STILLNESS 24" x 24" (61cm x 61cm)
oil on wood
2010
Over a decade ago I experimented with a style on 5 or 6 paintings (see “Untitled #2″ below) that was much different than the style I have developed over the years. It was free and loose, and used a palette knife instead brushes to apply the paint. Last week, after hitting a creative wall in the studio, I decided to revisit that style and see what happened. “Stillness” is the piece that resulted.
Click on above images to enlarge. Use arrow keys or mouse to navigate between them.
Music In The Video ALBUM RELEASE! The 5th Dank art video coincides with the release of Manuok’s latest album, “The Old Horse”. The brain child of the talented Scott Mercado, Manuok was a band I had the delight of seeing play multiple times when I lived in San Diego. The song in the video “Warship” is off their second album No End To Limitations. While I’ll have to wait until I move back to the States before I see them play live again, I’m stoked that today I’ll get to taste a whole new version of the magic Mr. Mercado and his crew have been making.
You can get the new album, along with news and tour dates, at www.manuok.com
Click on above images to enlarge. Use arrow keys or mouse to navigate between them.
I’ve only painted two self-portraits in my lifetime and both were done over 10 years ago. In early 2006 I had an idea for a new one. At the time my studio was a garage in San Diego and in the corner of it sat planks of wood I had collected for use in future paintings. I snatched four of the planks and hammered them together. Over the years that followed I would periodically apply with a palette knife the leftover paint from other paintings onto this wooden panel.
The idea was that the background would consist of a random/chaotic conglomeration of colors from my other visual explorations and over the top of that would be juxtaposed an image of myself in grayscale. A few months ago, 4 years after beginning the background, I began working on that grayscale image, and finally finished it earlier this week.
To me, the finished piece represents a visual journey, and an amalgamation of intertwined, contrasting ideas: Color versus black & white, chaos versus order, and the movement of time versus a moment of it. The piece is called Self-Portrait (Somewhere).
I was overdue for a gorilla painting…and even more so for an orange one.
Music In The Video Sweden has its share of bands making serious noise these days. Out of the mix one of my definite faves is Johnossi, a duo out of Stockholm, consisting of John Engelbert (songwriter, singer, guitarist) and Oskar “Ossi” Bonde (drummer, percussionist, singer). Fresh off the release of their third album Mavericks, their tunes are bouncing off my studio walls more and more. The song in the video, “Man Must Dance” can be found on their self-titled debut album (Amazon, iTunes).
Check out the latest news and info on them at following places: Official Website and last.fm.
Click on above images to enlarge. Use arrow keys or mouse to navigate between them.
For this past year my art studio has also been known as the living room in our apartment. There are obvious advantages and disadvantages of working at home. On the plus side no one would care if the only thing I wore to work was a feathered headdress and moon boots. On the down side, work and home life have an easy way of blending together making it difficult to focus and/or un-focus.
Last week though we decided to make a change. My canvases and paints now occupy a space I rent 19 blocks away on the 3rd floor of an old building in the neighborhood of Recoleta. The faded yellow room that I now dump my creative revelations and failures into sits atop two flights of worn creaky stairs, and was formerly part of a hostel that, until recently, filled both the second and third floors. As my easels moved into the 10″ x 10″ (3m x 3m) former dormitory, two simple wooden beds moved out.
In a bit of irony, not only does my studio reside in a former hostel, but on the first floor lives an old bar owned by Americans called El Alamo. The whole thing has me feeling a bit like Davy Crockett when I head to work each morning.
I’ve only been here a week, but I have a feeling some good things are gonna come out of this room.
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.
