Hanging On a Curtain

Completed Hanging On a Curtain last night or really early this morning. I'm in the last days of preparing for the show. I have enough work, but I'm pushing to have even more. I haven't actually had a solo show at Modified since the remodel, so there's a lot more wall space to fill than before. Most of my works are large horizontal pieces, so it should be okay.  Nonetheless, I'd rather push myself to create as much work as humanly possible before the hang date.

Left To Your Own Devices

Finished Left To Your Own Devices, pen & ink and marker this evening. I spent the afternoon at a coffee house I know with nice big tables. The music was a bit loud, so I was cranking my iPod since working with my own soundtrack is a must when I do art. The coffee house was moderately busy, but I noticed that crowds would pour in shifts around 3pm. To my knowledge no one paid me any mind, but of course I was pretty absorbed in my work. I can see why people go to coffee houses to work on things. There's a nice energy and it's also a pleasant change of pace.

This drawing is based off of a photo I took in Chinatown - San Francisco. There will be a pencil drawing as well. To work out the perspective I had to draw the scene in pencil first, I then proceeded to trace it in ink. I find that the pencil doesn't always erase to my liking and gets the markers dirty. I also like the fact it gives me and opportunity to contrast the medias with the same subject.

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.

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.