Back home

Hey blogger pals,

I am back from 2 weeks in beautiful Oregon, a much needed rest, time to look. I thought a lot about space and how to find it in life. I have been visualizing a daily calendar where the the block of time for painting is the biggest block, well, at least bigger than it has been.

Here are some things I saw while I was away....

I have been reading Resistance and Persistence by Sean Sculley. He says "I was always looking at the horizon line, at the way the end of the sea touches the beginnings of the sky, the way the sky presses down on to the sea, the way that line is painted...I think of land, sea, sky and they make a massive connection. I try to paint this...coming together of land and sea, sky and land. Stacked in horizon lines endlessly beginning and ending, the way the blocks of the world hug each other and brush up against each other, their weight, their air, their colour and the soft uncertain space between them."

When I was young and I drew pictures, there was always a gap between the land and the sky. The sky was at the top of the page and the land at the bottom. I wonder now, what was that mysterious space in between?

first exhibition

the organ players unleash themselves on portland!

thanks to the generous folks at Cascade Aids Project, who have dedicated their comfortable and welcoming PIVOT space (formerly Mens Wellness Center) to our group, we have hung our first exhibition since our inception.

i love seeing our work together, and seeing threads of commonality in the pieces. it doesn't matter that some of us play organs and some tell stories, or that some work figuratively, or representationally, or abstract - there is something about the pieces that relate. at the core, we all love marks. gestural marks. and simplification and reduction.

i also like showing pieces in a space that resembles a real human space, like a living room. we were going to put labels on the wall next to the pieces, and it just looked ridiculous; completely destroyed the experience of just being with the art.