The last sketch in Sketchbook Vol. 19: “Chainsaw Santa”, and the completed front and back covers.
Above: The back cover is made up of newspaper clippings and a BART pass from a trip back to the States in July of 2009, a McDonald’s Cheeseburger wrapper in Spanish, tea bag wrappers from my good friend caffeine, and two numbered tickets from waiting in line at the Buenos Aires post office to ship Orange Gorilla Stickers around the world.
Above: The front cover is made up of pieces of newspapers from some of the cities I was in during a trip back to the States in July of 2009. The pink drips are leftover paint from my painting Bazooka Retrograde.
The first and only self-portrait I ever painted I did over 10 years ago in college, in an Intro to Painting class. I’m not sure why I’ve waited so long to do another, but I figure it’s time I knock one out. Below are the work in progress pics of a new one coming to fruition.
3 panels – each panel measures 23.75″ x 32″ (61cm x 81cm) • oil & acrylic on wood
In late 2009 I started a group of multi-paneled paintings called the Retrograde Series. The paintings are an exploration of the memories, questions, sights, sounds, tastes of my youth, and their juxtaposition against each other, and the world around me decades later.
With Orange Crush Retrograde I dive down that rabbit hole once more. A memory of sitting on a bar stool next to my Grandfather, feet dangling high above the floor drinking an Orange Crush soda, blends with a memory of hearing Madonna tell Dick Clark that she wanted to “rule the world”. I wonder about the long and short term effects of war being a constant backdrop to the American paradigm, and that butts up against the fondness I had for my armies of little plastic men.
The composition is split into panels and cropped to exaggerate the idea that no one part of the composition is supposed to make a clear definitive conclusion about what the images mean as a whole. The hope is that something new exists for each viewer, and it is up to the individual to decide what answers exist within.