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).
