cold stressin'

I suppose bloggers should be people who like to talk about themselves. I'm not that way. Tried to post some real thoughts the other night, but blogger wouldn't let me log in. So instead of stepping over to my secret stash of passwords, I gave up. Too much to do these days, so I must sit when I can ...

800%

I'm lame to make you click more, but instead of posting a link, I'll ask you to google Justin Bieber 800% Slower, and listen to the MP3. It's on Soundcloud. Though over 30 minutes long, you'll be glad for no matter how much you hear, it's pretty cool.

I think I've finally made it to the Bridge just now.

Anyway, me and the missus have been working hard on the basement, of which a portion is dedicated to my art. Though we won't be 'finishing' it any time soon, we are making it the type of functional we need, and I'm thrilled.

I've started two new pieces in anticipation for 2 upcoming OPST shows, and will be kicking down a pair to the PoBoy Art Scorpio Show in November, about which I will inform you ASAP.

Just take it day-by-day, and be the best person you can be each day.

productivity and momentum

after a period of slumber, i have had two of the most productive weeks of the year. two weeks ago today, stuck without my painting kit, i bought a canvas and a tube of white and a tube of black from my pals at utrecht and went out to sauvie island. ever since i read about dekooning using black and white house paints (because he was broke) i have wanted to try that in a plein air environment. it was as i had expected; tough to express the greens, reds, ochres, and blues with just two
tones. impossible to describe cool and warm. it was all about composition and texture. a fun exercise and something i will do again. i learned from the experience. had to do more with less, which is something i strive to do anyway (and usually end up pulling every tube out of the carrier).

all the while i am also playing with painting on my iphone. it has become my new coffee shop past time.

say what you will about this, i know many painters poo poo it, but i think it's every bit as informative as sketching. i have already converted two of these small sketches into paintings,

one of which isn't half bad. pictured here is a view out the window of the coffee shop in oceanside.

last week i read about an artist using walnut stain, and that sparked an idea to use various shades of wood stain on a plein air piece. i bought three colors, a golden oak, deep red cherry, and dark ebony. i worked on three small (24 x 24) panels last week, and four more panels today. all were done out on sauvie island.

like the black and white piece, i find it good to limit my material choices. again, i have no way of defining warm and cool (only warm and warmer), and everything is in a tone of red or yellow. the first week i introduced some white chalk to provide some additional contrast. this week i brought the spray paint with me, which was fun.

the spray paint and the stain really don't play well together, but that's part of the fun. of the four today, i think there are two with potential. i'm still figuring out what to do with this medium, and really these are just experiments in how the materials react. i have done some drawing (either with a fine brush or a "stain pen" (from home depot, used to fill scratches in furniture) and some big abstract washes. in all the material is more workable than i first thought. i figured i would have big ambiguous puddles of red and black, but really it's not unlike painting with watercolor.

for some reason i keep thinking the "puddles of abstraction" will be the more exciting pictures, but so far each trip has included those as well as a couple of more traditional representative experiments which have been the more interesting pieces.

i don't have a problem...

someone said "art is what sells, everything else is a storage problem".

admitting you have a problem is the first step toward healing.

me? i don't have a problem.

palette as painting

maybe it's just a reflection of the quality of my last couple of paintings, but i actually like this canvas that i used as a palette more than the painting it was used for. it has a fresh and modern look, whereas the painting had a stuffy, overworked appearance.

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.

Pictures?

Some day, some day.

I wonder how many other abstract painters consistently have a 'dump' painting going on. A painting that doesn't work, and you keep trying to save it, and ultimately just start trying whatever-the-hell, truly whacked out ideas, just to see if something sticks. Ultimately, the painting looks truly horrible, but maybe an interesting direction comes from it.

showtime

Getting new work ready for Thursday August 5th reminds me of the Inertia Twins who follow me around at such times. As the date nears parallel paths of slacking and activity race onward, finding me sweating with the effort of not doing anything up until a couple of nights before when I then have to do everything all at once.

Just sayin'.

jerry, the colonel, and me

i went out to sauvie island to paint on monday, with my pal jerry. we pulled the colonel up onto this grassy knoll, one of my favorite spots, and i worked on a couple of canvases, one large and one medium sized, while jerry continued his study of watercolor, which he is trying to master before a coming vacation in which he wants to paint with the most travel friendly of media. the morning was gray, and even drizzled a bit on the way out, but after lunch the sun broke through and the skies were blue.

this was my second large scale canvas in the past couple of weeks, and while i don't think this one was as successful as the last, still, it is so much more appropriate for me to work in this scale. at least it is much more fun.

after a couple of hours of painting we ran into our friends jane and catherine, who had been painting up the road a bit under a grove of giant oak trees. small world; but then, it's not so strange to come across a fellow plein air painter on sauvie island in the summer. it is, after all, about the most beautiful place on earth.


that's jerry there, manning his water color station. we were on opposite sides of the colonel, jerry facing east overlooking a pond, sweeping fields, and a small clump of evergreens. i was looking west over an inlet the name of which i am too lazy to look up, on oak island. at lunch we sat and watched osprey dive for fish in jerry's pond. we drank beers and shared our thoughts about art and life.

nature is my studio

over the last several months i have focused my attention on drawing and a very few very small paintings, due to a change in my environment. ordinarily i prefer to paint pretty large format pictures, three to four feet in any one direction. yesterday i had a few hours free and hauled my gear to the backyard and laid a large piece of canvas on the ground and went to town. this is about three feet by four feet; not huge, but it felt so after the little eight inch pieces i've been painting lately.

it felt good to use my whole body to paint again; to walk around a canvas, to reach far across it to the other side with a long dripping brush in my hand, to kick some dirt on it, to have ants walk across it, to squeeze liberal amounts of paint onto it from the tube and then smash the paint around to mix it with the other colors. it is a process that simply can not be replicated on a small scale.

i wasn't sure what this first, large painting would look like after my self imposed hiatus. my drawing, and even my small paintings employ much more structure and representational marks than my typical large scale paintings do, and i thought that maybe this would influence what came out, but it didn't. it's not uncommon for me to start with one thing in mind and finish with something completely different. the process takes over and one mark influences the next. this painting is evidence of that.

inside looking out

i am at the beach, sitting by the fire with four of my friends. it is raining & i am reading a book, "color", a history of the palette. and taking photos through window glass and drink glass, and daydreaming of about blood beetles and lapis stones.