Being in reinvention mode is painstakingly tedious. I am not the same person I was 3 months ago, a LOT has changed for the better, thank god. I have been painting twice as much as I was in the last 5 years. Images don't just come to me anymore, I am having to work at them with sanding out scraping and gessoing. I will try to keep a visual log of the work so you can witness the changes as the work evolves.
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Some times i just loose my way. Im not sure i think its when i don't have an image in mind. Sometimes its also like when people say things they have no idea what they are talking about, like "art imitates life." What does that mean? Picasso didn't imitate life and niether did Van Gogh, Rembrandt, the list goes on, Duchamp did kind of except that he stole from real life. Infact Picasso said Good artist borrow and great artists steel. Anyway i am typing this on a nook so forgive my spelling and stuff. Actually i have no excuse, i should know how to spell by now.
Today, I drempt Salvador Dali hugged and kissed me. He gave me his blessings in a cool blueish damply lit room near his home in Figueres. He said nothing and all I could do is cry as he when to pick from a wall of paintings, one to give me. I remember his hair styled as Velazquez and pearlescent light obscuring his features. It was real enough to make me question if it really did happen. As I woke I could feel my face in the contortions of a cry. BTW: Yes, I realize this is a self portrait of Velazquez but this is a representation of how the dream look and felt... "The muse of mortality Vanitas paintings became a popular genre in the 17th century, usually juxtaposing lush still lifes with skulls as reminders that death waits on all of us. Plunking a traditional example by an unknown 17th century artist in the middle of Dali's surrealist works may confuse at first because Dali didn't paint vanitas as we think of them. But the show argues that he created...
So the other day I posted some weird azz stuff about Subjective Polymorphism. Well believe it or not it is a name that I researched and created as a way if explaining how it is that I paint. Trust me when I say I didn't pull this name out of thin air, let me explain. I have always wanted people to realize that they make up there on reality for the most part, we spend most of our life in or heads making scense of our own reality so that we can form some semblance of sanity and meaning to our life. My painting plays off this.
Letter from the medium, Let the medium be itself, then tease it to suggest images that were never meant to be created. It takes an ability to see with the minds eye and have an open mind enough to let shapes and colors suggest anything and everything. Then it is just a matter of you choosing what you want to bring out. Leave the integrity of the original vision so that from a visual stand point the viewer doesn't know weather the image was purposeful or accidental. It's as if the medium is talking to you and letting you know this is the way it reacts to . "by throwing a sponge full of color at a wall it leaves a stain in which a fine landscape can be seen... as well as heads of men, animals, battles, rocks, seas, clouds and other things...In this you will find marvelous ideas because the mind of the painter is stimulated to new inventions by obscure things. ” Quote: Salvador Dali
Subjective Polymorphism: *Subjective: Proceeding from or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world . *Polymorphism: Many objects made from one. In the context of object-oriented programming , is the ability to create a variable, a function, or an object that has more than one form. Subjective Polymorphism is a style of painting were one image is created in a way to suggest many but the image is personal similar to looking at clouds and seeing faces animals....
Texture is Qween!
My paintings come to me like found objects. My painting process is similar to walking on an over grown path, seeing a sparkle in the ruff and excavating to it like an archeologist. This has been the most exciting way to paint for me. It make me feel as if I discovered an image and by supporting it with composition, contrast and color I am revealing something that has been hiding in the chaos of texture. Texture is a big tool of mine it is my muse.
As I settle into this new job my work seems to be gaining ground slowly. Leaving the world of selling art supplies seems to have helped me concentrate on what it is I am painting. Everyday day conversations never seem to cover art or painting and at this point I don't miss them. Painting has become urgent, unlike it has been in years. It's strange to be painting from the moment instead of the preconceived idea, its like I have started to learn how to make art from the shear pleasure of making a mark again. Now, the mark is not trying to impress the culmination of marks like it doess if you force them. The real question is are you forcing them to empress or are you making marks for the shear enjoyment of their power and elegance? This is a self doubt all artist feel deeply.
Malfuxtion 315
FEK315 walks in threw the door, looks up at the clock and sees a wedge of time, then walks a few more steps to see what happened within that chunk. "15 minutes? It took me 15 minutes to walk through the door? What the hell did I do in that pie wedge?" Goth Cindy Turns to him. "See, this is what am talking about. You have no idea that you were talking to me about Long Range Missiles. You where calling them sniper weapons." FEK315 looks at the ground "Cindy, I am really not sure I understand what you are saying." "You loose time FEK." "How is that?" "Dah phuck I should know, your the lunatic!" FEK315 grabs Cindy's latex suited hips with grappling hands, pulls her close to his face and dives deep into her eyes. His zombie stare makes her shutter and slightly surrender. "Goth Cindy I know where you are. I see you in your head with Auto Cannon rounds passing you like light coated street flies, whistling razors c...
Pifft! Preliminary Sketches!
It's rare I work from sketches mainly because the sketch is part of the work. I usually start on a panel and work out all my ideas there. "Preliminary Sketches" are the being of the work so to leave them out is like throwing away the bones. For illustrators "Preliminary Sketches" are were you work out your mistakes. I am not an illustrator. Every mark I make is an important part of the final work. Sometimes a mark is there from the begin of the work and becomes a pivotal part of the painting. The evidence of the mark is exemplified with the constant rebuilding of the original mark. How many times have you made a sketch of an idea only to realize you like the sketch more then the final work? That is because the spontaneity is worked out of the piece. The first marks are important, they record the raw emotion that caused you to record the idea in the first place. Even if the original marks are scraped out the evidence of your erassing the marks are still there. ...
With my new job I am finally working 40 hours a week..it's a good thing! I started working as a large format digital press and digital cut operator. This has finally given me the opportunity to concentrate on painting. As far as my art work goes, I sold all of my inventory last month and gained 2 new collectors who each bought 4 pieces or more. Now my studio is empty, no shows lined up, money coming in and no pressure for sales. Sales pressure is poison to me, needing to sell art to eat really effects my work in a trite illustrative way. Over the last 8 years found out that my audience is limited. Lately, I have been looking at the paintings of Franz Klein, I find Klein's monumentality and heaviness attractive. His works like "Le Gros" have a permanence like structures of iron. ( Mark Di Suvero comes to mind. ) Looking at them closer the way his grays, blacks and whites interact with the texture of brush stroke give each work a quality of portra...
Beacon, acrylic on panel, 5x7 2.2013 Control:Beacon#3 has landed and the weather couldn't be better. The Russian meteor can be seen in the upper left quadrant of the painting. Well maybe at this point it wasn't Russian I think it was more just a meteor because it hadn't landed yet in Russia. It was just passing by the planet JimJim 12 in the constellation HeyBroThatsMySalami. side note: Dr Sally Tweezenphoner was eating a salami sandwich when she was tweeting the name of the constellation to a fellow astronomer when her dog ran off with her sandwich .
Money equalls validity in art.
Lately I have been reading about the Art Market and how it is changing the definition of Art itself. Here is a good article on what I am talking about. http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-02-06/art/uptown-money-kills-downtown-art/full/ It's an interesting read.
This year I decided to create 6 to 12 of the best works I am capable of, I have one work completed already it took about 4 months and 6 different versions to create. Monarch, Acrylic on panel, 16x20, 1.2013 Last year I decided to switch from oil to acrylic mainly because I wanted to get back into drawing and printing. That's a logical reason isn't it? After 16 years of oil painting I kept coming up with the same answers to the same problems. I needed new answers to take my work in a new direction so I decided acrylics was the best way to keep painting. (Hold on the printing and drawing are coming) I also really missed drawing and printing and as I painted in acrylics I started to realize that you can draw on the dry paint, not only, that but I started wiping out areas of paint with my hands like I would wipe an etching plate. You can do that in oil but it makes a hell of a mess. In acrylic all it does is dry on you hand, and as it drys on the work you ca...
As I go deeper in to this new phase of painting I start to realize that I am painting White Collar workers as Heroes and Villains, the major players in the game of a country's economic health. At this point I feel that I am working with the mythology of the white collar worker not to an end but recognizing their role in power from a world stand point. the Interview: acrylic on clayboard, 5x7, 10.24.12 Suit 7: acrylic on clayboard, 5x7, 10.26.12
I believe these portraits are celebrations of the technological worker, the Tecky. I wasn't sure for a long time why these portraits were coming out of me. At first I thought it had something to so with the 99% demonstrations, the bank debacles and the corporate corruption. Maybe this has something to do with it but it seems so negative and I wasn't doing research to find out more about these problems, so I knew this really wasn't what I was painting. It just didn't seem correct, the images were too comical for such a heavy topic. Today I was writing an artist statement about my work and it occurred to me after seeing my Dia De Los Muertos portraits of 2 years ago that what I am painting are Techys. Thus the cubism and angular lines with the business suits. These are portraits of people who write code all day and invent the coolist new apps on your phone. They are celebrations of the people in technology.