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Archive for November 3rd, 2008

Foundation: Update

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on November 3, 2008| 1 Comment »

 

 

    A while back I had a post titled “Foundation” (October 13, 2008) that showed a prepared canvas and briefly explained how I prepared the surface for painting.  I promised to show the piece when it was finished and here it is:

 

 

 

This is a 24″ high by 48″ wide canvas.  You can see the texture I talked about earlier in the sky, even on this small image.  This piece doesn’t have a title yet.  Sometimes it takes a while to arrive at a title and other times it pops out.  This is a pretty large painting and I’m holding off on naming it as I think it deserves something special, something fitting the time in which it was created.

I have a method for naming work that requires that I pretend that the work is not mine and I’ve stumbled across the painting at garage sale, maybe fifty years in the future.  I look quickly at it and try to assess it and determine if it has something of value in it, something that separates it and gives it some type of life of its own.  Then I try to grab a first impression of what feeling it conveys and go from there with a title.  It sounds kind of goofy but I find it works for me.

This piece (with a title!) will be at the Haen Gallery show in Asheville.

Quick Update:  I am leaning toward a title –  ” Toward Possibility”.  I’ll live with this piece for a few weeks in the studio and make a final determination.  If anyone has any feelings on this, let me know.  I think this is a really dynamic piece and deserves a fitting name.

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Coming to Asheville- II

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , on November 3, 2008| Leave a Comment »

This painting is “Archaeology: Man’s Footprint”  and is part of my upcoming show at the Haen Gallery in Asheville,NC.  It is a 24″ X 30″ canvas done primarily with acrylic paints. 

I always consider paintings like this , that have a strong central figure, as iconic pieces.  By that I mean, though the red tree can simply be a tree and nothing more, in the context of the painting it becomes a symbol with possible meanings beyond the obvious.

This piece has a very striking appearance, probably more than one can ascertain from the photo shown here, that is really heightened by the mottled texture in the sky. The finger-like layers of exposed earth and stone have a real rhythm, something I’ve talked about a bit in earlier posts.  All in all, I think this is a very strong piece.

Now, when I say that this is a very strong piece I mean that is how I see the piece.  It does not mean that anyone else will see it that way.  There are often paintings that I feel strongly about that take the longest time to find new homes.  It may be, in some pieces, that my eye is a bit biased because I am remembering the process of creating the work instead of focusing on the picture itself.  Cheri has a painting hanging in our home that is a favorite of mine but could never find a new home at any gallery in which it hung.  When I look at it, I see the struggle of taking a piece that was about to be discarded, early in the process,  as a failure and sticking with it for a long time to make it ultimately work.  I have a great sense of satisfaction when I look at that piece.

The show is titled “Now…” and opens November 22, 2008.

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