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Posts Tagged ‘Recent Paintings’

Uncharted

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on August 19, 2011| 5 Comments »

This is a small painting on paper, only 4″ by 5″, that I immediately began calling Uncharted as soon as the final stroke fell into place.  The way the path ends at the edge of the field in the foreground and the way the central figure stood there brought to mind someone coming to a point in their life, their journey, who realizes they are at a point and place they have never encountered before nor even been warned of by others.  They want to move forward, they know they must move ahead but they are filled with fears and doubts.  Second guessing.

I think most people try to avoid ever coming to such a place in their lives.  Most of us follow templates set down by many generation before us which attempt to create a stable and safe path for us to journey down. 

The known.  Familiar territory.

 But for some, that path soon comes to an end and they must venture forward using their own instincts, making their own way ahead if they can ever expect to find satisfaction with their existence here.

Again, it’s a scary route and not one easily chosen.  But for those who seek something that fulfills the inner aspects of themselves, it is the only way.  In a way I feel like I’m describing the route that the shamans of some natives tribes around world take in finding their spiritual awakening and maybe that is akin to the journey of many other seemingly normal people in other cultures who seek those intangibles that lay off the known map that we usually folllow.

 I’m not really sure.  That is uncharted territory for me but I am gratified that this simple, small piece inspires a little more thought.

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The M Is For Moonlight

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on June 21, 2011| 2 Comments »

I finished this painting yesterday, a 12″ by 36″ canvas called Moonlight Theatre.  I really enjoy working on these pieces.  They grow very organically, one bit leading to the next, and easily absorb my full attention making time fly by.  When I started I fully intended to work on a landscape, one with a few red-roofed houses.  I even started in the lower right corner with one of my typical windowless houses.  I started to put my brush to the canvas for another hosue when I stopped and began to sense that there was a cityscape here instead.  So it came to be.

I opted for windows and doors in this painting, something I only use on rare occasions.  I normally like the anonymity that comes from windowless structures in these paintings but here there is that same sense even with the windows.  They’re like the eyes and faces of a crowd of people crossing the street in a large city, aloof with little recognition of anything around them as they move.  If their eyes are like windows, they’re open but you can’t see in.  The same here.

I finished most of the painting before putting the M on the marquee of the theatre in the forefront of the piece.  I had already decided that the marquee was the focal point of the painting and wanted it to lead to or be influenced by the title.   I saw this as a city at night and felt that the word moonlight was in there somewhere.  That’s when I decided on the M for the marquee.  Moonlight Theatre.

Cheri came into the studio soon after I had finished and, after looking at it, asked  ” Is that M your initial?  Aren’t we a little self-centered?”

I hadn’t even considered that when I chose the M.  It was always for Moonlight but I could see how it could look that way.  I immediately thought of changing the M.  Maybe an O for Orpheum, which is a common name for theatres.  But I decided to hold off.  I liked the M and its angles in this piece– it just seemed to fit.   Besides, it was already Moonlight Theatre in my mind.

So it stays.  For now, M is for Moonlight.

 

 

 

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Good Fortune

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , on April 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been continuing this recent series of  patterned  landscapes, most on paper,  in the studio the past few weeks, falling into a very nice rhythm as I proceed.  This is a recent completion, an 18″ by 25″ image on paper, that has the Red Tree as the central figure in a quiet but bright composition.  The patterned fields of the landscape, like many of the paintings in this series, takes up about half of the composition, solidly built as a foundation to hold up the breaking sky above.

I’m still thinking about what to call this piece.  There is a sense of the idyllic in the scene, hunkered away safely from the intruding fingers of the greater world.  I suppose that’s why I find this work so satisfying as I paint.  There’s a comforting aspect in this work for me.  Soothing. Pacifying.

There’s also a simplicity in it but I would not call it naive.  I have a feeling that while this is an idealization and the landscape portrays the comfortable and safe, there is also an awareness of the world outside.  As though the Red Tree is cognizant of its good fortune in being rooted in this tranquil place.  Perhaps that should be its title- Good Fortune.

Let me think on that…

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The Warming

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on April 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

In between the new work I’ve been featuring here as of late, I’ve also been continuing to produce a few other pieces of my black and white ( or gray, as I sometimes refer to it) work.  As I said before, I enjoy the challenge these pieces present in trying to create emotion and feeling without the use of color.  No deep reds or yellows to warm up the scene and give it an inviting glow.  Only the composition and lines and shading to give the piece its lifeblood.

Oh, there is a touch of color.  The most recent group features red and yellow sun/moons which gives this group a great sense of continuity between the individual pieces.  The tryptych shown above, an image about 7″ tall by 18″ wide on paper that I’m calling The Warming, is an example.  In some of my gray work I have reserved the touch og contrasting color for the crown of a red tree but with this group I wanted the color to be only in the orb of light in the sky.  So with this piece the tree has gray foliage.

I like the feel of a tryptych, the way the three images are compartmentalized and relate to one another.  Each stands alone but is strengthened by the next and the sum of the three is infinitely more compelling than any one alone.  Thi breaking apart of the scene also brings a further sense of remoteness that I feel in the work, a feeling that is aided by the removal of color in the foreground.  The dark grays create a somber now from which the viewpoint originates and the yellow of the sun/moon creates a more optimistic future which approaches.

I’ve got plans for another in this series with four or five asymetrical segments creating different visual weights.  I’m still working it out in my head but will show it here-  if it works as I’m envisioning it.

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Pure Optimism

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on April 1, 2011| 4 Comments »

As I walk down to get the newsapaper in the morning, often in the dark, I will sometimes begin to think about what I might write in that day’s blog entry.  But sometimes the my mind might be occupied with the chorus of some long past song that mysteriously pops into my head without my permission.  Sometimes it’s pleasurable and sometimes I find myself asking how this annoying ditty became entangled in the synapses.  Today was such a day.

Up, up with people
You meet them wherever you go
Up, up with people
They’re the best kind of folks I know

Oh, god, no!  It was chorus from Up With People!   If you have never heard it, it’s a sugary sweet tune of upbeat energy that spews a love of all people everywhere that sprung from a traveling group of youths that began touring the world in the mid-60’s and are still doing so to this day.  Growing up, they quite often came through our area and the airwaves would be filled with television and radio commercials of this annoyingly happy song.  The TV ads showed very attractive young women and men with exceedingly large smiles and neat Osmondish hair.  I think there were sweater vests and pressed bell bottoms but can’t be sure if my memory is correct.  We forced by a grade school teacher to learn this song and to this day it has periodically wormed its way forward through the tangled mess in my brain to emerge, much to my chagrin.  Some people have LSD flashbacks, I have this damn song of ultra optimism.

Which brings me to the painting shown above, a smaller 12″ by 16″ canvas that I recently finished.  It threw me for a loop as I neared completion, it’s feel so completely different than that I had envisioned as I worked on it in its earlier stages.  It may be the mosy overtly optimistic thing I have ever done.  It is bright and happy and even the dark edges that I often employ as emotional counterweights seem far removed and less ominous.  It oozes positive energy.  As I said, I was taken aback by this.  Much of my work is forward looking and has an optimistic perspective but this seemed to push optimism to the extreme and made me a bit nervous because I found myself really beginning to like this small piece that wore its positive message like a badge of honor.  There is a simple naivete to it of which I find myself  feeling very protective, as though it is something I know can’t exist for long in this cynical world without someone looking out for it.

Days of viewing this painting has not changed that feeling.  I’m still surprised by this piece but it somehow works for me.  I’m thinking of calling it Pollyanna.

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The Hidden Heart

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on March 25, 2011| 2 Comments »

This is a 30″ by 30″ painting that I’ve finished in the last week or so.  It’s very much in the manner of other work that I’ve been locked in to recently, with a green/blue mosaic sky light breaking in contrast over the horizon.  There is a large difference in this piece in that there is more attention paid to the trees surrounding the central figure of the red tree.  There is less open space  and the assemblages of trees create compositional masses that appear almost monolithic in appearance which makes for a warmer, less stark feel while still maintaining the same effect compositionally.  I have used these large grouping of trees sparingly  for some time but did use themmore often in the years before the red tree made its first appearance in 2000.  I was browsing through some older work and realized that they had not emerged in my work in some time and there seemed to be a place for them now, particularly in this style of work that I’ve been focusing on recently.

I call this piece The Hidden Heart for the way the red tree is held in a pocket with the trees and hills around it.  There’s a feeling that it would remain unseen but for one following the field rows that seem to forge a trail to it.  I often refer to the red tree as the heart in my paintings probably because they often are the focal point of the paintings with everything revolving around them.  Or maybe I’m thinking of the red in the tree as being symbolic of life blood.  Maybe both.  I’m not completely sure.

As I said, this piece has less starkness and more warmth than some pieces while maintaining a sense of quietude which is enhanced by the scope of the sky above.  There has been a lot to look at in the studio recently but this piece continues to draw my attention and I am continually filled with a sense of completeness by it.

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Obscurity

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , on March 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

This is a new 12″ by 24″ painting that sits in my studio at the moment.  It draws a lot of my attention at the moment and I’ve been enjoying it over this time.  I find this a very hopeful piece, the whiteness of the house’s reflection of the bright rising light set in contrast to the dark foreground.  It’s this contrast that creates the hope I see.  Like many things, hope is relative to the conditions of the situation.

 I’ve left the landscape bare of other trees other than those in the foreground which form a stage-like setting for the scene beyond, wanting to create  more focus on the starkness of the house.  The path moves from dark to light and also conveys this sense of hope, of moving towards a more illuminated situation.

I’m thinking of calling this Obscurity.  I know that this doesn’t convey the hope of which I speak but I have been thinking of a line from John Locke’s An Essay on Human Understanding that has been bouncing around in my head for a week or so.  Locke states: 

 Untruth being unacceptable to the mind of man, there is no defence left for absurdity but obscurity.

It sounds wonderful.  In a perfect world.  I can’t help but wonder if in fact the opposite might apply to our times: Untruth being acceptable to the mind of man, there is no defence for rationality but obscurity?  This thought has hung hauntingly on me for some time and maybe I see this house as a refuge of some kind for rational thought in what seems an irrational time.  A place of obscurity.

Or maybe it’s just a house. After all, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

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The Wending

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on January 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

—Matsuo Basho

 

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I’ve been looking at this piece in the studio for the last several days.  Called The Wending, it’s a painting on paper that’s about 17″ square.  I always get the sense of it being painted on fabric when I glimpse at it.  I don’t know why.  In the color there is a mix of saturation and of a feel of fading, as though the color is slightly worn from use.  Like an old t-shirt that was once sharply bright in its color and over the years, through sun and sweat and repeated washings, has become a softer shade of its original self. 

Comfortable in its place.

And that’s how this piece makes me feel.  There is the sense of the journey yet it doesn’t feel alien or strange.  There is an absence of trepidation about moving ahead, as though, like the words of Basho above, the journey itelf is home.

It’s an immediate and comfortable sensation in this painting and I think most of it derives from this softened color.  The darkness under the color is even softened and less foreboding which adds to the ease of this piece.  It feels like a good path, a good journey.

All I ask of it.

 

 

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Answer Given

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on November 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This is a painting, an 18″ square canvas,  I just completed yesterday that I’m calling  Answer Given.  I did it at the request of a collector who wanted a companion piece for an existing painting of mine.  It’s always tricky taking on this kind of request because I can never be quite sure how the person sees this painting matching up with the one they already possess.  I was given some parameters but you just never know for sure if they want something different than what you see as a companion.  The existing piece was composed very much like this painting, with a blowing tree and a watery horizon, except with a foreboding deep purple sky with tinges of red through it. 

I chose to make the color field of this piece different, going with very warm reds and yellows that give the sky a real presence.  This piece is very much about the sky and the interaction between it and the tree, as though there was a running dialogue between them.  This interplay is where I found the title, Answer Given.   Though the paintings are similar in composition there are differences in feel with this piece feeling more at ease with its world and its place in it, giving it more a sense of optimism than the piece with the ominous purple sky. 

I think the two pieces will sit well with one another, as though they are two sides of a coin- part of the same but with a different face.

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One

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on August 31, 2010| 1 Comment »

I call this new painting, a 12″ by 24″ canvas,  One.

One path.

One tree.

One sun.

One person.

I’ve been working on paintings that are focused on rolling fields of color and how they relate to each other, as is seen in the foreground of this piece.  The rolls form a foundation for the painting as well as create depth into the painting, pulling the viewers eye further into the picture plane, allowing it to feel immersed.

Well, that’s the hope.  It’s also my translation of what I feel makes a painting of mine succeed on some level.  I feel that if I can easily allow the viewer deeper into the picture, they will get a greater sense of the color and emotion of the piece.

I have no proof that this is true but it helps me to think this, to fulfill the need for explanation.  The need to know the why of being drawn to it, even if it’s only for myself.

Just one reason.

One.

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