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.

Color Study for Cling

I just finished a small color study for Cling.  It's been one of the works that's spent the last couple months in the studio going slowly.  A lot of that has to do with figuring out the color palette to use with the painting.  The freeway works have a different color palette than my urbanscapes, yet somehow working on the freeway works has coaxed me out of my creative block, so last night I decided that I'd bring in the colors from the freeway works into the urbanscapes to see what happens.  In college I always did pastel or small paintings studies for the larger paintings.  It's funny how much stuff you get away from doing that you did as a student.  Ironically, though these things are still really important to do.  I think as the years have passed since art school I've simply have formed bad habits of skipping the preliminary portion of creating paintings.  Some of it has to do with time constraints of working a day job and the need to produce work for the gallery all the same.  I think more has to do with being free of the professors who made me do all that preliminary work that was so tedious at the time.  I'm sure some of my professors would like to know that years latter one of their students finally gets it.  Granted, I'm sure they were laughing to themselves at the time "you'll understand years from now", as I was complaining to them.

This morning while painting I was also thinking about the distinction between artists that have had formal training and those who have not.  In my mind I think of it as simply those who hop onto the freeway(going to school) and those who take surface streets(read, study and paint a whole lot).  In the end both groups get there, but those who chose to get there by freeway will get there sooner.  However, I don't really know if an artist is any more or less valid based on which road they choose.  Creating art is about struggle to get what is in your head out onto the canvas(feel free to insert your own medium here) the way you see it internally. It's just like everything else that's worth doing in life - not easy.  I feel that all artists are bound together by this mutual struggle.  It reminds me of riding up a really long and steep hill on my road bike, hard work, it hurts like hell and kicks your butt, but when you crest it and are flying down the other side it's pure exhilaration. 

Camera Work

Above is the photo taken in San Francisco for Snap below.

With this post I thought I'd share some of the photos behind the paintings.  There are some works that are derived solely from the sketchbook, but I love the process of going out with a camera to photograph source material for the paintings. It feeds the inner explorer inside of me and gets me out of the studio and out of my head for a while for that matter.  These three photos are rare in fact there was no manipulation or editing out of elements prior to going to canvas other than desaturating them and cropping.

Below is the photo taken outside of Barstow, CA and the painting A Sense of Loss.

Below is the photo taken outside in San Francisco, CA and the painting Unwritten Rules.

Once I get to the canvas I will often edit elements out or focus in on other details.  There are also instances where I will stray from the photo and increase the light and shadow to make elements clearer or more dramatic.  To some extent once I get to the canvas it's anything goes.

I'm returning to my original photos for many of my works, because I'm planning to create silkscreen prints of these works.  With that said though; I don't want to simply re-create those works, but rather create new pieces that explore the subject matter and composition in a different medium.  I may even decide to create new paintings based on these reinterpretations.  This isn't really uncommon for artists, William DeKooning, Robert Motherwell, and Edvard Munch all revisited works.  I haven't done this nearly enough considering that when I'm working on a piece I often am faced with several different paths.  I always tell myself that I will do a version this way or that, but hardly ever circle back.

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.

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.

Outpost in Progress

I started a new piece this week working title Outpost, but that may change. It's based on a photo I took at Two Guns in Northern Arizona. While I paint the painting I remember the squeaking old metal and plastic parts blowing in the wind hanging by a thread. It was a ambient grouping of sounds that in orchestra successfully unnerved me while I was there. If I was in a zombie movie those are the sounds you hear right before a zombie comes out of nowhere.

I'm focusing in on the middle of nowhere aspect of this scene. I want to capture the sense of isolation that I had while there. It really felt as if you were at the edge of civilization at some abandoned outpost long forgotten. Yet, the place still has a history.

Are You Hoping for a Miracle?

Above is the finished A Sense of Loss - 24x48 inches and Are You Hoping for a Miracle? - 10x20 inches.  I finished them two weeks ago, but haven't had a chance to post them.  It's been a crazy two weeks.

I almost entitled A Sense of Loss - "The Postman Always Rings Twice" after the crime noir novel, but decided that although the mood was there the station really didn't resemble the one in the book closely enough.  I do think the "Postman" title will be fitting for one of the works within this body of work.  The novel really does typify the psyche of how these roadside stations and diners were rapidly built in an almost gold rush urgency and boomed and busted just like all the little mining towns throughout the western United States during the Gold Rush.  I think the deserts of the Southwest are filled with little towns and small urban outposts that have sprouted up only to die and wither away like desert flowers when the heat of summer sets in.  The above gas stations came into being and ultimately abandoned in more recent history, but I think that more fuel efficient cars along with the growth of surrounding towns had a lot to do with their demise.  The need for people to stop and refuel at these middle of nowhere gas stations ceased and pretty soon these businesses ceased to be.  I named Are You Hoping for a Miracle in light of how the owner and the employees of that business must have felt.  I guess being an employee of a printshop that had to close it's doors due to the economic downturn and well changes in the industry (printing is used a lot more sparingly in the digital age) - I feel like I've been there.  Your hoping desperately that customers will come back in droves to save the place from going under, yet you know that it would take a miracle for that to happen.  I think about this when painting these paintings.

I also think about my childhood.  My family would just pick up and move from state to state with no job or place to live lined up when I was a kid.  There was a six to seven year period where my family migrated from place to place this way only to return back home to Phoenix where we started.  Now I find it amusing, but at the time that was a dreadful twist of fate.  The lesson I learned was that although my mom was looking for this ideal, perfect place across eight states; what she was really searching for was never out there to begin with.  Almost like running to stand still.

This life experience though has given me a perspective on the reality of the highway.  I remember us living in weekly stay motels or seasonal condos for months at a time, while we got settled in to new jobs, schools or my mom decided that the place wasn't for her.  Most of the moves occurred during the summer to facilitate, but not always.  I felt like I was either behind or ahead depending on where we moved to.  Also, being the perpetual new kid wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It always seemed that as soon as I was starting to fit in or established a few close friends it was time to go again.  I remember staring out the car window mile after lonely mile wishing that we weren't leaving while hoping the next place would be "it".

In short, the theme of this new body of work is still about a sense of place and people that inhabit them, but also functions as a intimate portrait of someone who's lived on the road and just like my memories are all the past, so are these stations my mom filled up at when moving my family all over hell and back.