Coasting

Just finished Coasting - pen & ink and marker on paper. I'm experimenting with a new paper - Canson Pro Layout Marker/18 lb 70 g. It's very bright white and the markers work wonderfully on it. With the last drawing I used a standard high quality drawing paper that was soaking the markers up greatly. I made it work, but it's a better idea to find a paper that works best for your media. I personally am a huge advocate of not fighting your materials if you don't have to. I really have grown to like using markers. Back in college I hated them, but when I went back to school for graphic design classes I took a cartooning class and something just clicked. They were like watercolors in a pen form. I also developed a technique apart from what the teacher taught that worked well for me.

I've read that collectors prefer to collect paintings rather than drawings. I haven't researched the reasons for the preference. I do know that I love looking at the drawings of other artists. In fact many of works I admire most are the drawings from artists like Bellows, Sargent, Eakins and Johns. There is something so raw and spontaneous about drawing. It's a fight to maintain the initial vitality of the drawing within a painting. I guess in a way an artist's drawings are equivalent to MTV's Unplugged Series in the 90's. It's my equivalent to going acoustic.

Before the Rush

Finished Before the Rush - pen & ink and marker on paper. It's based off of a photo I took the last time I was in San Francisco. It's time to go again. I have also been trying to plan a trip to New York, but at the moment it's just out of my budget. I know when I go I will want to be there for 5 to 7 days to visit galleries and museums as well as hours of walking the streets with a camera.

I watched a the documentary Side by Side, which interviews several movie directors on their preference of shooting with chemical process film cameras or digital cameras. The opinions were strongly divided with the pros and cons. I realized that in many ways I'm in the digital camera non-traditionalist camp comparatively. For me the invention of the digital camera and it's usage has influenced my work greatly. First off the freedom of being able to walk the streets of a city like San Francisco for hours and be able to take thousands of photos within a few days is huge. It's an economic thing as well. With a traditional 35mm it was completely cost prohibitive for me to even think of taking that many photos. Many of the shots that become paintings are truly the result of being able to take photos without worrying about getting the perfect shot. I have even created work based off of accidental shots. I also use Photoshop as a sketching tool, combining photos and sketches together. It's just not the traditional art school approach of doing things, but the technology is available to be used. I have not felt the need to stop using paint and canvas, but I like the level of naturalism I achieve and feel that my photography trips provide me with a connection to the cities I paint that I wouldn't have otherwise.

Thinking About the Past

Started work this week on There's No Going Back.  It's another installment in the desert/abandoned gas station series.  I feel I need to come up with an actual name for the series.  I have been bouncing back and forth from calling it the abandoned gas station series to the desert series.  Well, it's both.  There has to be a better name for it however.

There's No Going Back actually sheds light on what this series of works is about.  Well, at least it came to me while painting last night.  The soundtrack for this series for the most part has been U2's - The Joshua Tree album.  I was listening to Red Hill Mining Town and the verse "there's no going back" hit me.  There is no going back!  I can travel up and down some of the same highways my family did in our nomadic days of moving all over the West, but all there is left of the gas stations, motels and eateries from those days are ruins or new structures that have gone in their places.  The formative figures of my childhood have passed, so the only connection to my childhood is my memories (represented by ruins) outside of my siblings.  The desolation of the desert is a perfect analogy for separation, isolation and loss.  It's a universal experience that everyone in the world will likely share sometime in their life and I just happen to be painting it.  I guess this body of work is really about coming to age.  

Cling in Progress - almost

Cling is closer to being finished, but there's still more to do.  It's a great piece, so I'm not too concerned about rushing it off the easel yet.  The strategy of pre-mixing large batches of base colors has worked out very well.  I'm trying to walk a fine line between having a large mixture of colors while maintaining a monochromatic/cinematic lens filtered look for mood.  The weather has been kind to me with rain throughout the weekend slowing my drying time down a lot and making it easier to blend large areas.

I also started working on the first of many drawings that will make up the show as well.  Usually, when I exhibit it's paintings only without any drawings.  Modified has requested a mixture and I'm more than happy to oblige.  I really feel like I don't draw nearly enough.  I have a tendency to work only on the easel and only sketch when out of town or while sitting at a coffee house.  My camera in a lot of ways has replaced my sketchbook.  I can see pros and cons to both really.  Maybe, as a result of this show I'll find a balance between the two.

Cling - In Progress

A quick progress shot of Cling. I'm just getting a chance to return back to this painting. It may likely be the postcard piece for the October showing at Modified Arts. It has been a very challenging piece. I think that the composition  coupled with it's size has had something to do with that. The fact it's been a challenge will make it just that much sweeter when I finish the piece. My goal is to try to finish it this weekend. I have some other works in progress, but I think if I can complete this one that it will create a sense of momentum. Next weekend will be a three day weekend for me, which will allow me to get a lot done for the show. I've been working extra at work, so it's pulled me away from the studio over the last month. I'm taking time off in September to make sure I finish all the works for the show.

This exhibit is going to be really interesting. It will be a mixture of my normal urban paintings, night paintings, and the gas station works. I'm going through my Bisbee photos for some new work. I have a feeling that performing some more paintings from my Bisbee photographs will serve as a bridge between the two bodies of work. Really, the gas station paintings are very much like my bridge paintings in feel. I know in some crazy way all these works dove tail into each other and although they may seem disparate they're actually part of a really big story.  I just need to figure out the chapters and characters to link them all together.

A Tow Away Breakfast

Finished A Tow Away Breakfast. If I weren't on vacation and walking around with a camera I might have missed this small moment of two birds finding a scavenger's feast right before they were joined by three dozen of their feathered brothers and sisters. Yet, there is something just so fitting about these birds feasting in the tow away zone considering how most people think of pigeons and most likely want to do away with them. I confess after living in Hawaii and having to clean lanais up after them as part of my family's cleaning business...

Still, it's a great snapshot of urban life and what it is to live in a large city.

I also started work over the week on a new piece called Dead End that is going to be part of a series of night paintings. I have tons of night photos from San Francisco that I've barely touched. Largely, this clutch of photos is partly due to the fact that with my first trip to San Francisco I had more time to shoot photos at night than during the day. At the same time though there is nothing like wandering through the streets of a city at night. The city has such a different feel at night and some streets and alleyways become haunting where as during the day they are completely benign. 

Isolated States - Completed

I completed Isolated States before leaving for vacation, but with the rush of getting everything together for the trip - I didn't have time to post. This station was in the middle of nowhere just East of Lordsburg, New Mexico. It was a very desolate place and the distance between the sign and the station made me think of how they were two isolated islands in a sea of dirt and gravel.

The last two works have been a little more desolate than the previous ones.  That has a lot to do with the environment and how hot the day was when I went shooting for the source photos. Maybe a little on how I felt that day as well. I start painting these pieces in my mind while photographing them.

I also think that these paintings are portraits of the buildings as living things in themselves. In this case two structures isolated from each other that face the extreme elements of this desolate landscape together, but hundreds of feet apart. In the summer it's hot, in the winter it's cold always windy with hardly any rain. 

The concept of buildings as living entities has been a big part of my work for the last several years and a big part of my return to realism. The first paintings where I returned from abstraction to realism contained buildings. From there I started taking source photos and taught myself to become a better street photographer and my work became more realistic. Of course keeping the abstract and collage elements within them. When I paint buildings I am painting their soul as a living being or the stain left by all those who have inhabited them. When I paint an old hotel or gas station I'm thinking of all the lives that have passed through them. The lover's quarrels and makeups, the family ups and downs, the lonesome travelers who have passed through, the life and times of the ownership and employees, and everything else that could've happened there. I feel the stain of time that haunts these places and while I paint these works I do my best to infuse them with those feelings.