clutch (2/3/to/too) joint compound and acrylic on wood 13x14 not for sale
This one's dedicated to all the buzzer busters in our family.
Paintings
Lemon, no lemon / cowboy, no cowboy /
lemon, no lemon / cowboy, no cowboy acrylic on wood 12x14 (no longer exists)
Been watching a lot of food-related shows and thinking about the Buddhist concept of inter-being. And the virtues of lemons. And the virtues of non-lemons. And Beyonce's new album title. Okay, not really, but it is about lemons. Well, not really - it is and it isn't. Apparently so is everything else. Is that right? I don't know.
pollen pummel drill /
pollen pummel drill acrylic on wood 12x14 (sold)
I got your back/pain /
I got your back/pain acrylic on wood 12x14 (sold)
internet (portrait) /
internet (portrait) acrylic on wood 12x14 (sold)
Neighborhood /
neighborhood joint compound and acrylic on wood 12x14 (sold)
Not sure why, but this messy dude seems to do a thing I like. It's slapped together in a consistently shoddy way, and proudly so. In terms of a neighborhood, I think it rides the line between the type made of tents and pipes where teens dream of breaststroking in piles of cash and platinum and the type where the kids sit on warm couches and show off their hard-earned chicken pox scars and lazy Sunday stick-and-poke tattoos - a community where the heroes resuscitate their dying Brothers by breathing mouth-to-mouth into gray, plastic cartridges.
study buddy /
study buddy acrylic on wood 6.25x7.5
This is a little dude I've been slowly working on for a while. Just a little study, buddy. At first I was thinking about a Lucien Freud painting that foregrounds a large nude dude, a foot stool , and a red shag carpet. That carpet has always stuck with me for some reason. Such a committed amount of detail went into every fiber. So I used the idea of a red carpet as a jumping off point. After that, things got wacky. An old friend I showed it to recently said it made her think of Pee-wee's Playhouse. I can work with that.
Not a chance! /
Not a chance! acrylic and joint compound on wood 12x14 SOLD
Another fuzzy ditty. Getting lumpy. Sorta like wadis on this one. Am I playing the game? Not a chance!
Thanks, rugs /
Thanks, rugs acrylic on wood 12x15 (no longer exists)
We had a lot of rugs in our house growing up. Just about in every room. Swimming in their patterns, the cats (or "puds" for the initiated) would rotisserie themselves in a slowly spinning, sprawling square of afternoon sun. There's something dazzling in a rug's pattern. From afar they seem intricate, bold, and deliberate, yet fairly straight forward. But as you get up close, the tight structure dissolves into a beautiful array of pixelated color. In many ways, they reward patient observation. So I made this guy to show some appreciation for what they provide: warmth, quiet, and hours of a certain kind of learning and entertainment.
To be sure, the rugs in our house also contained a rich cultural history imbedded in them that both fascinates me and escapes me. Since many of the rugs we had have been donated or shared with family and friends or pitched outright, their particular mysteries may be hard to remember or interpret. But that doesn't mean I can't do some digging at the local public library to learn more about these patterns and motifs in a general sense. What I do know about them is what they've given me. And I'm grateful for that.
sidenote: This painting is a paint-over of another "painting" called Range from a series of sanded panels I did a while back. I often recycle old work that has dutifully served its purpose and yet thankfully still has potential for something new.
Nice Try Tie 2 (Ronny West Point Tie) /
Nice Try Tie 2 (Ronny West Point Tie) acrylic on wood 15x20 SOLD
In a stunning upset, Plaid has beaten Stripes, one to nothin'! /
In a stunning upset, Plaid has beaten Stripes, one to nothin'! acrylic on wood 12x14 on auction at Artspace ; starting bid: $50 SOLD
Just another chapter in the endless saga of stripes versus plaid. Who will win in the next match, er, clash?? It's hard to say, folks. All we know is that today plaid can hold it's collar popped high for on this day...Plaid is victor!
This one along with the other one will be available at the Artspace action and there will be details on that show to come soon. It's on the fourth Friday of February. I know that much.
Liza and Louise /
Liza and Louise acrylic and screws on wood 10x12 offered at Artspace auction; starting bid: $50 SOLD
Pushing this technique a little further and going for two flannel shirts-type look in both texture and pattern. The title is taken from a NOFX song about two lesbians - sort of an anthem from my teenage punk/skaterat days. This one was built up in many layers. Since the colors are mixed optically and the surface is not flat, there isn't really a steady hold, if you will, for the eye to rest. And as you get closer to the painting, like much artwork done in a similar way (Seurat and other pointilists, Chuck Close, etc.) the image disintegrates into a bunch of bits.
This one and a couple more made in the same vein will be hung at an auction show next month at Artspace. I'll add some more details about the show here later.
chairback, placemat, halfpipe, pipe /
chairback, placemat, halfpipe, pipe acrylic, graphite, felt pen on wood panel 48x34 SOLD
Nurses /
Nurses acrylic on paper 22x24 SOLD
I came across an image of a group of 13 nurses in training during the 40's. Made me think of all the nurses we have and have had in our family. We have oodles. Formally, there are a lot of rhythms set up in this image that made my eye dance. My hat's off to the original photographer who snapped this one. Couldn't find the person's name, but they really captured all the conformity in the room - "soup-to-nuts," as my mother (once a nurse herself) would say. I took this pic with my phone, so it's not the highest quality, but you get the idea. As might be noticed, I've taken certain liberties with the original image in order to add certain tensions. Perhaps they'll appear in a slow read of the image. That's the hope anyway.
Sleeping on Stones /
Sleeping on Stones acrylic on wood 7.5x6.25
Pumpkin Spice Lint Ball /
pumpkin spice lint ball acrylic on wood 12x14 (no longer exists)
More fun with making acrylic string tangles. I like the visual static that starts to hum when you get a bunch of layers of this stuff going. More to come.
Purse(Clutch) /
Purse(Clutch) acrylic on wood 6.5x7.375 not for sale
About 2 weeks ago I went to visit my family in Boone, NC. While there I noticed a sweet pattern on my mom's new purse, or "clutch," as she likes to call it. All around it has big bold black and white stripes with a red interior and accents. Something about the look of it struck me and stuck in my head for a while. I used the basic design of it to make this one. The acrylic allows you to do some pretty interesting things in terms of utilizing it's somewhat plastic properties. I assume you could do something similar with oil, but it would be far more expensive, might be a bit unreliable going from one color to the next, and it would take forever to dry. So I went a more immediate route.
Sweater Nest /
Sweater Nest acrylic on wood 7.375x5.375
I've been having fun using acrylic in a somewhat sculptural way. With a little ingenuity you can make acrylic look fairly close to string. I'll be making many more of this type. They're sort of a bear, but I'm tweaking that process a little bit. Another process I'll be tweaking is my documentation of these paintings. Gotta get some more lights and standardize it a bit so my images don't look crummy. I'll get there.
Siliceous Oozes /
Siliceous Oozes acrylic on wood 7.375x5.25 (no longer exists)
Pulling from my geology classes at William & Mary here. I was always a big fan of the term siliceous oozes. It describes a situation where microscopic critters like diatoms accumulate on the ocean floor when the water is nearly saturated with silica. Very slowly blankets of a silica-rich ooze are formed. If I remember correctly, these oozes later become chert after spending a few million years in nature's pressure cooker. Chert's cool because you can make cutting tools and arrowheads out of it. I like chert.
I've included an image to show the scale - a good trick for photographing an outcrop or rock. I reckon it's just as useful photographing artwork. I'll try to make a habit out of it. The Nikon cap measures 2.125 inches in diameter, so this one is a little guy.
Snow on the Ground, Bang-bang /
Snow on the Ground, Bang-bang acrylic, graphite, and cotton on wood panel 12x14
This is another one pulled from my time at the National Training Center in Ft. Irwin, CA. Summetime, 1999. We were on a live-fire range in this valley, and out of nowhere it started snowing like mad. That completely blew our minds since it was around June or so and in the Mojave Desert and it was right in the middle of our live-fire exercise. Everyone was going apeshit. We loved it. Guns and snow in the desert make soldiers very happy and a little confused. We were experiencing something truly bizarre and magical.