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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.
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.
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.
Above is A Sense of Loss (working) and below that Companions. Both are for the next showing. As usual I figure out the what I'm doing for a show with very little time to do it. I'm glad to see that nothing has changed.
The work for this show has diverged a little from my normal urban environments to I guess the remains of small outposts of urbanity in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure of the overall theme of this body of work and initially I thought it was a portrait of "boom and bust". Now that I'm further into the works I think it's actually more of a portrait of our fragility as human beings. A gas station in the middle of nowhere closes and in no time at all it becomes and instant ruin. It's as if these buildings within a very short time of being uninhabited become uninhabitable empty shells that are quickly decimated by nature and vandals.
Yesterday, I drove up to I-40 and took photos of some sites between Flagstaff and Winslow. I was struck with the eery and somewhat foreboding feeling that fills you when exploring these ruins. There is this uncanny feeling of almost voyeurism by being there and even that doesn't fully describe the feeling. Of course by being there you are ignoring no trespassing signs in some cases, but the I've had the same feeling when visiting ancient ruin sites within national and state parks, so it's something different. I guess these sites are haunted and maybe that's the draw. It's the essence of individuals from the past that still inhabit these places that you've chosen to pay an unsolicited visit to.
Spending this rainy day working on a new piece entitled cling. At least that's the working title of the piece. It has a very similar feel to Snap from a couple years back. The focus has been on all the complex folds of the figures jeans. It was around 4pm so the sun was at an angle that really heightened the shadows of the folds. The reference photo for this painting is actually from downtown Phoenix. I usually use my photos from other cities, but for this upcoming show I want to focus in on some subjects from my own local. I find it odd that when I speak with people who haven't really been to Phoenix that they don't view Phoenix as a large gritty city. Granted it doesn't have the same architectural feel of the cities I like to paint. I really like the older buildings that you find in the older cities. Phoenix has a few, but Phoenix also has the tendency to level an older building and place a new one in it's place that doesn't have even a fraction of the character of the previous structure. It's just the way my hometown is.
Nonetheless, I recently purchased a much better camera that is a bit of a hybrid between the normal digital point & shoot and a 35mm. I'm going to be doing a lot of riding downtown and shooting photos like crazy. It isn't as concealable as my other point & shoots, but I'm just going to have to use better judgement when taking pictures. I prefer to take photos without it being obvious to my subjects when I'm taking street photos.
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.
I finished Evening Post last Sunday morning just in time to deliver it to the gallery. I dragged my best friend and former college professor along with me. It was a great opportunity to spend some time talking about art and life. Funny the older I get the less I feel I know. I guess the more you know the more aware you become of what exceeds your knowledge. Also, when I'm alone painting in my studio I have a lot of time to think about the big questions of life. More often than not I end up dismantling my philosophical beliefs when I realize that they are founded on false assumptions.
I huge topic of discussion for us was dealing with getting older, attaining or not attaining life long goals, eventual death and the metaphysics of what happens afterwards. This is definitely a place where the older I get and the more I think about it - the less definitive my assumptions on all the above become. I was brought up to believe in reincarnation rather than heaven or hell, from a more new age perspective. I have to wonder these days if the beliefs I was taught when growing up amount to nothing more than a sugar coating meant to make our eventual death an easier pill to swallow. If life doesn't turn out the way you like it or death comes early - never fear; this was only another read through. A real-life video game with endless lives to get it right.
It might be the punk questioning of authority within me, but considering that in India where the concept of reincarnation is a huge part of Hinduism and their political system prior to the English there was a very strict caste system/ class system in place within their society. I can't help, but wonder if the concept of reincarnation was developed to keep the lower castes/classes from revolting? I really do want to believe, but I wonder if it's just shying away from the reality that you have to make every moment count.
In regards to the other cans filled with worms. I don't really know where to begin. My mentor maybe unintentionally is teaching me another lesson.
