New Paintings

I just got slides back the other day from Jake over at Blue Moon. Thanks again!
So without further ado...
(click on the images to view them a good deal bigger!)

"Underworld"  oil on canvas  2010
It started off with a fox but I just couldn't get it to look right. So then I decided it didn't really need a character at all. And then late at night I changed my mind again and added the bunny. Okay, rabbit. But bunny is funnier. Anyway I like it. It make me laugh.

"Prelude no. 2"
at least that's the title for now, in reference to "Prelude to an Encounter" which would be no. 1
This one is very simple but I'm proud of it. At least for now. My opinion of my own work is as variable as the weather.

"Map"
I stole both the concept and title for this piece from this very different image by Nick Sheehy (aka Showchicken). You can see his work on his Flickr page.

Currently untitled
A cedar tree. "Cedar"?  "Barrier"?  "Between"?  I don't know.

"Rehearsal"
The slide on this one had a lot of glare on it. I was able to fix it up pretty good in Photoshop but Jake's going to reshoot it anyway. This is only my second theater/public space painting of which I hope to do many more.

Linden drawing

Well I don't post very often here, mostly because I don't get that much new work done, although I should have some new slides in a couple weeks.

So I thought I'd post some work by Linden who is now a few months past her 2nd birthday. I thought what she was working on last night looked pretty good.

She's using washable markers and went at it with a sponge toward the end.

River Styx magazine cover

This just came in the mail yesterday. It looks very nice.
River Styx is a non-profit literary magazine that comes out three times a year (for 35 years now). You can check out their website here: www.riverstyx.org

The cover is "Crescendo", the back cover "Under The St. John's Bridge"

A bit of process

I took a snapshot of the early sketch stage of "Performance". I'm not sure that it's worth much as an insight into my process. So I'll also offer this observation from my journal on finishing a painting:

"This is how I know a painting is finished: I realise that the last substantive brush stroke I made was about an hour ago and that all I've done since is nitpick at the details."

2 more paintings

These are also recent although they are not scheduled to be included in any shows so far unless they make it to my annual exhibition next April. I'm particularly happy with the piece "Performance" and may do some variations on this them at some point.

















"Performance" oil on canvas 2010






















"Under Water no.2"

two new train paintings

So I'm putting five paintings in a train themed show in Corvallis, Oregon (at the Corvallis Art Center).
three of them will be older paintings but I did two new pieces for the show. There will also be some photography and some kind of work using maps I think. I don't have the names of the other participating artists yet. The centerpiece of the show is going to be an elaborate model train set that they plan to suspend from the rafters. If you've never been to the Art Center it is an old church and I'm thinking it's going to look pretty damn cool.

The show runs from July 15th to August 14th with an opening reception on Thursday July 14 from 5:30 to 7pm. I'll defintely try to be there.

Here's the two new pieces:


















"Time Transfixed (after Magritte)" oil on canvas 2010













untitled so far

Horror movies and Van Gogh

I have little to no press concerning my work, so I put together a little press release (only my second ever) for my upcoming show and got this sweet little blurb in the online version of the Portland Mercury:

"New paintings from an artist who's been haunting the local scene for a decade. His paintings fall somewhere between a horror movie backdrop and Vincent Van Gogh, playing with light on starry, shadowy nights."

I like it.

Narrative Art

(I jotted this down a couple weeks ago on some scrap paper while painting):

"I am and always will be, unapologetically, a narrative artist. Life itself is an unfolding narrative event. Those who think story telling is beneath the dignity of visual art have lost touch with it’s original purpose."

Some art critics are dismissive of narrative art, presumably because they are intellectually stuck in the pretentious post-modern mid-twentieth century. Or they think that the effort to imply a story through art is some kind of a cop-out of artistic intention. I should think that at least one of the primary goals of any verbal story teller is to create images in the mind of the listener or reader. Just so, one of my goals as an image maker is to create stories in the mind of the viewer. Nothing is more vital than story-telling. Stories are how we derive meaning.

Bill Watterson Dinosaurs!

The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently published a short email interview with artist Bill Watterson. You know, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes! It got me thinking about what Mr. Watterson may or may not be doing with his artistic spare time these days. I assume (or at least fervently hope) that he continues to paint for himself. Since he no longer needs to earn a living he can enact the motto of recluse pianist Glenn Gould who said the best artist to audience ratio is 1 to 0.
I thought about his painting of dinosaurs that graced the back cover of his "Lazy Sunday Book" collection, but was unable to find an example posted on the internet. Shame on you Bill Watterson fans! So here it is.
(click on the image to view it larger)

The light

All those fires in my paintings have gone away. Recently what I've noticed is that I'm creating that same weird warm limited light source but as if it were emanating directly from the point of view, as if I or the viewer were illuminating the scene simply by looking at it. Like my imagination is itself a light, and to prove it I only have to paint it. It's a little weird but I like it. I think I'll see where it takes me. Or what it shows me.

New slides

So I finally got some more slides done. I'm having some color issues which is weird since I'm supposed to be the color control guy at my day job (which I don't want to get into, because it is lame). When I post them they seem garish all of a sudden.
Anyway the titles here are mostly tentative.
You can click on the images to view them a little bit larger.
Enjoy. Or don't. Whatever. I'm feeling ambivalent myself.























Studio at Night
(In which I pretend that the end of the world is imminent while I'm absorbed in making my little pictures)























"Linden Tree"
(one of the trees in the park near our house after which my daughter is named)

















"Muddy Road"
(My wife and the guy who takes my slides don't like this one but I thought it came out pretty good. But then I'm rarely the best judge of my own work)

















"The Fox"
I had this one re-shot because the previous slide had some glare on the left.














"Three Blind Mice"
(More of a joke than a work of art. Maybe a nice illustration for children's rhymes)

Aaargh...

[A rant written during my last painting session back in mid-December]

The truth is I have no idea if I'm any good. I paint scenes that look good to me and then think to myself, "I have no idea what that would really look like". I use photo references when I can but mostly I'm just painting completely out of my head. If I pay special attention and try to copy the details out of a photo I think the painting usually comes out better, but I always want to make it all up anyway. What the hell am I doing?

[and now... back to work. painting tonight. wish me luck cybervoid.]