Thursday, February 23, 2017

Planetscapes


I was at an opening of a former student, Theresa Musatto, at a small gallery in town that is no longer exhibiting,the Urarro. She is a grad of MICA's painting program and the work was wonderful. While talking with her about her work the conversation led to challenges of working in a non-representational vein, which I don't often dabble in, but after the conversation I went home with the intention of focusing on some non-representational exercises. These four works were the result. Inspired by images from planets from NASA, I just tried to divorce myself from subject matter as much as possible and just let color and texture drive the image.


The above was the first to be done and I was working with various violets and maroons and trying to suggest heat, but the cold heat of space. I was thinking in terms of a transit across the face of a sun. Not being able to completely escape some form of representation, I guess.


The second one was the least successful from an expectations standpoint, but I like the lower right hand corner portion and some other bits and pieces. Composition didn't quite pan out the way I had planned.


This was all about green and unfortunately a gas giant kept trying to force my hand and then while I wasn't looking that big Jovian orange spot shows up...what the H.


 This was the piece that I ended up being the most pleased with despite it being the most representational of the bunch really. It just had a nice feel to it, literally. The last of the project for now, but it is just the beginning of setting free the bears...maybe.








Friday, February 10, 2017

One Problem Solved

Alright, one problem solved. I've figured out how to get back on my blog. To celebrate I'm putting this painting on. It is from January. A landscape experiment, 24" x 30", that evolved out of reading a monograph on Turner and I like the end result. I will try to get more recent works posted following the past year of neglect. I'm also working on another landscape type piece.

The problem that didn't get solved is that Trump is still the president. I keep waiting for the day when he goes a whole 24 hours without saying or doing something really, really stupid. Three weeks in and no sign of a break. I'm sorry world.