The family has been amazing, helping me get ready for Open Studios the last couple of weeks.

I will be open on Sat. and Sun. October 3rd, 4th, 17th, and 18th from 11:00 to 5:00. Come on by.

I was visiting the art studio of my old friend, Big Menace, yesterday when I spied a framed Cretin album on his wall. Very cool.

Princess, 18x24" acrylic on canvas and Wedding Day, 24x24" acrylic on canvas.

Lately, I have dipped into painting a few faces. Please consider these works in progress or very rough drafts. This series is probably going to stay in my hands or be painted over.

After purposefully neglecting the human face for the last few years, these paintings are a lot of fun to do.

I started out thinking I could ignore light and shadow with these, but that foolish notion was thrown out almost immediately. Highlighting keeps slipping in there and if you want to paint any kind of detail, the shadows are your primary tools. 

Come check out this year's A Figurative Affair show. I will be attending the opening on Friday, April 3rd at the R Blitzer Gallery, come by and say hello.

One Year Early. Oil on canvas. 30"x48"

I don't know if this is interesting to other folks, but I'm thinking about making this a series of blog posts. Writing about one painting in detail. Let's see how this works.

One Year Early is one of my first oil paintings. The photograph was taken with the model standing on a kitchen counter and me on my knees below her. I love the presence of the pose. The angle is classically domineering and powerful but there is something about the position of her arms that tempers the angle and feels very casual. These contradictory elements in the pose would dictate the color and mood of the painting for me.

I love experimenting and I was fascinated with the way my new oil paints blended. This painting started as a whirlwind of blended colors. It's very rare that I use a brush to paint and One Year Early is no exception. It's all palette knife. Once the thin layer of colors cured, I thinned some red (I don't remember which red) and spread that on top. I let that cure and got started on the figure.

I use chalk to draw in my figures, that way I can easily wipe off mistakes and draw over and over until it is just right. Then I mask the figure with painter's tape. With this painting, the red was so loud, that I thought it might be interesting to counter the red, not by clashing with it, using loud greens or blues, but by cancelling it as the contradictions in the pose had tempered one another. I had a thought that I could paint a painting that you would walk right past. It would be quiet and perfect for a library or hotel. I know I should probably be trying to get attention, "LOOK AT ME!" But, I was going for something else with this painting. To deal with that loud red, I chose a deep plum wine color, it almost looks black in thicker areas. Around that time I was reading the amazing David Park biography by Nancy Boas and I grew an appreciation and love for ochre yellow. I had never been a big fan of yellow, but ochre yellow just sings to me now. I think there is some brown in there as well.

The blue dots. I don't know. The painting needed some kind of spark. I went for quiet, but it was WAY too quiet. I wish I had a clever or intellectual reason for the blue dots, but I don't. They come from the guts.

The name of the painting, One Year Early, came at the very end. I signed the painting and when I dated it, I got it wrong. I wrote 1-13 instead of 1-14. So, while the painting has the wrong year on it, the title pretty much advertises that fact. I kind of hate telling you that story about the title, you probably have a better story or idea in your head. Maybe the idea for this "The Story of a Painting" series is a bad idea. I'm not sure.

If there is anything else you would like to know about One Year Early, or any other paintings, let me know by heading on over to the 'Contact' page.

Thanks.

We Live in a Cave II. Mixed media on canvas. 48"x36"

Just finished up a commission of We Live in a Cave II. This one is varnished, wired, and ready for delivery. Yes, I will do commissions. Ask me.

This painting was done a little backwards. Normally, I paint a background, let it dry, and then paint the figure over the top. With this painting I painted the black background last. Below are some phone camera pics of the process. I did the fire ladies first, painting about fifty layers of reds and oranges and yellows with paint and a glazing medium to keep the layers semi-transparent. Then, I chalked in the figures, and painted the dark background in thin brown and black layers.

The pics below are not really a step-by-step but give a bit of a glimpse of the early process.

Posture has a very well written article up about my work with the grindcore band, Cretin. Please go and check it out HERE.

Here are the first four paintings in the Black and white series I am working on.

I don't think they are completely finished, but well on their way.

I was at my mother's for thanksgiving. She is keeping The Yellow Girl and The Blue Lady at her house. I'm not sure if this photo captures it, but the way she hung them is simply majestic. They dominate the room.

When I painted them, I imagined they were sort of like folk art tapestries. I will explain their background in a future post.

Thank you. I hope everyone had a swell thanksgiving.

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Here's a skateboard that I painted for my friend, Greg, a few months ago. I went a little crazy with the bright colors.

I love seeing my paintings in other people's homes; how and where folks hang them. Matt bought Stalker earlier this year. Looks like it's in good company between The Thing and The Exorcist.

The Thing poster seen in this picture was one of the main inspirations for my figurative abstract work.

The death metal / grind band, Cretin, has pre-released their album, Stranger. The band used one of my paintings for the cover and a couple of other paintings for the CD/LP booklet. The album is on Relapse Records.

More information about the album is HERE.

Thanks to Lori from Ideal Hair for sending over this great shot. Lori bought her Stranger giclee prints last weekend, during Open Studios.

Thanks to Sean for sharing this fantastic picture of my dry pigments.

Click on the pics to advance.

It was a very successful first weekend. Many old friends came by and I made a number of new friends. It was a crazy start on Saturday with a big sale, then two separate folks who walked into the studio shook their head and left. I can laugh now, but at the time it stung a little.

I learned a lot and had some very meaningful and informative conversations. The kindness was a bit overwhelming. It's a strange thing to put yourself full throttle into an endeavor and turn around, hang it on a wall, and ask people to come judge it. A new experience for me, with a lot of great ups and downs (mostly, very kind, ups).

Thank you to everyone who stopped by. Even the few who shook their heads and took off.