Art Plunge

Just sold a very important piece in my reportoire- "Between Dreams"- which had once gotten me all the way to NYC. It had been chosen for a group show called "LANDSCAPE:A SENSE OF PLACE" by Annette Rose-Shapiro (managing editor of ARTnews magazine). (Annette Rose-Shapiro and me at SITE: BROOKLYN) I had only a few days to submit to the competition and didn't think I would finish this painting in time. I was swamped working to pay the bills but I kept thinking- do it-do it-do it...you never know if you don't do it. So I would drag myself into the studio after work and paint. I remember getting the acceptance letter-what a feeling! "Between Dreams" what a fitting title for a piece that shows the boundaries between fantastical and reality- and just which location are you heading to? Which one are you leaving behind? This one's been hanging in my house a few years now, it's been shown a few times. It reminds me that I did it once- which...

"The Path of Fruitfulness" 24" x 24" acrylic/krylon on gallery wrapped canvas I finally finished this piece I've been slaving away on! It is based on a Gankyil (Wheel of Joy:The Base, The Path, The Fruit) and I took a few detail photos :

Wake up you sleepy head Put on some clothes, shake up your bed Put another log on the fire for me Ive made some breakfast and coffee This has pretty much been my weekend. Starting early in the studio (7:30 am!) and working on THIS, THIS up above for hours without stopping to eat, drink water or even pee. TRUE! If you read my post from yesterday you might have an idea of the hard fought battle this became. Since yesterdays post more mistakes popped up and had to be fixed, such as accidentally scratching the pretty pink painted smoke and having to fix it with another layer of light pink. I let the mistakes dictate the direction of the piece. I decided whatever FATE intended this to look like in the end would be the way I would roll. So...what was just going to be a straight up backlit David Bowie became him standing poised in front of pink smoke and stars. Suddenly it was taking shape and I owe it all to mistakes and errors. You have to see things this way so you don't start h...

A friend and I are trying to figure out the name of this plant. I call it the "Bulbasaur Plant" because it has little bulbs that look like Bulbasaur. Don't know what a Bulbasaur is? Let me pull your hair for a second! BULBA! Ok so I took a few days break from blogging and blah blah blah-ing all over the internet. I need that sometimes. I have a HERMIT side and it needs to be quiet and reflective and only hang out with plants and paintings sometimes. Since all the events I had to promote were finally over I felt it a good chance to just catch up on real life and shun the social network timekiller. I'm still kinda feeling that way so I might be less mouthy and loud this week. Plus I have a new painting I'm working on and you know me....these paintings take forever and the more I can get done on them right now the better. Ok, here's a little peek See what hanging out with plants do to you? Some of the dreams I've been having lately have involved ...

"Agua Fresca" at El Fenix I woke up this morning to a titillating little piece of cheese in the ol' mousetrap. Yes I said titillating....7 year old! There's a competition of sorts to get your work printed in a National Magazine called Origins. I have been fortunate enough to have a small feature in there once upon a time for the BARTERING ARTISTS group but having my art printed is a whole other ballgame. That would be nice and make my Mom proud. So I started facebooking trying to get some votes. Kinda disastrous. Perhaps I need another cup of coffee? I could not for the life of me explain to my friends how to CLICK a LINK and LIKE A COMMENT in a THREAD. I started laughing. It's my own fault. But if you happen to be reading this and would like to help me out...the piece I would like to see printed is this one: So if you like this piece and would like to see it printed let's try to get a vote in. Bear with me as I try to explain this again. :) Maybe...

The iconic Peter Max After dropping off art at Rising Gallery yesterday I remembered hearing about Peter Max having a show in town somewhere nearby. It seemed like a good day to hunt it down....after lunch. I had my first Twisted Root experience. It was good and the way they call you a celebrity name at the counter was funny. Although I was not thrilled with my name. Everyone else when called to the counter had a funny little joke, quote or lyric with theirs. Mine was simply called out straight and really what else can you say with a name like PINK . PINK?!?!?!  Ha!  At the drink machine I saw the word root beer and filled her up. I took a drink, this was supposed to be amazing root beer. What filled my mouth was not the taste of root beer at all. I was dizzy for a second as pure sugar rushed through my blood. What was this taste....so familiar...almost like cream soda, kinda like root beer but...no...it was...BUBBLE GUM! Then I spied a little piece of paper taped ab...

Latest works in my studio I snapped a shot of these two together before I wrap em up today. They are going to go travelling to Rising Gallery and my studio is going to look like a boring old dining room again. Little tip for the artists, a nice roll of painters drop plastic goes a long way towards protecting your art for travelling! Wired up the pieces yesterday so they'll hang nice and decided that the latest piece would look much sharper with the sides painted black. I decided that after messing around with a photo of it in Photoshop and seeing how striking it was against black. This one would actually look cool framed in black if someone bought it and felt like doing that. :-) I've entered two juried competitions in the past week, one was the Hecho in Dallas put on by the Latino Cultural Center and the other was the Craighead Green New Talent show. Both were free to enter and I have found it's best to promptly forget about these things as soon as you sub...

"The World of Traceable Ghosts" acrylic, krylon on canvas 30" x 40" C'est fini! It's done! I put a lot of hours into this and excited to show it in public this Friday at Rising Gallery. I'm curious to see it hanging next to the mice. Today I just finish off the sides and install hanging fixtures to my pieces, wrap them up for travel and they are ready for the ball. I took some detail shots with my  humble camera detail  detail A lot of symbolism snuck it's way into this one subconsciously. I've also added secrets than can only be seen in person.  One thing I want to say about my work, I almost never have a set idea in my head of how it's going to be. No road map. No sketch. I let the canvas tell me what to do. I feel like I learn so much more when there isn't a connect the dots to follow. The forms, colors, figures, they appear like magic apparitions. Each thing sparking the next thing, like dominoes falling. I ha...

detail from work in progress "The World of Traceable Ghosts" There is a good chunk of time when you first start a painting that feels a lot like hacking through a thick forest with a cheap plastic picnic knife. Then after some time it feels like your plastic knife has turned into a well forged and sharp sword. Things start opening up and becoming easier. Paths begin to appear where there were none before. I finally hit that point on this painting last night. It's a good point. It's the point when you see clearly what all is left to do to the work and not the "what the hell am I going to do?" point anymore. I've posted a few photos on facebook of my progress and gotten a phenomenal response so far. YAY! I was very skeptical of the color scheme at first. I've been living in aqua, green and pool blue land for so long! I even had a fellow artist and blogger (Lizzie Fortuin) from the Netherlands ask about putting my piece on her website ...it...

Ever so often I reach my fill of social networking, communication responsibilities, promoting and self promoting and the general constant noisy jibber jabber of life and the people around me. My little inner hermit kicks in and starts getting angry. Hermit wants peace and quiet and.....solitude. This was solidified yesterday when I found myself getting annoyed and angry for not really any good reason. I know the world works a certain way, is interested in certain things....not things I am necessarily interested in or wish for humanity but nonetheless....it is that way. The second sign that hermit was tapping on my heart with his old cane was I found myself painting on autopilot and NOT FEELING IT. Meh! Blah! By all accounts I was where I love to be in the Universe, in my studio and I was angry... with the Blah Mehs. Thats not a good feeling for an artist. It then dawned on me as I sat in front of the canvas.....my work comes from a love of Nature and the Natural world and I was di...

THE FINISHED PIECE! "Sometimes You Feel Small part 2" 36" x 48" acrylic/krylon on gallery wrapped canvas ...will be on view at RISING GALLERY on June 1! I started this thing on April 15th and finished it respectively on May 14th. Thats about a months worth of work on this thing, snagging a few hours a day or whole days sometimes to work on it. This was my first piece I fully documented publicly through it's various stages and also the first piece I used a different approach to. That being for one....the krylon spray in the background and also the very careful layering from back to front...all the elements in my pieces are usually just placed on as my brain sees fit, whether in the foreground or background.  It's been an interesting process and a few people were watching diligently and offering supportive words- thanks friends! Let's have the whole story now from start to finish: This thing is 36" x 48...

This is the latest progression on this piece. I've added the green branch shapes and the pale blue circles. This was the layer just before I'm ready to start adding in some darker features and weight into the mix. I'm ready to crack open one of my favorite colors: Paynes Grey and start heading into the browns. Yeah, my house is a mess but I'm on a roll and I can't be bothered with dishes just yet.... (Soundtrack while working on this piece: Swervedriver, June of 44 and some 60's mixes)

No doubt when you are doing something you absolutely love it doesn't feel like work at all. Whatever that may be... gardening, cooking, reading, writing and in my case....painting. In fact when I start painting and I'm in my zone I kind of equate it to being on drugs. It's like an addiction and I find it really hard to stop for the day. It's a lot like being in love. You miss it while you are away. You think about it and anticipate returning to it. Or maybe I'm crazy. I can only say in my defense that I have not been able to paint something for myself for a VERY VERY long time. I am coming off a year of having to hustle everyone elses commissions and deadlines and benefit pieces and nothing was done for little ol' me. POOR ME! Just kidding, sorta...but this is why I am feeling pretty euphoric that I carved out a little time this weekend to work on my newest and biggest piece. For me. Mine. MINES!!!! And to prove just how smitten and retardo I am about pai...

Fourth Layer: Blue branch shapes Third Layer: Soft blue grey organic shapes and pale green color fields Second Layer: Spray painted blue and pale green forms First Layer: Double coated flat color primer That is just a brief visual rundown of where the painting is and has been so far. I'm at the stage where I'm adding in some bolder branch shapes that intersect, overlap and dodge behind other forms. In case anyone was wondering about my process...no, I don't sketch these out beforehand. In fact as I get to each form- thats when I reach for a pencil and draw out the form to be, right before it gets painted. I work intuitively on my composition, breaking up shapes and space. Sometimes mistakes make happy discoveries. For instance my paintbrush was fully loaded with paint and bumped into the canvas accidentally where I had not planned it and I felt like I had to make a plan B or escape route to fix my mistake. I ended up really liking what the form was doing....

The weather this Easter weekend has been amazing. I made sure to spend a little time out in it yesterday while putting on the second layer of my new piece. Usually I work backwards. I lay in the foreground elements and then start sticking stuff in the background. It is a LOT MORE TIME CONSUMING to to do it that way. You have to watch your brush and lines and not paint over things that are already finished. So on this piece I'm trying an experiment and working background to foreground as much as possible and I'm going to document the whole beautiful disaster in phases. If you aren't familiar with my style it's a bit like this. So the second layer I added was another new experiment I spray painted on my canvas! OMG! Slap my hand! TABOO! Not really, we artists can do whatever the hell we want. :) I have basically broken up the space with two different colors of spray paint. Now I will begin some more background fields in acrylic paint. Right now it just remind...