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Suit 2: acrylic on panel, 8.2012

Suit #1

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Suit #1: Acrylic, 8.16.2012, 8x8 This is the first painting in my Suit series. This body of work is a comment on the restructuring of the banking industry and the core values of handling Americas money by large corporations and banks.

Artists and fame

Some artist's art is their fame and their product is secondary.
I find myself still in the middle of reinventing myself. My paintings seem to be about busy work right now. Figuring out what it means to paint with acrylics is redefining my imagery. Inspiration wise I seem to be floating between Guston and Franz Klien. Size wise I have shrunk down to 5x7, 5x5, 12 x 16s, mainly because of my neck problems. I hope soon I can find some groove because right now I feel like I am painting to be busy. This wall street tie and jacket series seems to predictable and illustrative. At this point I do not want to become illustrative but I am wondering how much illustration people need to understand these paintings are not about abstraction.
Some people call me a Surrealist, I am not. I don't paint dreams. Some people call me a Hallucinatory. However, I am not tiring to get you to see something I didn't paint. There was a time I was tiring to do this, but now my work seems to be more about the act of painting and the final image is secondary. I am concerned about the quality work of the final result but the end images come about by crystallization of thought at the time of creation. What I do take from the Surrealists is automatic thought. I add emotion from the Abstract Expressionists and use the everyday as an inspiration. It is really important to understand that I "find" myself working this way. After years of training as a printmaker and trying to end up with a specific image in the end felt like I was becoming an illustrator, I felt constricted and predicable. I see Illustration as the process of creating with a specific final image in mind, thus the "sketch" and the preliminary works t
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Title: Portrait of Philip K Dick, Acrylic, 6.2012
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Here is the final to the Ironman portrait. I have been thinking of doing a series of these.  It's a great excuse to work in red and yellow.
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This week I was asked to create a work for a show based on a super hero, if you know me at all you'll know I picked IronMan. I thought about creating a work based on bankers being Heros but after the latest buffoonery with Morgan Stanley, Chase Manhattan and the Facebook stocks I realized that at least Tony Stark is fictional and seems to care a little bit for his fellow man. So I took the painting below and started to create Ironman over it. Here is a phone shot of what it looks like now. I know it's fairly pedestrian at this point but keep in mind that this is the beginning sketches. The idea at this point is to create several cells at once with a technique called dynamism.
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I paint on pieces until I feel then are finished. I know that sounds logical but how do you know when something is finished if you have no idea what the end result will be? When I started creating art I was a Photo Realist, but after 3 years I got board of coping what I was looking at, besides I didn't see the point in poorly imitating a camera.  My Art is a log or journal of where my mind has been for the hours I have been working. One thought leads into the next, that is why my work is busy and seems to be fragmented. This is how I am inspired to keep painting. Here is an example of a painting I have been working on for the last 3 weeks.  The painting seems to be at half stage, although I can never be quite sure. I have some paintings go through 3 or 4 finished states before they are complete. I think it has to do with the fact that my skill has not caught up with where the painting is going. I have had paintings take 4 years to complete, that's working on
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Untitled, Acrylic on panel, 8x10,  2012 My new room, graphite on paper, 8x8,  2012 Stroll on Wall, oil on panel, 20x30  2012 America or me?, oil on panel, 40 x40,  2012 Roots, graphite on Yupo paper,  8x11,  2012 Hedge Fund, oil on panel, 25x30  2012 Cut Throat, graphite on paper, 8x12  2012 White Collar 2, acrylic on panel, 8x8  2012 An innocent man, acrylic on panel, 8x8  2012 So here is some of the work I have completed in the last 5 months. I have made a move toward acrylics. After painting with oils for 20 years I needed to break my pattern to learn more about the images and ways to improve on the final outcome of the work. I am also going back to my instinct of image. I got caught up in trying to sell art and as I say, you either make art to sell or you make it because you have something to say, blessed and cursed are those who's art

Painting 12 for the year

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Here is a new painting I am working on, this is stage 2. Not sure where it is going I also wanted to let you know I am excited to tell you I have my first retrospective At the Fine Arts & Creatives Emporium in Everett Wa. next month.!!!