LAYERS

These two paintings are part of a series I have been working on for several months which combines the patterns of urban shapes and colors with the superimposed zen circle. I was trying to create the feeling of looking in through a layer of graphics into the painting or world behind. It almost feels like graffiti on the surface of the painting. I am featuring this work at my upcoming show Feb. 2011 at the Studio Gallery.

New Year New Work

I have been painting landscapes in Acrylic and am trying to get the majestic feeling of the light and the use new and bold colors. The palette is very provocative and I am sure will strike some viewers as garish but so be it. I think I am just starting to understand the old adage that an artists job is to be creative, unique, and interpretive and I feel pretty strongly that this work has all three of those qualities. It is my goal to make this fairly expressive and impressionist work a major direction for the new year. I believe that changing and following new paths is the secret of growing as an artist and I really have never been content staying in one place for too long.

Creative Light in the Landscape

Being a landscape painter as well as a non representational abstract artist, I often try to capture the feeling of light in the landscape. Making the light the subject of the painting. Although the land mass still has an important function of balance and scale in the work it is not the center of interest the light is. The two paintings I am posting are from my Studio class at the Art League this last semester. The theme of the class was to develop a theme and work with it. Many of the students really kept their heads in the work and produced some very interesting and creative pieces. My theme was light and these two pieces represent a couple of my demos. They are both full sheet watercolors painted on 300 lb. paper.

Old Friends Shown in Georgetwon

When I first got the feeling for acrylics and had a series I liked it was a group of work based on Zion Canyon and I called the pieces Monoliths. They were simple strong dark shapes against a warm background which really amplified the power of the shape and created for me an impression of the strength of the stone monuments in the Southwest landscape. The paintings were primative and expressive and I left them with the attitude that anyone could paint as well as this and looked for a more complicated subject. Several of them were chosen for a one week show in Georgetown and I was shocked to hear the reactions to them. They spoke to many viewers as the best in the show. Goes to show I know very little.

Figure to ponder

One of my favorite subject is the figure both clothed and nude although I find myself painting other things more of the time. It is because of several reasons the figure model is expensive to hire, open life classes are filled with pushy give me my space nosey painters, and getting a lively painting from photos is not easy. Sometimes, if I just abstract the subject down to line and one focus area I can make a fairly good painting from an old black and white. The image is one I did a few weeks back and my goal was to do one a day but so far it is one every two weeks but it's a start.

Summer is here

I just want the feeling of light wind and movement to come through in this work. The under paintings are very textural and aggressive. This makes the images fade in and out of the over layered whites. I believe the variety of edges and creates the feeling of flickered light. Well its an attempt and I hope like them.

Well I have been painting but I have been out to lunch when it comes to communicating with my legion of fans. I am sorry for my absence. I was working on some new paintings and some new workshop ideas so I haven't been idle. I am also reading about writing a novel about a totally wrecked artist who is searching for redemption but will he find it is the big question. The nice thing is that all of the things I have been reading by authors totally applies to painting and other creative endeavors. One statement that struck me as earth shattering was "write about what you know" but "really write about what you can imagine" and then "write about what you can figure out" by E. L. Doctorow spelling a mess I know substitute the word paint for write and you have the core of my teaching and painting philosophy. Look beyond the comfortable known subjects and reach for those imagined and figured out subjects. I hope this helps.