Exit Via Crush

Merry Christmas everyone.

Plane Cows

Traditional fun, I even bought some absinthe and got sunburned.

I couldn’t get the paper to lie flat, so there is a slight distortion towards the middle.

Pour Out

I was little upset when I found out the David Foster Wallace had killed himself.  Not upset like I am when people I know pass away, but much more upset than the usual amount of sadness I feel for people I don’t know.  In fact I can’t really think of any other famous person’s death that has ever bothered me.  In any event I found myself reading any article by Wallace I could find.  One article that I really enjoyed was EUnibus Pluram, an article mostly about TV (if you live in Oregon I would highly recommend using you library’s EBSCO account to access the article, it is in the Review of Contemporary Fiction Summer 93).

Well sure enough, any serious article about TV has to make mention of Duchamp, and Wallace does not disappoint.  In fact he really goes above a beyond and has a really nice write-up about Duchamp’s fountain.  One aspect he explores, that I hadn’t really thought about, was how the fountain changed the space of the gallery.  Not in a shocking way but in a more basic way.  Like, if we are inside and the walls are white and there is a urinal, is it alright to go pee?  Because really the only difference between the gallery, or the kitchen, or the classroom and the bathroom is the urinal, at least physically.

This reminded me of something I had read in a book on the history of clothing.  The author felt that clothing was invented not to cover up soft spots or for warmth, but to distract everyone from remembering that people produce excrement.  The author justified this argument by saying that it is universally impolite to go the bathroom mid-sentence.

Drifting Along

Painting is going well, I am starting to get a routine again.  I like these circle things, even if in this picture they sort of look like balloons, because they add a good mirror to the rabbits eye.  Something that has been missing for a while.

Coastal Delay Over

The delay is over.  I am getting settled into my new library and things are going well.  I think the little break from painting was good, but I am anxious to get back at it.

In slightly other news I just bought a Wacom tablet.  It is pretty awesome, but very different from watercolor.  However it has provided me with the opportunity to mess around with brush strokes and color blending, something I am not very good at.  I hope it will enable me to continue to develop my watercolors among other things.  I am very excited.

A Coastal Delay

Sorry this painting has taken so long to make it to the blog.  I have been having a big two weeks, career wise.  I now have a new library job on the Oregon coast!  I am very excited, and have a lot to do.  Unfortunately one of the things is packing up my watercolor stuff.  I expect a three week or so delay between this and my next painting.

Rabbit Icon Inset

I think things are sort of coming together in this one.  I like the color and the space for the most part.  I would like to do a little more with the shadows, but I can’t really think of what.  I think I can build off of this one and that is a good feeling.

Rabbit and Bird with Comic Elements

It is almost 2008 and I have over 70 paintings to show for 2007.  I feel pretty good about myself.  Also this year a buddy of mine and I have almost finished a graphic novel which is also exciting.

I have been thinking a lot about comic books and graphic novels lately (I am wraping up Dave Sim’s Cerebus series, like it or not, it is an amazing artistic effort).  They were definitely the reason I became interested in the visual arts in the first place.  I was sort of thinking about the similarities between the comic book panel and my own aquarium shapes.  I think this could be a healthy thought.

Above all an image maker?

What are paintings all about?  Communicating?  Objects to reflect on?  Sometimes it is fun to just try and make things that look cool.  For the last couple of paintings I was really trying to get my thoughts in order, but not this time.  This time I just tried to make a painting that I could show someone and say, “Hey, is this cool?”

Aquarium Turned Geometric Form

Things are going good.  In this painting I used paint as a color, but also as a cover for the white paper.  I think I did this in a non-hokey way.