Throwback in the Self-Referential Sense.

In the spirit of 1998...



I present a little watercolor piece called "Dance with the Devil in the Pale Moonlight."

This came out of a watercolor class I was in Connecticut where I was the only male, and the only person under 50 I believe. There were a lot of flowers and soft pastel colored paintings in the group, and this painting was a response to that. It didn't go over too well. But the class was great.

I happen to like the deep color blue of the night sky and the way the mask sits on the face. It appears to almost be grafted on. The style is very comic book like, which is difficult with watercolors. The mask seems more alive than the fellow who wears it.

Whoa!

Watercolor is a medium that was completely censored from Carnegie Mellon University. Not officially, of course, but the underlying tone of students and teachers alike was "turning up the nose." I think watercolors require a deftness in paint application that can really be beautiful.

I will be chasing that beauty in 2007.

Painting as a focal practice.

Painting has such a commanding presence when I am "in the zone." To sit there for hours upon end, extracting the shapes and colors from the mud changes my thinking, as if my brain is on another more vibrant level. Things become clear. I feel more articulate.

To compare this with the feeling of spending that time on the computer is interesting to me. Computer time is more like becoming a receptacle to information. I am excited to learn new ways of digesting and structuring that information, but I don't achieve the active agency that closes the loop so to speak. It's all downloading into the mind, much like the helicopter instructions in the matrix movie. I think ultimately, that leads to an overwhelmed feeling, because there is literally no end to the information, and therefore nothing to stand upon. Where do you draw lines of value?

Painting provides a reflection point back upon the self. One that reinforces and centers value.
It's what I like to call participatory consciousness, or passionate engagement. The way that your reflection always meets with you when you look into a puddle or pass a mirror. The agency of that meeting is shared between you and the reflection. Mind like water.

With a computer, you lack that bounce back. The more you engage with computers, the more information pours into your brain, and the more your soul gets sucked out into the vapid realm of indifference.

If you're not careful.

A Tree Blooms in South Philly

This photo was taken on Dec 15th in South Philly, right in front of the cheese steak houses on Passyunk. In fact, many of the street trees in that area are blooming in this fashion. 2 weeks later we continue to have 50 degree days.

Trees Bloom amid winter warm spell
False Spring won't damage plants..
Anybody seen signs of winter?

Obviously, there is a warming trend. I remember just a few years ago becoming alarmed seeing trees with buds in the winter. I guess when leaves start coming out, I will truly be worried.

Art Face off...

I found this website yesterday called Artfaceoff.com

There tagline is "A grassroots project bringing democracy to the world of art." Lofty goal indeed, but an interesting concept. You put a maximum of 24 images up on their site, and your work is rated on a 10 point scale. I like "distributed feedback" that could result from this.. I signed up because I was intrigued. I also inherently like competition. Perhaps it's from running road races. Does the competition pollute the art? Hard to tell, but I think this is a good way to get work exposure on the web.

You can view my and rate my work here.

Do I Like Diebenkorn anymore?

When you believe something so vehemently for years, it's good to come back around to it and try and question what made you come to that belief in the first place.

Woman on Stool...





I still like him. Samantha asked me the otherday what it was, and I said the light. But I think it is really the loneliness of them that provokes me. A kind of hopper-esque world for the suburbs, fractured and grittier. I hadn't thought of how similar they are before.

Working on a New Self Portrait

Okay. Here is what it looks like right about now.

It's a running joke that I paint so many self portraits that I am my best subject. This is the first self portrait since this one. Just for the record, I have been painting other things.

I've become aware of how these portraits work as personal reflection / confrontation. To that end this current work is very much a search for a new sense of identity in a new city, Philadelphia.

The painting is perhaps %75 done. And it has come a long way. At first it was very muddy (corresponding to the feeling of sorting out Philadelphia), and then I took a razor and actually cut the form out of the mud.

I've been painting in the mornings, and the sky has been switching between blue and grey. I've been trying to keep up.

Parts that need work, the values inside the room. The outside values are extremely bright, so I am constantly reminding myself to darken the inside values.

I also have to fix up the mouth. It's not sitting on the jaw properly.