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...

SEMESTER 2: WEEK 1

OK. Here goes. Semester 2. Was decompressing a bit last week with travel and PRSD (post-residency stress disorder :)  Last week I met with my mentor David Feinberg from the University of Minnesota. I get to be a teaching assistant to his painting class on Wednesday nights. Our first critique is tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday. I also am auditing an Art History Class at the U for Contemporary Art/Painting. I am also a bit surprised but in my preliminary research for a Semester 3 mentor, I received a very fast reply from New York artist April Gornik. Looks like she will be agreeable to mentoring next semester! Finished up my Residency summary and emailed to new advisor, Oscar Palacio. 

Spent a lot of studio time this week getting some canvases ready. I sanded and gessoed a bunch of masonite boards. I have never painted on this, but it was a common suggestion at the residency. Also painting on some smaller canvases because of residency suggestions. More on these later. 

I was a bit stumped starting this week. There's always a lot of mixed messages at the residency. Usually I will try some different things, but stay close to my advisor and 1 or 2 other professors. These next 3 I think will be part of a very large work. They are smaller, but I want to do a bunch that will add up to an actual landscape/scene. Was sort of inspired by Oscar's work and some other photographers. I guess these are a bunch of snapshots that will add up to some sort of collage kind of thing. Skies are always a good place for me to start painting when I am confused or distressed and needing to get started with out a clear path.

This next one is a study for the following painting. This one is on pre-made gesso board from the art store (for comparison to my own home made boards).  I am trying to get a thicker painterly effect going on this one. Lots of texture and brush strokes. (This is something that former advisor Hannah Barrett suggested in our last meeting.)

This weekend is also my first Chicago trip. I plan to make at least 2. This first one I will most likely be trying to get through the 2 big museums. I emailed Michael Newman (AIB professor) about other places to be looking at for my next trip.

Weeks 18 & 19

All 4 of these paintings are very wet so I apologize for the flash in the middle of all of them. Felt like I finally moved off of those 3 or 4 bigger ones that I was constantly working on and refining. Don't know how happy I was finally, but I just had to move on for my own sanity. These next 3 are all Lakes and all at or just after sunset (movie makers refer to this as Magic Hour because of the warm soft light that is everywhere). This one above is Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis and will have some buoys/moorings in a white pattern on the water. 

I need to keep my edge. The large clouds/lakes/island one from last blog didn't say as much as I hoped. The first comments I got about it were, "what are you trying to say? it's not very interesting." Maybe that's what I'm heading into at the next residency...

This one should say something. There's going to be a small moon or two at the top. Haven't quite figured that part of it out yet.  I like the isolation at the top. So much going on at the bottom and then 1 small thing at the top.

This picture is very dark, but I think it comes closest to Jeffrey's summation of landscape: trying to capture the ethereal atmosphere next to the very rough earth. Have noticed people piling rocks to make little "people sculptures" like the Inuit. This is happening all around the great lakes on hiking paths, etc. they will show up at the bottom of this one.

And finally this one. my interpretation of "Starry Night" by Van Gogh. Don't know if I have a lot to say about this one. It just is. Tried to capture the light, vibrancy, and color of the original while being with my paint stroke.

Weeks 16 & 17

I was out of town last week, so this covers the week before that and this current week. Continuing to explore. Working with some more layers, smaller brushes, greater detail. Had a great meeting with my mentor Christine Wilcox and I think there's a couple of works we looked at that I will go back into. 

This one might kill me. I tried rendering every leaf. Not sure how those old masters die this! It also isn't quite working the way I hoped. I do like that this is a bit of a different perspective (point of view) than what I always do and was suggested by Christine.

What to say about this one. So far it's just fun. Wet on wet and I've only done the top half obviously. Was shooting for "magic hour."

I am continuing with my landscape painting class and learning the "prismatic" method. It is slow and frustrating, but it is good technical practice for my work. It is helping me in another way as well. The more I learn the more I realize what I am doing in my own work that is "breaking the rules" and creating work that I am interested in. Harsher lights and darks, rendering certain details that wouldn't be in traditional work, etc. Good points that I am sure will work into the thesis.

Weeks 14 & 15

Couple of larger images I am continuing to work on. (Patience is a virtue, that is a difficult lesson all on it's own!) Working on trying to capture realistic colors and light-patterns. My landscape painting class is not going as well as hoped. They are dogmatic slaves that copy photos and really don't create interesting images. However, I am learning what I don't want to do. I am learning a lot about the things I can do to make sure my works don't fall in this category. I use a lot more white and black and try to push the extremes of the color scale to create a lot of drama and tension in my work. So I guess it's not a total loss...

These clouds have been very difficult and I have had to redo them a LOT! Many layers, many wipe-downs and do-overs. I can say I am not totally displeased with this latest incarnation and I did some things technically I have never done before...

This stump one has been totally redone. I was trying to do a lot when I realized the stump was the star of the painting. I put it in the middle and gave it the detail I was trying to spread around. It feels alive now and I like that. (Just for fun I put a Sasquatch back in the trees.)

This last one I have worked on for a long time it seems. Continually changing things and tweaking colors. Tried to anthropomorphize the tree but not sure if it worked. It may not be done, and I may just wait to get comments from the next residency.