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Archive for the ‘Early Paintings’ Category

Filling In Gaps

Posted in Early Paintings on October 10, 2010| 2 Comments »

I was reminded yesterday of a project that I’ve been putting off now for some time.  I was asked for  images of several paintings that I had sold in 1998 and 1999 and I realized that I didn’t have them, at least in any form that could be forwarded. 

 Before the time when I was digitizing my work, all the images were photographed on slides.  I was never crazy about the process.  I would set up and take the photos but would never know until the slides came back from processing if they were acceptable.  Sometimes they weren’t and the painting in question was already in the gallery, leaving me with only an image of it that was flawed in some way such as having a glare or being too dark in spots from a misplaced light. 

And when they did come back they were these tiny blocks of celluloid that you could only see by holding up to the light or dragging out a viewer.  The whole process was cumbersome and unsatisfying.  I was thrilled when I finally was introduced to the digital age as far as imaging was concerned.

Now for those several years I am left with a gap in my records of my work and a formidable stack of slide sheets, unorganized and sometimes unlabeled.  There are many pieces I would like to look at again, to revisit and rediscover.  To examine paintings that I haven’t seen in over a decade, to see how they worked in relation to what I do now.  I have been meaning to attack this as a project, scanning and putting the images in order but something always seems to distract me.

But it must be done and soon I must go ahead with it.  A winter project to fill in the gaps…

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Play Ball

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Video, tagged , on October 6, 2010| 7 Comments »

I woke up early this morning, even by my standards, and the first thing in my mind as I laid there in the dark was the thought that there was baseball today.  The first day of the baseball playoffs.  Baseball’s always been a link to childhood for me (and many, many others) but this morning there was the reawakened feelings of childish anticipation on Christmas morning at the prospect of watching baseball in the studio. 

My appreciation of baseball has regrown over the years back to the thrill it provided as a kid.  I had lost interest in it in the 1980’s as I was busy trying to make a living and find my own niche in the world.  But as I began to find who and what I was, I rediscovered the game.  Oh, there’s a lot to be cynical about in the game– ludicrous salaries that make greedy corporate types look like pikers, performance enhancing drugs and such.  Things that have driven away some longtime fans such as my father. 

 But, for me, I look past those  trappings and see only the game and its pace and geometry.  Nuance and history.  The way it raises emotion with a game both simple and complex.  A game where a player is not judged by sheer size or strength or pure physical ability but by skill level and intangibles such as grittiness, hustle and gamesmanship.  A game where losing and failing are built into the game and those who aren’t afraid to fail succeed.  A game that is celebrated with poetry and romance.

So, today is a day for baseball.  A day of childish wonder.  A day of joy here in Mudville.

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The image at the top is a little experiment from when I was first starting to paint.  I call it Casey at the Bat.  It’s hard to explain what I was going for and how close I came to reaching it with this little piece.  I know it doesn’t look like much but it is pretty much what I wanted from it.

In honor of the first day of the playoffs, here’s a 1908 Edison recording of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. 

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Old Stuff

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, tagged on September 30, 2010| 2 Comments »

At the gallery talk I gave a few weeks back at the Principle Gallery, I referenced my early work, before the Red Tree emerged in my work and the landscapes were less centered on a central figure.  Whenever I talk about how the work evolved over the years I always turn and look at the paintings of mine that are hanging and try to find something that has some sort of equivalency and never really see anything there that fits the bill. 

I was reminded of this yesterday when I was going through some old work on the computer and came across this scan of a small piece from about 15 years back.  It’s about 4″ by 5″  on a piece of illustration board and is very emblematic of the work I was trying to produce at the time.  It was all about blocks of color and their relationship to one another and how atmosphere and feeling  was created by them.  They were extremely quiet, almost mute.  Stoic.

There is always a part of me that wonders, when seeing examples of this early work, what my work would be now if I had chosen to stay in that mode of expression, if I had not been sparked by the energy of the red tree.  Would the work have grown in a different way, with a different feel and appearance? 

 Perhaps it’s not wise to ask such questions.  I suppose we are what we are at this point in time and to reflect back with such questions serves no purpose. 

But looking at this work, I can see the beginnings of what has become my work.  I see the point where I was at that time in the progression of how I mix colors and how the paint is applied.  I can see the things in this piece that would spark other pieces which would contribute to the work’s evolution.  That’s one of the aspects of painting I seldom talk about – how work begets work, how each piece is a step forward in the evolution of a body of work.  It’s a process of constant change and adjustment, always moving hopefully ahead.

Maybe that’s the purpose in looking back on earlier work- to see if one has truly changed or grown.

I don’t know…

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Hollywood Squares

Posted in Early Paintings, tagged on August 30, 2010| 1 Comment »

I was looking for something in my files and came across this old piece from around 1994.  It was an experiment with ink on bristol board, which is a very slick surfaced paper.  I was just seeing how different inks reacted on different surfaces by painting a  small block and dropping ink into the thinned paint.  I ended up with this little block and I immediately was reminded of the original Hollywood Squares television gameshow.  I even scrawled a title on this at the time, I’ll Take Paul Lynde to Block. 

It wasn’t the greatest gameshow.  I mean the questions weren’t challenging and they made it no secret that the celebrities were given the questions beforehand.  It didn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the intelligence of the celebrities or the contestants and, even as a kid, I found myself wondering where they found these contestants  who often didn’t have a clue.  But it was entertaining.  The regulars were all comics or comic actors like Paul Lynde, Wally Cox and Charlie Weaver, who had a regular schtick for the questions which were delivered by the affable Peter Marshall.   I always think of his son, Peter LeCock (Marshall’s real last name), who was major league baseball player.

The show has continued through the years and I have never watched it since those days with Paul Lynde.  It’s odd how a strange little piece reminds you of a very small part of your past spent sitting on the couch during snowdays as a kid, watching daytime TV.

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Still Seuss-y

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , on August 14, 2010| 4 Comments »

Yesterday’s post about the 50th  anniversary of Green Eggs and Ham  by Dr. Seuss made me think about a piece that I’ve had hanging around my studio for the past decade.  It’s a painting that I did in 2001 that I call Red, Hot and Blue.  It’s an oil on panel piece that is pretty big, almost 5 1/2′ tall in its frame.  It could be a small door.  It showed in a few galleries after it was first painted and never found a home so it retired to my studio, to keep me company.

I mention it  because it was been called the “Dr. Seuss painting”  by several people who saw it when it was hanging in the galleries.  They saw something in the way the trees were shaped and colored  that gave them the appearance of a Seuss character.  I had no thought of Seuss when I painted the piece but when I heard these comments I began to see it. 

The expressive sway of the trees as though they were dancing.  The bright primary colors- the red of the foliage and the bright blue of the trunk.  Even the two trees in the background added to the Seuss-y feel.

The foliage actually looked like the endangered Truffala trees from Seuss’ cautionary fable about the environment, The Lorax. 

It was not intended but it made sense.  Seuss’ books were about communicating by giving strange creatures and things we often see as objects, such as trees and flowers, human qualities.  His characters moved  with a rhythm that made them feel alive. Just what I was trying to do with my painting.  I’ve often  felt that we best see and better understand things that possess human qualitities.  I remember being taught that the Native American tribes in the area where I grew up gave names to local hills based on the human qualities they had.  It made an impression and started me looking for the human form in all things. 

The curve of a tree trunk. The roll of the land.  The fingers of clouds in the sky.

To communicate.

So, while it was never intentional, this painting was very much a product of the influence of Dr. Seuss and others.  When I look at it today, I don’t see the name I gave it.  I see it as that “Dr. Seuss painting”.

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Be Careful What You Wish…

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Quote, tagged , , on August 2, 2010| 4 Comments »

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones

— Mother Theresa

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This is a little piece that I did many years ago, one that never made it out of the studio.  A piece that is really for me.  It’s not a great piece of work, maybe not even good.  But it’s one of my personal favorites.  It’s informally called Be Careful What You Wish after the old adage: Be careful what you wish because you may just get it.  I always bear this saying in mind to remind myself that with everything there is a responsibility, a cost that may not be evident on its surface. 

Something we often fail to ponder when making wishes and decisions.  Unconsidered consequences.

Kind of like the story of the Monkey’s Paw, the old tale where a family receives a monkey’s paw from a friend who has just died.  The paw is a talisman with the supposedly mystical power to grant the holder three wishes.  The family wishes for money and their son is killed in a horrific accident and they  receive a large amount of money from his insurance policy.  After the funeral, they are stricken with grief and they wish for their son to be alive again.  Soon, there is a knock at their door.  It is their son–alive.  But still horribly mutilated and in extreme agony.  They use the third wish to wish him dead again.

Actually, this reminds me more of  Pandora’s Box, where Pandora is given a box (or jar, depending on how the story is told) by the god Zeus with the instructions to not open it under any circumstance.  Of course, she does.  immediately, all the evils in the world are released and in her panic, she slams the lid back down, trapping Hope in the box.

My little guy seems to be in the same situation.  In my mind, he was digging for things that were better left alone and they soon flew from the pit he had dug, even as he feverishly tried to refill the hole.  What exactly they are, I am not sure.  There is a giant that peeks from beneath a tree.  Perhaps they are demons.  Or regrets. Or lesser versions and aspects of the digger, things he has been keeping inside for all his life. 

 Things betters left alone.

Like many things, I am not sure.  Whatever the case, it remains a little painting that always triggers thought in me…

 

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Kabuki TV

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Technique/History, Uncategorized on May 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Kabuki TV-- circa 1994

Just looking through some old things, mostly little pieces that are from the time when I first started painting, and I came across this.  At the time  I was playing around with color and masking, where you put something such as tape on the painting surface and paint over it then peel it away to reveal the unpainted surface underneath.  It can be a big part of traditional watercolor painting and I wanted to see if it fit with the way I thought and wanted to paint.  It didn’t.  But I did come up with this little abstraction that always catches my eye and makes my mind’s gears turn.

It’s always interesting to see these little pieces because it inevitably triggers memories of that time when every day was bringing new discoveries as I tried to learn more and more about color and different mediums.  Sometimes things clicked and it was revelatory to discover my strengths.  Other times, it was a struggle and the end product was muddled, labored.  But there was still something to be learned there.  Like identifying my weaknesses and learning how to strengthen these areas or, at least, downplay them.

I guess that this is the process for development in any area of your life,  playing up your strong suits and trying to cover your weaknesses.  Perhaps that is why I like to see these old experiments, to be reminded of my growth, artistically and personally, through the years. 

At least, what I perceive as growth.

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As Clouds Roll By

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on March 2, 2010| 1 Comment »

This  is a new painting that I’ve just finished, tentatively called As Clouds Roll By.  It’s a 14″ by 18″ image painted on ragboard.  It’s a composition that I have visited on a number of occasions, this time at the request of a collector in Pennsylvania, and one that I always get great pleasure from painting.

Even though this is a very simple composition with few elements, the great satisfaction I feel after finishing a piece such as this is something I can’t fully explain.  Perhaps it’s the recognition of the things in this piece that fully jibe with what I want from my own paintings.  The simplicity of design. The quietude of vast open space.  The depth into the picture, even though it is a very simple composition.  The inviting warmth of the house and tree.  The languorous fashion in which the clouds roll by, in a way representing the slow and inevitable march of time.

It clicks a lot of my own buttons.

The clouds in this piece always take me back to the first time I painted clouds in that looked like these.  I was not yet a full-time painter and had obtained a large commisiion that would prove to be very important to me.  I was on a short deadline and was still painting in the dining area of our home at the time with large sheets of paper spread over folding tables.  I was working on a large triptych and was nearly finished when our late cat, Tinker, decided to explore the tables.  Bounding up, she stepped first in a damp part of my palette and ran across the three sheets, leaving perfect little paw prints in a watery blue tint in her wake.  As the echoes of my bellow faded, my mind raced as I looked at my now very unfinished work.

Start over?  No time.  Try to blend them in to the background?  Not with this particular style of painting.  I sat and looked, concentrating.  Wait a minute.  The prints only ran across the sky portion of all the sheets.  And they ran in lovely diagonal manner.

Quickly, I was at it with paint and within several minutes I had blocked in clouds where once there were paw prints.  It worked.  Tinker’s run across the sky fit the rhythm of the piece and the clouds actually gave a fullness to the composition that it had lacked.  It was actually quite an improvement.

So when I see clouds such as these, I always flash back to my initial panic and the subsequent discovery of good fortune in this happy accident.  Since that day, when what seems to be a disatrous event happens with one of my paintings I step back with a much calmer mind and eye with the knowledge that perhaps this is just a new opportunity to see things a new way.

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Songs Along The Way

Posted in Early Paintings, Television, tagged , , on February 21, 2010| 3 Comments »

Late last year, I was contacted by a man who wanted to use a painting of mine that he had acquired ten or so years ago as part of the packaging for a CD he was about to release.  The piece, To the Victor,  was one that I remembered well from that time and I agreed to his use of the image.  It was, however, a painting that I only had documented with a slide that had been damaged so he would have to get the painting photographed.  No problem.

This week I received a copy of the CD from the artist and was pleased to see the painting on the cover of the CD’s booklet.  The piece fits well with the title of the CD as well, Songs Along the Way, from songwriter Gary Portnoy.

Gary Portnoy is best known as the singer and composer of perhaps the best known theme song from any TV show ever, the Cheers theme, Where Everybody Knows Your Name.  Who hasn’t at least hummed along to that tune at some point?  He has also written the themes of several other television shows, garnering two Emmy nominations, and his songs have been recorded and performed by a wide variety of artists.   To find out  more about Gary’s music and his career check out his website by simply clicking the cover from his new CD, shown here.

You always hope that your work will live well with the people who obtain it and it’s extremely gratifying to have a piece such as To the Victor still resonate with its owner so that he chooses it to represent, in some small way, his own work.  Many thanks to you, Gary.

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Rockin’ Billy

Posted in Early Paintings, Influences, Neat Stuff, tagged , , on February 6, 2010| 1 Comment »

I went to the Little Gems opening last night at the West End Gallery.  It was a really great crowd and I was able to see a lot of people I don’t get to see but a time or two a year.  A lot of good conversation.

One friend, guitarist Bill Groome, reminded me of a piece that I had given him back in 1999.  It was a little piece I had done years before that, before I ever thought of showing or selling my work.  It was done with crayons and was of a guitar player dancing to his own playing.  I called it Rockin’ Billy after rockabilly guitarist Billy Lee Riley, who distinctive, edge-of-wild studio playing rocked most of the early rockabilly recordings at Sun Records, including his own hits Red Hot ( …my gal is red hot, your gal ain’t doodley-squat…) and Flying Saucers Rock and Roll.   There was just something about the player in this little piece that felt liked he was moved by the spirit of that early music.

I didn’t have any images of the piece but when I got into the studio this morning, I found that Bill had emailed me a scan of Rockin’ Billy.   Thanks, Bill.  Even though it’s rough edged and maybe not a virtuoso piece in itself, I still really like this little guy a lot.  I can still hear Billy Lee’s guitar echoing in my memory…

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