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.

Lost in Transition - Finished

Just completed Lost in Transition, acrylic, ink and collage on canvas, 36 x 120 inches. It's the title painting for the show at Modified Arts this October wit.h the opening on Third Friday the 17th! There will be a healthy mixture of paintings and drawings. 

At the moment I'm basking in the glow of the two newly finished paintings. It's that time during the preparation of a show where works come together and are finished. Thanks, to my habit of working on several pieces at a time they all seem to just about finish together.

Initially, I was going to name this painting "Come as You Are", because that Nirvana song just kept popping in my head, but this morning I realized that it was the piece in the show that epitomizes what the whole body of work is about.

Everything is in a perpetual state of transition. A constant state of becoming something or someone else. Sometimes though a person, a society, or a place gets stuck and lost in the flux of this change. Two Guns, Arizona is such a place.  An abandoned and re-inhabited several times, but now only the ghostly remains of it's checkered past remain high on a desert plain with each season slowly cleaning the remnants of its history away.

A Sense of Loss and Letting Go

I finished A Sense of Loss and Letting Go late last night. I'm really glad that I pushed myself to complete this final piece for the show. In a lot of ways A Sense of Loss the first painting that dealt with this station was the start of  the series and when I was painting it back in March and April I didn't feel resolved. I knew the painting was done and that it was one possible solution to the subject matter, but I had other ideas of where to take it. I still do. This painting is yet another possible solution. I guess for me this is the station that I photographed first and the seed for the whole series. 

I think what strikes me about this station is how it feels like the bleached white dry javelina skull parts I come across when hiking down around Sierra Vista and Bisbee. This station sits with it's bent up awning and broken out windows as an empty shell like a pile of bones surrounded by future tumbleweeds in the middle of the Southern California desert outside of Barstow.  

Kingdom Come and Went

Just completed Kingdom Come and Went. It's another super wide piece. I think this format works really well for the abandoned gas station/desert works. I think it highlights the one aspect about the desert outside of the heat: it's expansiveness. The desert has several places where it's flat with mountains in the distance that in more humid climates would be obscured by the atmosphere. There's lots and lots of sky and the land just seems to stretch out before you in every direction; forever. It's odd to write about this, because this is really quite normal for a desert kid like me. Whenever, I'm away from the Southwestern Deserts it may take a while, but I notice the lack of expansiveness and endless blue sky.

The title popped in my head right after finishing the painting. The title has some religious undertones, but I think for me personally it's my perception of how these small desert towns were once booming and now are a year or so from becoming ghost towns. I just imagine a gas station owner, perhaps a mechanic by trade who buys the a station just off the highway and runs a prosperous business. Then over time with more fuel efficient cars business just slowly slips away until he can no longer keep the doors open. It's as if all his dreams came true to own his own prosperous company, but times change and he finds it slip from his hands like grains of sand. Like his kingdom came and went before his eyes.

There's More To It - Working

Here's a working shot of There's More To It Than That a new 72 x 36 inch mixed media on canvas work. I have to laugh at my titles at times.  I bounce back and forth from single word titles to long The Smiths like titles. It's what comes to me while painting them, so it is what it is. 

When I worked abstractly I used to make lists of titles for a show and then if a title didn't come to me I would then go down the list until something fit. Often times I found myself in the predicament where the title that came to me while painting a piece had already been used. I stopped using that system.

Today, I just wait for a title to come to me. If it doesn't come to me I will look to the collaged text to invent something or will open a book randomly with my eyes closed and point somewhere on a page. If it makes sense - I use it. Titles these days typically don't require any special rituals, however. They've been flowing easily.

This piece is an answer to There's No Going Back. I chose to have a sunset with an impending monsoon storm coming in. In this instance a storm coming in is far from negative. In the desert the storms are awaited for, not dreaded; bringing cooler temps and life to the landscape. The sunset is representative of turning the page or putting false perceptions to rest for a new day tomorrow. In many cases there is no going back, but sometimes there's more to the circumstances surrounding past events than you may have known at the time or even been capable of grasping. In fact I have recently found that everything I thought I knew at one time was based on false perceptions and assumptions. In short, there may be no going back, but there is returning to where you once were and beginning a new. In the same place; just at a different time.

Reckoning

Just completed Reckoning working title was Lonely Outpost 2. I think the new title fits better with the definition of "the process of calculating or estimating something" or "a judgement or opinion", rather than the "avenging for past misdeeds". Of course I guess all could apply depending on you the viewer's interpretation.

I guess for me buildings are representative of souls with the wear and tear. With this series I have known that it speaks of my childhood, but of course it sometimes takes years for me to figure out what my subconscious mind is saying to me. That's okay though. I like the mystery. What I do know is that I have been doing a great deal of reckoning in regards to my childhood past. Somethings have become clearer to me, mythologies shattered, lies exposed, family members that were once lost found, and today new beginnings. 

Of course my way of processing it all is in paint. One of my favorite verses from a Folk Implosion song is "I never know what I'm thinking, until I dream". For me that hits home on how I am. Of course, I dream in paint. Come to think of it that's what inspired the gas station series to begin with. I woke up remembering a dream of me painting a huge series of gas stations out in the desert. I found the photo I'd taken three years earlier of an abandoned gas station outside of Barstow California and it felt right.

I also think that the concept of reckoning is a big part of this body of work in subject matter alone. These gas stations in the Southwestern deserts of the U.S. speak volumes about American culture. The West and the underlining Manifest Destiny philosophy has influenced the politics of the region from the pioneer days to present day. The perpetual bust and boom fueled by the cowboy spirit of American independence. Yes, speaking of this paradigm can get politically charged rather quickly, but I'm not playing politics here. At least I'm making no judgement calls, but rather just exposing the essence of what I see in myself and the world as I know it.  My family members and myself are the products of this culture, these deserts and only through the exploration of this culture and the underlining themes; can I understand them and myself - not to mention all that went down. I guess I'd rather author this story in Paul Bowles' fashion with a rather dispassionate exploration of characters and events without letting you know which character represents the author's voice allowing the reader to make their own calls. In the end there is more gray than black or white and no clear answers to be found.

For my personal history, a big part of my childhood was spent traveling these roads and fueling up most likely at these very stations moving from place to place as my mom desperately tried to find herself with my sister and I living in a temporal state of constant flux. The result of this is her son chose in adulthood to take the existentialist view that "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself" I saw this magnet at the art store my last trip, but I've thought in a thousand times - just worded differently - when thinking about all the places I lived as a kid.

For me it was both fun and dreadful at the same time. For an introverted, socially awkward kid being in a new school having to make new friends every year wasn't a lot of fun. I turned to my art as my companion. In the end I have no regrets, because I realize that I'm the artist I am today as a result of moving all over the place. Yet, I guess the time for reckoning has come.

Lonely Outpost 2 - working

A progress shot of Lonely Outpost 2 another 60 x 18 inch painting.  Originally the idea was to make either a diptych or a triptych, but it didn't happen with this pair of canvases at least. I'm not to worried.  I did let the two share the same yellow almost peach sky. That's the huge difference between Lonely Outpost 1 and 2; the skies.  Also, with the first painting I used red for the station's color rather than the yellow.  The station was actually an old Exxon station.  I still think that this station is the most creepy of the sites I've photographed. This station had broken light fixtures that were creaking as they blew in the wind.  It felt like one of the moments within horror or suspense films right before someone attacks the protagonist or a haunting discovery is made. 

There's No Going Back

Finished up There's No Going Back. The latest installment of the Desert/Gas Station Series. The Modified show is going to be really interesting.  At the moment there are two really different bodies of work going into the show.  I'm planning to take some new photos down in Bisbee that I think will tie the two bodies of work into a cohesive whole. I'm thinking of entitling the show "Temporal". It fits both bodies of work very well. 

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.  

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.

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.

Dreaming of Empties

I completed Dreaming of Empties and All Your False Projections this morning and will be delivering them along with Lonely Outpost up to the Lanning Gallery this afternoon. It will be a relief to get up North and out of this hellish heat for a few hours.

I have been purchasing some new brushes/tools for these paintings namely the Catalyst series from Princeton http://princetonbrush.com/catalyst-blades-acrylic.html. These are fantastic for achieving really nice impasto techniques. They really make a nice addition to my current textures.

Lonely Outpost Completed

I just completed Lonely Outpost. This last weekend I headed out to White Sands, NM for some fun. I also took some time to photograph several abandoned gas stations, motels, and cafes that were on the way.  There are a few good ones that I didn't see until after I flew past the freeway exit ramp and sometimes the only chance to turn around was 10 to 20 miles down the road. Next time...

When photographing one site over the weekend it occurred to me that maybe this new body of work isn't really that much of a divergence for me. When I consider that my artist statement states "that my interest is in capturing the ephemeral nature of our existence", "exposing the fragility of our existence" and "the effect mankind has had on the planet".  I can't help, but feel that this new body of work does all those things.  Granted the environments are not the urban environments I usually paint, but the message remains the same.  I'm just fleshing out my artistic vision a bit more.

The new body of work is also allowing me to explore some different color palette ideas.  I have always enjoyed when film and television directors have used color filters to mute the color of a film or cast a distinct hue on all of the scenes. It will be interesting to see how this influences the more urban works.