The Uncertainty Is Always There - In Progress

Here's a progress shot of The Uncertainty Is Always There acrylic and collage on canvas.  I've been using a subdued color palette lately instead of just black and white.  I like the added depth and playing the warm deep browns off of the  cool dark blue/greys.  It just feels more dynamic to me.

The title for this piece comes from the uncertainty of our times and the uncertainty I feel at times. It's the ghost that seems to always haunt us.

I've been entering into juried exhibitions and it will be a while until I know the results for a few of them.  It's kind of nice though to have the work from the last show in the studio on my shelves to look at while I'm painting more work.  It's interesting, but paintings feed off of each other.  My hope is that these paintings will dovetail into each other better. 

Preoccupation

Finished Preoccupation, acrylic and collage on canvas, 36 x 36 inches this morning. It's nice that the last three and the painting still in progress are Phoenix based. Tomorrow evening I deliver the paintings and drawings to Modified Arts for my solo exhibit "Lost in Transition" with the opening this Friday October 17th 6-9pm.

It's been a long haul getting ready for this show. There were even two works that although nearly done that I juried out of the show. They will be great paintings when completed, but they didn't fit into the whole theme overall. 

It's odd how shows come together, really. I'm sure musical artist go through the same feelings when putting albumns together. There are just songs that don't fit and are either used for b-sides or saved for another albumn.

Illusions of Grandeur

Completed Illusions of Grandeur, acrylic, ink and collaged materials on canvas, 41 x 57 inches - last night. The focus and meaning of the piece for me is the size relationship of the man walking underneath the huge sign for the theater. During the process of painting Illusions of Grandeur I started to think about how truly big the world is and that although the events within your personal realm may seem to be earth shatteringly important - in the grand scheme of things it's mostly of little consequence. Along with re-watching the first episode of Cosmos, when Neil deGrasse Tyson is walking on the giant calendar of the universe and gets to humanity's place on that calendar which is the last minute of December 31st. It's humbling.  

With that said, your name is on the theater marque in the lives of those who love you. Just don't get carried away.

Distant Hush

Finished Distant Hush up last night. It's the companion to Midnight City though larger. The title comes from the fact that you can see at the base of the buildings the traffic whizzing by. Of course from where I was standing it was only a distant hush and spectacle of dancing light. It's amazing, but from a distance the annoying and the mundane can be beautiful. 

Not sure how to work this into a painting, but as I rode my bike home today a butterfly flew next to me for about a block or two. There was something simply amazing about riding alongside a butterfly for over two minutes. There are moments like this that remind me of why I ride my bicycle to and from work.

As the World Passes By

Just finished As the World Passes By this morning. The title comes from how I feel this morning and the fact that the people waiting to cross the street are just watching the traffic pass them by. This morning I looked through my newsfeed and just felt a deep pang of frustration. Later drinking my morning cup of tea looking at both this drawing and the painting in progress on the easel; I thought how odd it was that my work isn't political and that I don't actually express my political views on my blog.

That's not entirely true though. It's impossible in some ways for an artist's worldview not to come through in their work. My work is actually political, but it's not tied to the fashionable politics of the day that blow in every which direction depending on where the wind current is coming from on a particular day. My focus is on what it is to be human, the modern world and how I see the world (or rather my attempt to make sense of it).

I remember when I was in art school I had a drawing professor Jim Eder. It was my first life drawing class. He came up from behind me and pointed out that I was missing the subtle transitions of how shadows were criss crossing each other across the model's body. Once I saw it; I saw it everywhere I looked. Capturing it became an insane challenge for me. I quickly learned to keep my drawings loose and not to commit to early to strong heavy shadows. I noted that as the model's pose would progress that more shadows and highlights would reveal themselves to my eyes. Almost as if my eyes needed and adjustment period. I soon learned as Jerry Shutte another life drawing and painting professor taught, that after a pose is held the model will succumb to gravity and their body weight will shift as a result. It became important to either wait for that shift or quickly capture the initial moment. Becoming an artist is more about learning to "see" than learning to master your materials.

When I look at any of political issues that currently divide my country: the longer I look the more complex the problems seem and less clear the answers to those problems become. For me it's just like drawing or painting from life in that there are so many intricate details to capture that don't always show themselves in the beginning and that things are often so much more complex than they seem. When it comes to politics it seems as everyone wants to paint these problems over with a big broad brush of absolutes. There seems to be no middle ground, but in a world of grey...

I'll paint in my studio as the world passes by and hope that maybe my paintings and drawings with all their shades of grey will inspire others to see differently.

Resurrecting Ghosts

I've spent the rainy weekend resurrecting paintings that have stalled in the studio over the last two years.  Well, I mainly restarted work on "We'll give you a number".  It's hard to say why works stall.  I will be working on them and then just loose the spark somewhere or a commission work comes up that takes precedence and I put them to the side.  Long story short like most artists I have several unfinished paintings that lurk around the studio like ghosts waiting to be resurrected if they're lucky.  This work was intended originally to be the first of a series of five.

Getting the central figure right was pretty much the struggle for the day.  I was petrified that I was going to over work her face.  I'm not convinced that I avoided that, because at one point I scrapped an entire layer of paint off.  I'm content now.  I worked through it.  I think that now that I have her squared away I can finish the painting off without as much struggle.

After this one is finished the other ghosts lurking around the studio will have to wait for their resurrection day.  I can only play Johannes Cabal every once in a while.

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.

Only the Lonely

I started the second painting of the boy and girl series.  I'll have to come up with a better title than that prior to the exhibit, but for now it will have to suffice. This painting has a little more detail, but I still want to keep the loose look, so I'll probably ink in details and paint them back out until I get just the right mix.


I'm keeping the color scheme muted and primarily monochromatic with the addition of earth tones and Paynes grey. I'm also keeping the strong perspective.  I'm planning two more canvases that will have our characters walking up and down stairs.  These works will be a little more photo based.  For the most part I'm using a mixture of photo sources from San Francisco, CA and Bisbee, AZ. Of course my goal is to create an universal urban environment, so it can be New York, Mexico City or any other city for that matter.


Later in the series I would like to incorporate the loneliness and dehumanization that is seen within Edward Hopper's paintings.  His work has always been an inspiration.  This loneliness or state of being an island is what these particular characters within this series long to escape.

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. 

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.