Indecision

indecision
mixed media
16 x 8
July 2014

Sometimes a canvas just doesn't work.  I started this one a couple years back now, before I started to keep track of progress.  This could be one of those archaeological digs of paint layers. I think it started as two people in a bedroom, then was covered with several layers of abstract color work, then a series of lines that I was going to write over.  This final piece has several more layers of paint and a pour of resin. Finally calling it done in July, but waiting another month to post about it.

Sleepy Times

I gave myself a new challenge, to work on painting people with a touch more realism.

Sunbathers

Oil on Canvas

22 x 30

June 2014

Sleeping In

Oil on Canvas

16 x 18

June 2014

new works, a show and an award

Coy Bird
Feb 2014
Acrylic on Canvas
40x30

Most of the time I worked on Coy Bird I viewed it as a vertical painting.  I hit a point, though, were I thought there was just something missing.  I started rotating the canvas to another perspective and the it hit me. It wasn't missing something, I was just looking at it wrong.

PacNW
April 2014
Oil on Canvas
44x14

A kind of abstract landscape idea of the Pacific NW region.

Sunday Stroll Through a Region of Imminent Peril
May 2014
Oil on Canvas
22x34

I am definitely of the opinion that art can be fun and have some humor.  This is pretty self explanatory and I think humorous. The title is partially from the tv show Archer. 

At the RAW Spectrum Show

 Raw Spectrum Show

I was very honored to participate in the RAW Spectrum show at the Showbox at the Market April 17, 2014.

I had been contacted by one of the organized and asked if I would like to participate.  The show was a great experience.  I had a twelve foot section of fence and a table to display work.  I showed five canvases and three sculptures. The response was super positive.


Figurative Art Competition
End of April I entered Online Gallery's Figurative Art Competition and won a special recognition award for the New Year painting embedded in resin.

Acrylic Sculpture

Cast Acrylic Resin

 

 

Untitled Painting

Day 1
Pencil on canvas

Final Piece
Acrylic and Pencil on Canvas
48x24

Wood Between the Worlds

The wood between the worlds in the Magician's Nephew was a tranquil wood outside of time and place, an in between place to enter other worlds.  This painting was inspired from the description of entering the wood by rising up through a pool of water. 

Illustration from the book The Magician's Nephew

Day 1 - Sky

Tree Branches

Canopy

Light

First layer of Resin

Final painting with 1/8th inch of resin

Cold City

Cold City
Oil on Canvas
42 x 26

When my friend commissioned this painting the only direction I had were a couple of images that caught his eye.  The common factor was a pretty monochromatic piece with an intense blue area somewhere in the painting.  He gave me the perfect amount of input in what catches his eye but gave ultimate freedom  in the end result.  (An aside, I turned down a commission once because the person was too specific on what she wanted, the painting she was looking at except with her husbands yacht in it.  Good lord that would have been a painfully uninteresting piece of shit.)  OK back on track.  The grand idea here is this ominous towering city in a sort of dreamlike fog.  But the city isn't a trap or so oppressive of an environment that you can't escape.  Between the buildings is a wide avenue opening to the breaking dawn just filtering through the fog.

A couple years ago I did a city scape painting called Rat Trap, which came out of a time in my life where I felt trapped.  (1999-2009 section)    I feel this painting, Cold City, is coming from a place in my life that is filled with a lot more hope in the future.  I think if you could put these two together, eve though the rat trap is more colorful, I feel it is more ominous.  I called this a cold city, but it doesn't mean a city without life.  I see it more as a cold facade but underneath is filled with life and warmth. While I worked on this I documented stages of my process.  I began with a bright orange background for a hidden subtext of warmth, that even when the city seems cold and insensitive there can be found warmth in it's humanity.  The edges, which are unseen in photos, are painted in the orange to refer back to this warmth below the apparent frosty exterior.