Work in Progress

c. 36" x 40"
Oil on Canvas

As I work on this I plan to post photographs of my "progress".

Expressive

18" x 20"
Oil on canvas

12 x 12

Something new

Stickin' to the plan

Woman with slipper
oil on canvas
12 x 12

Charcoal Drawing

My favorite from the last Artspace life drawing session I attended earlier this month.  Charcoal on mat board, c. 10 x 12.

Watercolor/gouache/charcoal figure

I did this in October and just got a good photograph of it to share.  Watercolor, gouache, charcoal on mat board.

Portrait

18 x 20
Oil

I've pushed paint around on this picture for far too long.  I think she's done...maybe a few little jabs with the brushes but maybe not, too.  I want to do more oil portraits, get my hand, arm and head (mostly) to loosen up and get out of the tight zone!!!!!! I like the detail here and I dislike it too.  Ah, the totally ambivalent painter.

Floral

16 x 20
Oil

I like the color in this.  Maybe I need to enhance the transparency in the "vase"?

Recent work/oil/charcoal

The volume of recent work posted here has been pretty slim lately.  But not for having anything to show, just too busy making it, slow getting it photographed and posted, pulled in another direction, etc.  So, over the next several weeks I will try putting something up here every day or so.

Bullit Reservation
12x12 oil on canvas

Oil Figure
12x12

Charcoal Figure
12x16

Abbott Gallery

My community is home to a four-floor, some would say old fashioned, department store. It has been in its current location for close to 130 years.  This past Friday I signed an agreement to exhibit two original paintings in the store's Abbott Gallery and I am really pleased to have this opportunity.  I see this as an occasion to have my work on view in a very public venue for an extended period of time.  Although there are a number of other decorative items on display, my work will be the only original pieces available for purchase.
I've decided to exhibit two landscape works; both are done with oil and are framed in 2 1/2" plain gold frames.
Fun!

SOLD

ArtSpace Exhibit Comes to an End

Our drawing group exhibit of work based on the figure comes to an end on November 18th.  One of the participants took this photo of the gallery and shared it with me the other day.  The framed piece to the left of center is my work.  Watercolor, charcoal, gouache and graphite.  It was great fun to participate; the opening reception an opportunity enjoy each other's work and learn from those attending how they saw and felt about the pieces on display.

Faces

Oil on canvas

Watercolor, gouache, charcoal on paper

Watercolor and charcoal on paper

I cropped these from some larger pieces.  Just wanted to study the faces without the distraction of whatever surrounds them.  To suggest that the face is most suggestive of mood (subject's and/or picture-maker's) is, well, almost silly, huh?  Body language is suggestive but the face...well.

Writing about painting and other things.......

In the past I have been content to make pictures, enjoy the process of bringing something to a conclusion and then spinning off in whatever direction I felt pushed or pulled to work through the next thing.  Having the work (completed or otherwise) close at hand to consider, reconsider, hide (sometimes!), hang on the wall or lean on a window frame, there for my occasional pleasure as well as anyone who finds their way to my work-space.  I sometimes rotate pictures in and out of my house too, so I guess I do have another favorite venue (my living room) and visitors there can see the pieces, too.  And, yes an occasional exhibit at a local cafe or participation in a group show (which I'm doing right now) but not much sharing other than that.
All of that is to say that I want to make some changes, I want to find opportunities to display and exhibit what I do.  I think this is going to be difficult as well as time consuming!
There is an emerging art venue in my community so I'm going to try to put something together there.  It is a setting that may allow for both exhibition and demonstration.  More later.

This picture seems appropriate for the time of year.

Summer scribble

Watercolor and ink, c. 4.5"x4.5".

Gorka's "Silence"/Charcoal Portrait-Figure

So, art is art, I guess.  There wasn't anything particular in mind when I did these two drawings...same day I think.  I wasn't "trying" to capture a mood, feeling; employ a particular process or technique....they just came out the way they came out.  The lower one might look sort of morbid (?) but I really think that's just me, right now, today, here at this moment.  My father is near death, having chosen to forgo any additional treatment for the medical condition from which he suffers....so, stillness, silence, quietude, finality and the temporal, infuse my thoughts, perhaps on all or many subjects.
But another viewer may see that piece differently, likely will see differently.  And therein the dimensions of artistic "expression", perhaps better described as artistic "observation"?
When I feel this way, analytical for lack of a better term, I slowly become aware of what is absent: the pleasure, pain or balance which flows from recognizing feelings. Just by virtue of considering, in an intellectual way,  what a work might mean, I might be ignoring my own emotional state at any particular time....and I might be pushing important feelings aside.  Ah, maybe that's the real contribution of art; if we let it, it can connect us to our feelings!  Maybe?

The youtube piece is a really bad slideshow accompanied by a really good piece by John Gorka, a musician I admire.  He does art with words and music and music is just as susceptible to analytical limitations as any picture; the picture he paints with words is open to multiple interpretations. Enjoy!

One of three pieces I am showing at Artspace Community Art Center in Greenfield, Massachusetts as part of a show entitled Bodies of Work.  The show opens on October 12, 2011 and runs through early November.

The colors I like

Water color, charcoal, gouache; 14" x24"; detail.

Ink Drawing

Pen/sketchbook

Studio Favorite!

I generally have Pandora going while I work in my studio; somehow this tune pops up when I'm playing my "Magnetic Fields" station.  I jump all around hoping nobody is watching through the big windows. This is the Pogues, "Tuesday Morning".

Adult content!

So, maybe I should but the adult content warning page on this?

Charcoal and oil

While speaking with an artist acquaintance last week the subject of working in a series became part of our conversation.  For whatever reason I have chosen to work on individual pieces with a rather random, perhaps whimsical approach.  The fellow I was speaking with offered a suggestion that I think I might try to implement.  He offered that if I were to choose a subject and purchase a sufficient quantity of paper or canvas I'd have an easier time and an opportunity for efficiency in the work.  He offered that many gallery directors prefer to exhibit a series of related works.  That certainly sounded reasonable.  So, I think I am going to work on that.  Maybe I'll start with 25-30 or so sheets of exceptional paper, lots of really good charcoal and a few soft pastel sticks.  

Near Bullit Reservation

Oil on canvas board c. 18" x 20".  Took me a long time to do this; lots of changes, particularly color arrangements, brush stroke or paint application decisions, fighting myself about realism, representation and abstracting details.
The change of seasons seems to be running in our direction here so it seemed appropriate to post it.  Finished it last month.

Work in Progress

For me, a massive oil.  I keep looking and wondering if I can do it.  36" x 48"; maybe a half-dozen times to the canvas, including almost eight hours yesterday....and I'm absolutely unsure of where I am headed with it.  So far, not too frustrating.  Not sure about it but I'm "listening" and for the most part enjoying the search for balance and tempo.

Finding more lines

Finding the lines and finding the image

Green River/watercolor and ink/c. 5"x5"

I've been reading a biography of Marc Chagall over the summer. How I could have waited so long to know more about him, his family and his work?!!  Jackie Wullschlager, the author, puts the Chagalls in the room with me as I read and brings to life a period in history reverberating to this day.  
As with any individual's observations of another, Wullschlager's choice of which dots to connect might not reveal Chagall's every need or motive but the volume is a spectacular treasure. Paris and Berlin in the 1920's and later, Russia, antisemitism, slippery gallery owners and art patrons, fragile bodies stressed again and again, success in small and large increments, an artist's life intertwined with poets, actors, poverty, wealth, political and social upheaval, religious traditions, philosophical questions.  And within it all the story of the evolution of the art of an expressive painter whose work continues to reveal layer upon layer of the life he knew.
So, I'm channeling Chagall.  I hope he wouldn't be too offended.

Fairly fast ink figures

 

 

If I remember correctly, these were three to five minute sketches; done in 5" x 5" sketchbook.

#24

Charcoal Figure

So, I need to take some photographs of work I am doing.......this particular image comes from my computer achieve of images, which of course I like to look at from time to time, but I'm working on two floral pieces, one portrait, a figure in gouache on canvas board and an expressive landscape, all of which I'd like to post.  Soon. 

New Art

Small piece I did two weeks ago using gouache on foam board. The colors don't reproduce too well; I scanned it right on the glass....no photo...and the copy still disappoints, me at least. Anyway, I like the way the paint slides on this surface, dries in puddles so that it is more and less transparent along the brush-path. This is like impulse, reflex, spontaneous line and blob-making that really just catches arm movement and some conscious idea of where to push or lift or drag the brush and what colors to place next to others. Fun and fast!

Two pieces

Free time Thursday!

Life drawing "collection".

On a different note!

I tried using gouache on foam board covered with a smooth, almost glassy surface the other day. And I enjoy the results! Don't know (don't really care) if this material is archival....well the gouache is, I think. The color in these photos doesn't really compare to the originals but it was the best I could do. I have enough board to do maybe 30 of them so there will be more here.

Suburbia/violence/haunted still?

I don't really want to offer much about this. I like the work or I wouldn't post it but the "inspiration" was an exclamation point, punctuation mark, in character formation with negative implications and energy which survives to this time in my life.