My Last Iowa Chronicles Post

Yes, this will be my last post for this particular blog, the reason being that I feel the original spirit in which this blog was started has evaporated, or evolved rather. Let's say it has evaporated and risen to the troposphere where it will turn into pretty puffy clouds shaped like bunnies and t-rexes. I still have a couple months left in Iowa and I'm still making art and will continue to, however my focus has shifted to illustration. My experience here in Iowa has been invaluable in learning about myself as an artist and I'm ready to move on to the next thing. So I will start a shiny brand new blog of the work I make from here on sometime soonish, and I will be sure to alert you when that has occurred. Thanks for following this blog to those of you that have and I hope it wasn't super boring or anything. Phalanges!

A couple thingies:

Fidel Castro Session One

So here are the results of my first session with the Fidel Castro Deathlist 2010 portrait. It's off to an encouraging start; it just felt good to work large with big brushes attached to sticks and lots of paint. Click HERE to hear me thinking aloud about this piece so far.




A close-up, showing the fun things that are happening with the paint:

Oooooops Paint

In an effort to save $$$ I'm considering buying "oops" paint from the Home Depot instead of accurate flesh tones. This may lend the painting more of an expressive quality with heightened emotion, depending on the colors I pick. I'll probably buy some of the paint today, cuz I just got paid HAAAAAAYYYY.

New series in the fetal stage

This here be a Photoshop sketch of Fidel Castro for a new series that I will be starting soon. I am supa dupa excited for this series! I think it's going to be very fulfilling and will be a major turning point artistically for me. The inspiration for it comes from an interview with artist Jenny Saville, specifically the passage where she explains her painting process. Her manner of working is very physical; she is a fairly small woman and she likes to work on large canvases. The way she moves paint around is wonderful and I hope to see at least one of her paintings in person someday. I, on the other hand, hardly ever paint with very much energy, usually opting to sit in a chair and slowly, methodically and calmly apply my paint. I've always thought that this MO suited my personality. But you know what, I've come to realize that this may be very far from the truth. While I may have a laid-back demeanor, there exists in me... how shall I put this... a monster? An inner darkness? An evil monkey? There is indeed a turbulence within and I want to try to coax it out through this series. I'm going to work large, I'm going to attach my one to five inch brushes to broomsticks, and I'm going to use large quantities of house paint. I may even attach extra weight to the broomsticks to add extra physical challenge. I want this way of painting to be a work-out. I am a person who needs physical activity and if I were not to get it I'm pretty sure I would go insane. Seriously. So it makes sense that this new strenuous way of painting would suit me very well.

The series will be called "Deathlist 2010." Don't worry it's not a hitlist, however it is a list of celebrities who, as determined by this website, are believed to kick the bucket this year. I did not originally intend to paint potentially soon-to-be-dead celebrities; I was thinking about painting the mentally disabled/disturbed at first (which I still may go back to at some point). But after recently discovering that fashion designer Alexander McQueen had passed, the idea of painting large portraits of dead celebrities in the vein of Saville excited me. Then I thought why not kick up the freaky factor and paint celebrities who may be on their way out this year? Dark I know, but like I said I am trying unleash the evil monkey, capture it, tame it, give it a name and make it the family pet. And how creepy would it be if word of this series got out and celebrities new about it and feared that the next painting I made would be of them? It's kind of a twisted sense of power and superiority over those who are already the most powerful and superior. Anyway, that's the idea in a nutshell and I want to get crackin' asap. Thanks for reading.

Bald Fella

Zoe and Biz

Old Woman (who looks like a man)

Moi

Thingy

Xarim

Rollin' Up Wit Dem Thangs

Here's a couple new things for me; I suppose my first "legitimate" ventures into the abstract (whatever that means). I just didn't want to concern myself with skin tones and anatomy and all that stuff for once so I just starting putting paint down and letting things flow. The first painting here was my first exploration and the second abstract rekindled a previous interest in making these kind of ominous shapes in a landscape that seem to exist only to cause trouble. I don't know, it looks a little like a horizon with some big, floating mass in the air to me. I'll probably work on it a little more and maybe explore the idea further. The third painting is just something I felt like doing.

Well, well, well, long time no see...

Hiya peoples, it's been a while since I've done anything to this here blog and it may have been a while more had a friend of mine told me to get my act together and put some new stuff up. I have been painting a lot lately; I have many works in progress but only a few finished pieces. I'm starting a new way of working in which I give myself six hours max to complete any one painting, just to keep me moving along. I have more things to photograph and I will try and do that sometime fairly soon. For now, here ya go: