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Just finished Gum Wrappers and Fancy Cars. It's a whimsical title really. Maybe a musing really. As I was looking at the drawing thinking of a name it dawned on me that there's fancy cars, dirty streets with gum wrappers, lots of signs and...
I think it's an interesting contrast between super clean expensive cars and liter strewn sidewalks. I respond somehow to San Francisco - Chinatown's mixture of glitz, high intensity colors, decaying buildings and liter strewn streets. I remember when I was a kid the first time I went to LA's Chinatown I felt like I'd stepped into a scene from Bladerunner that I'd only seen six months earlier.
When I lived in Honolulu, Hawaii it was very similar. Once you made it out of the touristy parts I remember walking down alleyways where there were street vendors, grocers with chickens hanging from hooks, the guys with merchandise inside their coats, street performers, street preachers and lots of people. I lived in three different buildings. Initially, we stayed in a 20 story building that was okay, then we moved and lived in a 40 story and ultimately lived in a 30 story on the 28th floor. The last building was really the best for living space, ocean view and location. It was only five blocks from the beach where the bus stop that I rode to school was as well. It's odd to think about it, but I rode a public bus to school in Hawaii rather than a school bus. Nonetheless, I thought I was in heaven to be able to watch the waves and smell the ocean air during my 30 minute wait for the bus every morning.
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.
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.
I completed There's More To It Than That today. The real finishing detail was finishing off the light area of the sky on the left side, but adding dirty semi-opaque glazes. The sky just needed to have the small clouds defined and the bright yellow toned down and dirtied up a bit.
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.
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.
Completed Sunrise this evening. It was more of a matter of fine tuning things. I've been bouncing back and forth from this painting and three others. There has been a lot that has happened in the last month or so in my life. This painting is about the beginning of a new day.
