June Evening

22 x 18 inches
oil on canvas

This one has been in the studio for over a year.   The imagined portraits always take the longest time to complete.  

Nemo Night Photos

Went out to explore in the blizzard late last night: the snow was as beautiful and cold as you would expect.  I was playing with the camera settings trying to capture all the pink light glancing off the snow and sky. 

Hello Przasnysz!

I just received digital copies of the show announcements from my upcoming show in Przasnysz, Poland, small town two hours outside Warsaw.   This solo exhibition features works on paper from the Night Fictions series.   The show opens October 2, 2010 and will be on display for a month in the Gallery "Na Pietrze"  in the Joseph Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski Center of Culture before traveling to other venues throughout Poland.  I am very honored to have been offered this opportunity, and by the very nice work done on the poster announcement above and the card announcement below.   My thanks to gallery director Krzysztof Gadomski and Stefan Niedzialkowski who first introduced us.  A big thanks as well to the gallery staff!  Dziękuję bardzo! 














(In case your Polish is a bit rusty, the announcement is a pretty direct translation of the bio listed on my website.)

Writing Exercise

I've sent my entry off to another national exhibition call.  It had some interesting parameters, asking for art that was in some manner inspired by the written word.   As I find much writing inspiring, the premise wasn't much of a stretch.  One art form often inspires another.  Where would contemporary painting be without cinema, cinema without painting or the novel.  I owe my last reserves of energy to music for sure.   Anyways, the challenging (and ironic) part is that juror asked for a statement under 100 words.  That's tough, practically a Twitter confinement for a loquacious bloke.   Here's what I sent:

“…a thaw set in.  The air became plaint.  The beeches sweated.  The branches gave up their heavy burdens of snow. “

In his book “Dog Years,” Gunter Grass uses a snowfall its subsequent thaw to echo the metamorphosis the story’s central character.   In Grimm’s fairy tales, the woods and winter are familiar backdrops.   These stories have never been far from my mind as I’ve ventured out through snow and night and found inspiration for creating my own images.   In my current series of work, I’ve adapted this context explored by the German Romantics to the contemporary Maine landscape.  In this setting, I write my own fictions through images.   In them, the viewer reads the story of our protagonists, senses wide, straining against the night and the snow-covered stillness.

For those of you geeky enough to word-count me, I went way over.   With the little quote at the top, I hit 128.  I always aim at the spirit of the idea, so I figure that's close enough.   Regardless of whether the work gets accepted, it was useful exercise.  I can let a painting go, but artist statements never seem to be finished.  They evolve constantly as the artwork shifts context and is shown in a new time or different venue. 

New Coat

As promised, more snow, but a tad bit warmer with an identifiable coat now.  Subtle layers added to the face as well. 

The Lost Posts

While I've been in and out of the studio for the last month trying to dodge the heat, I have been obviously not blogging.   As the weather cools and head clears, I'll pledge to be somewhat more regular. You might remember this one, still pretty bleak but a tree has been added for company, and the suggestion of a cabin on the horizon, so all is not lost.  A nice winter coat is the next addition with some more snow....

That Monday Feeling

I'm always quite excited to pull an abandoned painting out of the pile, so if it a less-than joyous image, it is a joyous occasion.  Not content to simply have five canvas portraits in the works, I had to pull out a panel to have a nocturne to tinker with. 

Mush

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This a nocturne that has been kicking around for a bit.  For the longest time I kept it around as a toned ground-- I was in love with the swoosh of violet across the surface. While there is a little bit left in the upper left, it has been well covered over.  The figure got a new head today.  I'm starting to think of the figures like clay beings, something I might mush around while keeping the core mass.   The new portraits are also inching along. I really cringe at the second for now.

Minor Adjustments

I've shown these two before, and the changes may not be obvious past this point.   They are nearly finished, barring perhaps some more minor adjustments. 

Shrinking Jogger

You may remember this one.   A night scene, waiting for someone to come for the longest time.   Suddenly, a young woman comes into the foreground.   I really liked the figure actually, she was loose and had just that touch of almost-Fraggonard in places that made made her something to keep.   However, I did not like he placement.   It really felt like a cop-out to keep her in the same plane as the tree.   I added snow to the tree as I had intended, but it was no solution.   Among other desperate thoughts, I considered cutting her out and keeping her under my pillow.   (It's on paper after all, and I am spending way too much time on these paper pieces.)   Consoled by the permanence of digital record, I told myself that I'd always have an image to reconstruct her somewhere else.  (Yet, it was the paint itself that made the hoodie so nice. ) So, keeping some of the same place (and paint), I projected her into the scene. A much better story is the result.  The writing rule of "kill your darlings" certainly applies to narrative painting. 

Accident

So I was working on this little linen painting. Two days before, the head was a green blob. (Really thought I took an image of that) The face developed rapidly, and I was imagining that it would go the way of eave; maybe he was just some guy leaning against a tree, catching his breath.  I didn't know why he was leaning into the tree so hard with his shoulder like that--I try not to question at this stage.











Anyways, still the same painting.  I was photographing a lot of little work for the blog, and was being lazy (or efficient) by placing this painting on its side to photograph since the camera was already on its side in the horizontal position.   I was immediately struck by how much more sense the image made.  There's nothing like lying in the snow, feeling ice against your cheek.  (Now that's a breather!) All that was lacking was some light and gravity.

With the paint still wet and the camera still on the tripod, I was compelled to make some quick changes.   Okay, so it's a little colder and maybe a wholly more pessimistic image, but that's what happened.   I may have to make more images of this situation to figure out what's going on.  

Puffy Coat

Halloween may be over, but winter is just starting.  There's nothing like losing that hour of daylight to put me in the mood for these paintings.  Working on these during the summer felt like pure fantasy, but now the chill is in the air.  It was 34 degrees on the walk to class this morning, and I'm guessing my scarf will be on for the walk home from the studio this evening.

Overworked

I refuse to allow myself to work on this painting anymore.  Unlike some of my early blob-successes, this painting was at a graceful state after the first wash of blue, then it has gone progressively downhill.  The foreground is crusty mess of successive layers of paint. The figure, perpetually awkward, has been scraped, glazed, and repainted too many times.  It's a work on paper, so I should think of it as a sketch, but it's definitely has the surface of a canvas by now. 

The Horror

Had to recast the lead in this one.   You can still see a ghost of the old one behind him. 

Snow Man

This one developed enough atmosphere to call it a start.   I'm imagining a tree or two in here as well.

New Hat

 

Much happier with the figure in this one now, as strange as it is. I should leave it alone now, unless something else occurs to me. 

Paper Continues

Though it looks like the amount of works on display in January will be scaled back to make room for the bigger canvases, I'm still working on the small paintings on paper.  A figure just ran into this one; it might take some detective work to find the start of this painting from previous posts...

Two of Twelve

In the process of packing up a tight set of twelve nocturnes for Poland, I again found two I may have not posted previously. These are finished images, so I've posted them up to the portfolio site, where you should always go if you want to see the highest resolution images.

Forgotten Ones

I've had a few nocturnes that I could have sworn that I had posted, but it appears not. In fact the second one I hates so much that I did not post in it previous incarnation with a weak, smaller male figure. (It seems I did not even record it, leaving one for the x-rays.) The first two are on linen, and the last on paper--unfinished to varying degrees.

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