The Return

COVID sort of shut down the gallery scene for two years, but it appears to be back up and running again and I had the good fortune of landing a small show at the Kada Gallery...16 pieces, mostly new works from this latest iteration of a techniques I've been developing. Mine are the ones in color. Top two photos are of the gallery.

Just finished these two pieces after the show. The top one is the lagoons at Presque Isle and the bottom one, a small piece of Dublin. Staying busy with the figure as well.

 

Milling About

On the beach, this is this year's model. Not a lot of time spent down there this year, and very little time in the water. It was too cold for me all of June. I'm a cold water sissy. Needs to be in the high 70's or low 80's or I'm not going in. Anyways, using stone washed in from the destruction of previous projects, this is how far I got. I'll probably be able to do a little more work, but nothing appreciable.

Lots of painting in the summer to prepare for a show at Kada Gallery in Erie. Opened Saturday night and looked good. First time I've seen a bunch of these pieces together. Fish 1 and Kora were both in the show. A nice painting of Pittsburgh and one of Erie, seen a few posts back, were also in. 16 pieces overall.

My new favorite figure painting. Doing a lot of that lately as well. I'm getting better at it.

 

Bodies of Work of Bodies

I've continued to do a lot of figure painting. I'm getting better. Different lighting, different bodies, different challenges, every piece is like solving a different equation.  I've been fortunate to have worked with some amazing women. The pressure to do their particular beauty justice is pretty intense.

I really loved this pose. There was a dream-like quality to it and the clasped hands added a bit of a twist to it. The lighting was really strange on this figure. This model is a dancer and every movement or gesture was just like a beautiful verse.

This model is all about softness and coolness. The painting below is the first one of this model and there is a certain Modigliani quality to her.

The dancing images are such  a pleasure to paint. Challenging on so many levels, but working on them is like a blessing that you can be in the presence of such beauty, power and grace. 

The color is off on this photo but the lighting is pretty close to the original. Multiple figure paintings present a whole different set of challenges. I'm liking this one.

 

Not Out of the Woods, Yet.

 

The school year is almost over. I don't know what I think about that. Very busy painting. The top piece is State Street in Erie PA. Then the other two are the same idea applied to organic things...The sea and the forest...

Went to the Atlanta Aquarium in January I think. It was amazing . I fell in love with the jellyfish. They were just floating around in this tank that looked like a giant flat screen TV. Amazing creatures, jellyfish. Who the fuck thinks of these things. Like some deity is just hanging out and decides that the ocean needs some gelatinous blobs that float around and sting things to death...

The forest is based on some jungle pictures I took in Guatemala while working at Tikal. We'll see where this goes.

                        Doing a lot of figure painting, getting better. I'll post some next week.

Another Beginning

Another year.

Staying busy.

They have lifted the mask requirement for school.

My students now appear to be human beings.

That is good.

Here is my first major work of the year.

Submitted to the Erie Art Museum Spring Show.

I have been lucky to have connected with a new model.

A dancer.

Some amazing stuff happening.

In this piece she appeared to be actually radiating light.

I also reconnected with my original model for the first time in a while.

This painting came from some experiments with a mirror.

Every time I work with her there is always something magical.

This is one of my favorite paintings of her.

First painting of 2022.

 

In the End

It is finished...

A Race With Van Gogh

I read at some point that Van Gogh managed to paint over 100 paintings in a single year and part of that year he was institutionalized. I don't know if that memory is correct or can be substantiated, but I thought it was a fitting challenge. Normally, I might finish 25 to 30 works a year. A couple of years I did my version of 100 Views of Edo, and for two consecutive years I completed 50 paintings per year. During the first COVID year, under lock-down, to keep my sanity I painted like a madman, literally, finishing 82 paintings. When this thing went into a second year, my mental state was threatened as it was the first year, and the therapy that painting was, became even more so in the second year and I thought 100 paintings would be apropos. I'm going to make it.

Here are some of the Architectonic paintings from the last couple of months. These were done for a small exhibition at a local gallery...GlassGrowers. The first painting is a painting of Sevilla, Spain.

The three smaller paintings are from a series of works inspired by the idea of Thomas Cole's Course of Empire.

Much of the year's work was figure painting and will post a few of them before the year's end.