown Lovers" series. The working title has shifted. I may not give the series a formal name. The works are related, but their supposed to function as stand alone paintings.

A Bad Day to Hang Laundry

I just finished A Bad Day to Hang Laundry.  I feel the painting really fits the mood of what the next body of work will be.  It's a small painting 12x24 inches, but it packs a punch.  I'm planning on performing a lot of small works for my upcoming show in September at the Lanning Gallery in Sedona, AZ.


This painting is the beginning of a large series of connected works that work together as well as individually.  I like to think of a body of work like a musical album.  The songs can be sold as singles, but together tell a story or establish a  definite mood.  The working title of the next show is Escape Plan.  I'm going to focus in on gritty portraits of individuals in different urban environments that are either attempting or desire to escape their environs, predicaments, other people or themselves.  

Above is the original sketch for A Bad Day to Hang Laundry and it's companion piece that I haven't named yet.  I guess it would be BDHL 2, but I'm not sure if I want to go 1,2,3, etc with this series.  The theme for this series is a tale of a boy and a girl who walk down the same streets, go to the same bookstores, restaurants, parks, and other places; yet they never meet.  I guess star crossed lovers that are perfect for each other if only they could meet.  I can hear Morrissey crooning now, if it were made into a short film. I guess a little bit of the inspiration for the series is the fact that my wife and I went to the same high school, but didn't meet each other until the second semester of our freshman year in college.


I'm not sure how the series will play out.  I'm just going to sketch, paint and repeat until I feel the series is done.

Guilty Glance

I finished up Guilty Glance yesterday, just in time to submit it for it's intended exhibit. I was keeping it completely black, white and grey for a possible submittal for that show, but the painting really needed color to come together.  Not much, but enough to give it a greater sense of depth. I do have to admit that I feel I've fallen into a pattern of being some what obsessive with each painting I paint. It seems as if my perfectionist streak has just been running wild. It's not really a terrible thing, but it unsettles me to be less prolific in a time when I desire to produce twice as much work than I am.


It might just be a phase and it will simply pass. So much of who I am as an artist goes on beneath the surface of my conscious mind. I may just be climbing up the steep slope of a new artistic plateau and once I get to the top my prolific nature and snap decisions will return. For this moment, I'm caught in the struggle of reinventing the wheel with each canvas I paint.

Graphic Guilt

I have been painting like crazy for the last few days on a new work called The Guilty Glance. It's going to be my submission to a juried exhibition named "Consequences". Oddly, enough I could almost use any one of my paintings, considering that my work in general is about the passage of time and the effects of internal and external forces on my subjects. Nonetheless, I thought it would be best to relate the work directly to the show's theme without telling too much of the story. The figure in the foreground is in a half run looking over his shoulder clutching the straps to his backpack. It's unclear if he's just exited the building, just sneaking out for the evening, has just burgled a condo inside, perhaps there's something contraband inside his backpack, or he's just the nervous type. The painting isn't going to tell the viewer, it's up to the viewer to interpret and write the story as she or he feels fit. In general I paint all my works in this manner on purpose. I feel that all too often when I watch a film everything is spelled out to me as if I were three years old. Leave some mystery and I will happily fill in the blanks.


My normal technique of inking followed with painting has been employed here. What I have been finding more and more is that I really like the graphic quality created by going back and re-inking the work again afterwards. I'm not sure where this will lead.  I guess time will tell. I do like how the technique can push a figure completely into the foreground of a painting. I also like the strong chiaroscuro quality it creates as well. 

Nazareth Hotel

I delivered Nazareth Hotel up to the Lanning Gallery in Sedona, AZ yesterday along with some other works. It's one of my favorite paintings. The old hotel just has such a haunted feel to it. It almost makes me wonder what kind of ghosts may inhabit the rooms of the hotel. I almost have the impression though that it's actually hotel rooms that have been turned into apartments or at least are used for extended stays. I can see a character from a noir film staying there, while hiding out from the authorities or from his or her past.

Nazareth

Nazareth Hotel has been going well. I was shooting to finish the painting last night in order to deliver it along with others to the gallery today, but that didn't happen. I'm going to put the delivery to the gallery off for later this week, so I can include this painting.


This work is just the beginning of a series of similarly themed paintings. I'm planning to focus in on the architectural and street scene stuff for a while. Something about Escape Plan, November and now Nazareth Hotel is...  I don't know how to say it. It just seems to be the work I need to be doing at the moment. I find myself becoming completely lost within the intricate details and spaces of these paintings. It's wonderful to feel like you have physically inhabited the space within a work. I have been able to smell the rain in the air and the dampness on my cheeks while painting the Nazareth Hotel. It's been a painting that I have truly lived in. When I left for the Gothic Opening in Santa Ana on Friday leaving Nazareth Hotel in an unfinished state was very difficult to break away.   

Waiting for the Rain

Work has continued on After the Rain. I'm almost finished with it.  Now comes the tricky part rendering the shoes of the main two figures. I have painted the wet concrete shadows just the way I want them, but I can screw everything up if I don't render the shoes just so.


Other than that I'm just waiting for the rain literally and figuratively speaking. Rain was in the forecast for latter this week, but that didn't happen. I love painting on rainy days. The moist air does wonders for acrylics and extends the drying time, so that I can blend the skin tones and folds in clothing better. Whenever, I happen to leave Phoenix the prerequisite for my new home will be that it has more weather.

Gothic

Escape Plan has been selected to be part of Gothic an exhibit at the Orange County Center of Contemporary Art in Santa Ana, California. Here's the link http://occca.org/EXHIBITIONS.html. The Opening Reception will be Saturday February 4th,2010 - 6pm to 10pm.

I've also been working on After the Rain above. I took a little time from the easel last week to update my artist statement and resume. It wasn't the most enjoyable way to spend the week, but it's one of the necessary parts of being an artist. I have always found working on my artist statement to be difficult. I feel a big part of this difficulty is partly due to the fact I'm trying to formally put words to what I do visually. In my blog I keep things pretty casual, which is easier. My mentor Dave Sklar mused this morning over breakfast that "the reason the artist statement is so hard to write is that in essence, it's an artist's epitaph of who they are and what they're about, if a bolt of lightning was to strike them down latter today." That might be a bit melodramatic, but in essence, yes I would want my current artist statement read at my wake when I depart. Hopefully, that's a very long time from now when I've painted thousands of paintings.


Well back to After the Rain. It's been a fun little painting. It's odd, but I felt it should be a small work based on the sketch. Now that I'm into the painting I almost feel as if it should be bigger. I may have to paint a larger version latter. I actually want to do a series of smaller works to work out some color schemes.  I have four distinct bodies of work in my head at the moment and I want to use unique color palettes for each of them. There will be some subjective differences as well, but I want to challenge myself a little more.

Final Painting for 2011

Just finished my last painting for 2011. It's called Escape Plan. I'm going to submit it for a show called Gothic along with a two other works. I feel this work will fit in with the show's premise well. I've always been a bit tormented by the fact people consider my work dark, but with this painting I've went ahead and leaned into it a bit. 


I've actually become more comfortable with being considered dark. The conclusion I have reached is that I am a Alfred Hitchcock or Rod Sterling when it comes to doing my art. When I think about it though the world is really a dark place and I don't think there are many that would argue that we're not living through some dark times in some respect. Although, a quick glance through the history books leads me to think that times are always dark for one reason or another. I guess it's all relative.


2011 for me was a year of up and downs, but ultimately more up than down. I built the studio and my gallery sales have been great this year, so I can only feel thankful and forget any of the downs. With any luck 2012 will be great year for all.  Happy New Years!