Week 5

This one is a bit back to my "regular" style, but I'm doing a few things. My mentors comments were that the horizontal pieces were stronger than the vertical ones. He wanted me to play with canvas sizes a bit. He also said the "weird detail" that shows up in my work happens at 25 ft. This one will work with both of those ideas.

This is the second project from my mentor. Started the first one last week. There are pieces of photograph in the center and the upper right of this one. Playing with starting the painting around those two photos.

This is # 6 in my "pond" series. These are slow, but there's a lot of wet on wet. They are a bit more abstract/real. And almost no horizon lines. They will make more sense when they are all together on the wall at AIB. 

Seagull is coming along. Just letting this one happen. I'm not thinking about anything anyone has said or recommended. It's an elegy for my grandpa so it just needs to happen. Might not bring to AIB in June.

Back to these small UFO paintings. Wasn't sure what to do with them. Really liked the Elizabeth Peyton show at the Walker. She has re-inspired this series. I want them small, slick, populist subject, shiny. Sort of a guilty pleasure.

Week 4

Week 4 was great. Extra studio time, less time working on reports! This first one above is one of my assigned projects from David my mentor. The objects at the top left and lower right are pieces of photographs to be used as jump off points, but they are ripped out and placed on the canvas.

Finally started working on the gull and not the forrest floor. 

These two from the pond series I think are done or practically done. I think they have a certain photographic quality. A snapshot quickness. They will be strong when they are all done and hanging together.

This last one is done too. Very out of my comfort zone. Wrong horizon. Weird homogeneous color. Took care to make distinctive marks (Hannah would be proud!).  I also like the shape of this one and the first one. My mentor says my vertical paintings aren't very strong. The horizontal ones have deep space and the vertical ones "bog down in technique." Playing with some wider sized canvases. Too cold to make my own in the garage right now. (My hands freeze up and hurt after 10 or 15 minutes. So off to Blick Art!

Week 3

Very busy week! I don't know if I got exactly my 20 hours in the studio, but I will have more time this next week to make up for any time I missed. Spent an inordinate amount of time working on the first research paper (omniousness in David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock.) Got a rough draft finally out so on to the fun stuff. Visited the Walker with Jeffrey this week. We heard a lecture about Elizabeth Peyton. I thought I didn't like her until I walked through the retrospective and I think I do now. Well, I hate her of course because it's "easy" and she's famous, but I do like the shiny, pretty, fuzziness of the paintings. Even more excited by the exhibit of Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo. A LARGE retrospective! Radioactive penises were every where!

The two works above are from my new Pond series for which I've done a few already. Not much to say yet, it's early...

Starting 2 works for my mentor. Cutting up parts of photographs as starts in paintings. Each had to have an item and a piece of landscape. I need to paint to match that landscape. This piece had the photos placed intentionally. The other arbitrarily. 

This is the first painting in response to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. I like it a lot. Not my usual. Moved the horizon. Changed the paint a little. Out of focus. Eerie. So far, so good. I think the summation of the paper and the movies is this. There's the scene where the Crows start landing on the kids' playground. There's no music. When there are 4 or 5 and they keep landing slowly 1 by 1, it's scary. When we look and there's 500 of them on the playground I don't think it's quite as scary. The scariness/eerie part comes not knowing when exactly or if we've crossed over into the absurdity of the dream, when we ask ourselves, "is this real or am I dreaming?"

This seagull one is odd. I don't think I'm painting it.  It's sort of painting itself. I spent about 10 hours this week continuing to work on the background. I started it at the end of January. Don't know why exactly, but I had a clear idea of it in my head coming out of the residency. Hadn't even thought about my Alfred Hitchcock assignment yet. On 2/2/9 my Grandfather died. I was much closer to him than any male in my life. He was a big squawky bird, but strong and majestic. I guess this has sort of turned into an elegy for him.

Week 2

Julia and I were in Chicago this work. She went for Land O' Lakes and I went Museum-hopping. Mostly I ran around the Institute of Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art. I also have a good idea for some galleries for my next Chicago venture.  Assistant teaching is fun, but I found out that some grad students get PAID to do it.... DAMN. I also met with new mentor David Feinberg. We had a great critique today and he gave me two interesting assignments. Words don't really do them justice, so you'll just have to see them on the blog in the near future. Jeffrey and I also attended an AWESOME talk by Jerry Saltz at the U. He was amazing. I wasn't expecting much, but wow, he was inspiring! Busy week to say the least. OK, here's the work:

I decided to start a UFO series. Two sky studies here (above). They are smaller works on board. I don't have a lot of reason to do these except that I want to.

This is the first finished one from my "photography/painting" project. Sort of a painting collage when it's done. I think I will do around 12 or 16 of these total.

These two are about birds. Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock and also by a small book Hannah lent me about Oriental painting/marks. Top is base coat on canvas. This one I will paint thicker. Bottom one is on board. Bit more odd I hope...