New Work

Friend, artist and photographer, Mary S, Rezny, is having an invitational exhibit in her studio in a couple of weeks. The title of the show is "Red." My take on the theme is this recently finished piece which I've called, "Sailor's Delight." The reference is two-fold: first the weather aphorism "Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. red sky at night, sailor's delight," second, the row of light dots in the lower right resemble harbor lights. I sometimes struggle with titles for abstract paintings. There are always the risks of being too literal, or too esoteric, or too... cute. I usually wind up making some reference that I feel gives people a starting point to engage the painting. I'm not really so concerned where they end up though. If someone finds their imagination and emotions activated by the piece, that alone is a good thing. Especially if they are unaccustomed to looking at the world this way. My goals are to challenge and reward viewers in a ways that are both intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying. No, it's not cutting edge, but I'm still finding lot's of room to explore here. Hopefully others will too.

This is a small piece, only 9" x 10." The medium is acrylic and Tyvek on a wood panel.

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Concrete

These quirky little objects, the tallest of which is about 7," were recently donated to a local (in my neighborhood, actually) not-for-profit organization, The Living Arts & Science Center (LASC), to be included in their annual art auction fund raiser. Donating art to charitable auctions is a sometimes contentious subject among artists and deserves a discussion of it's own. Since this writing is about the art work, I'll leave that for another time.

I've been intrigued by concrete as an art medium for several years and belong to a Google Group called Artconcrete that discusses the subject. The group was started by Canadian artist and jeweler, Andrew Goss. Check out his blog at http://artconcrete.blogspot.com/ for information and links if you are interested. He's done a great job of showing the potential for the medium, including writing a book geared toward small scale work, titled "Concrete Handbook for Artists," also available through his web sites.

The bud vases were some of my first experiments and I had tons of fun doing them. Along with concrete, they incorporate found laboratory glass (I'm a hopeless scavenger treasure-hunter), tile grout, copper leaf and wire and a chemical patina. Maybe I can go into the process more another time. I kept to a smaller scale both for manageable experimentation and practical working conditions. Everything was done in my regular painting/design space where setup and clean up are major issues. Concrete dust and buckets of water are not entirely compatible with paint, paper and computers! I've sold several through galleries in Lexington and Chicago but this is their first really public outing. Unless you count the ETSY store that I neglected into auto-extinction.

The 6 6/8" diameter rings in the photo to the right were among my first trials. No other use for them has been found to date, but I'm looking! The shape resulted from found plastic packaging that I used for a mould. The colors are from different pigments , aggregates and finishes.

In the last photo, an ancient-future, radio-wanna-be, rock-boat, is just a playful temporary construction made from pieces of my first disastrous attempts with concrete. TIP: make plenty of room for failure, it's so instructive - and can be fun!

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Evolution

Here is sequential look at the evolution of a digital/traditional hybrid piece. The steps were not preplanned. The process was an experiment with no particular end in mind except discovery. Some might see that as a metaphor for life I suppose. In any case, I enjoy watching things grow. I'm not sure what to do with this particular species. A poster series maybe? I'm open to suggestions.

Click images to enlarge

1) I started with a ballpoint pen sketch, one of my favorite mediums.
2) After scanning, I converted it to vector art and posterized layers in CorelDraw. Not much difference visually but an important technical step.


3) Then I exported it to a Photoshop file, opened it in that program and tried some color. Since I had separated the various shades of gray into unique layers in step 2 I could easily alter their colors individually.
4) A little filter magic - OK, a lot!


5) Finally I scanned part of a painting for the background and recolored it to harmonize with the rest.

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Abstraction

All art is abstract. The most photo-realistic painting of Uncle George is not Uncle George. It is a two dimensional summary of the artist's observations. As is a photograph. The level of detail required for a satisfactory representation depends largely on culture and personal experience, ranging from petroglyphs to holograms. Both of which rock BTW [groan]. What takes an image or object beyond familiarity and gives it value as art are it's abstract elements: composition, color, materials, imagination, insight, attitude, skill, etc. One of the great gifts of abstract art is to simply recognize and publicly acknowledge this fact. From this acknowledgment follows the insight that any of these elements can be appreciated on their own.

I love abstraction and have been known to get misty in front of a late period Diebenkorn, but recently I've felt the urge to get my figurative drawing skills back in shape. Along with that, a few trips to the library reminded me of my deep appreciation for John Singer Sargent. Combining these conditions I produced a ballpoint pen sketch from a Sargent painting. To deepen the double looking-glass effect, the subject of Sargent's painting is another artist looking at photographs from which to paint a landscape. Does this represent some kind of conceptual hologram? Or is that too abstract?


TOP - painting: "Green Filter"
BOTTOM - sketch after Sargent

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August Memory on a Winter's Day

Some thoughts from a warmer time.
A crazy day. Multiple deadlines seemed to spring up from nowhere and collide. This afternoon a much needed shower drifted through and left behind a pleasant, cooler, if humid, evening. But the work day is not over. Before starting my next project I decided to just sit still for 10 min. and listen. I opened the studio door and put my chair a few feet from the screen, facing the night air. A chorus of creatures flooded my head and the city seemed quiet by comparison. Somehow it reminded me that life, even in its subtle beauty, can be chaotic, even violent. Here is nature, pouring forth sounds and seeds with no inventory and only one thought - grow. But this is just the beginning - the edge, foaming up from an unseen river of restless searching, living, and dying. Above this rises the stillness of coherence, intention, and infinite expansion. Within that frame every mark has its message. None of what we usually think of as art was born in this room today, but perhaps much was conceived in these few moments.
Painting: "Rain-wet Street"

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Waking Up

Paintings are like dreams: constructed with pieces of familiar reality, but out of context. This gives them a "set apart" quality that arouses curiosity and fuels the imagination. If you let them, they can become windows into the subtexts of your own life.
Painting: "Dreamstalk"

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Beginning in The Middle

"Now" sits here conspicuously between the past and the future. There is no other starting point. Although I have recorded my thoughts, both verbal and visual, for some time, I am just "now" getting around to this form. In an attempt to stretch the meaning of "spontaneous" I will refer to those earlier notes at times. So, here goes.
Illustration: "Contemplation"

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