BAD DREAMS on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
Acrylic on wood panel. 16” x 16” (40.6 cm. x 40.6 cm.)
This is a painting I specifically made for the upcoming “DREAMS” issue of BLABWORLD magazine. The show should be in October 2012, and then the painting will become available for sale. (Copro Gallery, Santa Monica, Ca. USA)
This painting has been a BITCH from day one. When I started it, I was sick with a cold. I’ve put almost twice the time into this as my last painting, (and they are the same size, 16” x 16”) Most of that extra time was fixing things and changing things. I almost gave it up twice during the process. I wanted to trash it! It was often a frustrating drama and sometimes depressing. However, I pushed myself to the end. Sometimes my work just goes that way. Now, after I have finished it, I like it! This one I call, “BAD DREAMS.”
This is my most recent painting in the series I call “Planktonauts.” This is #3.
PLANKTOAUTS V2 on Flickr.
I can see endless possibilities for this kind of painting. Imagination generated, no landscapes, no gravity, no perspective, no rules.
Garden study #2 on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
This is my second “Garden Study.” (you can see the first one here on FLICKR, it’s next in line in the set ) I’m now jumping into a third. I will continue to make these ‘test paintings’ , approaching the subject from different perspectives, until I’m sure of my direction for the vary large “Garden” commission I have coming up.
This one is 12” x 16” on panel (acrylics)
Garden Study on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
12” x 16” Acrylic on panel.
Here’s a study I hope you will find interesting. I’m experimenting with ideas for my large garden painting. Thinking about how I want to represent the colors and characters that will live in the painting.
“THE NIGHT TRAWLERS”
30in. high X 40in. wide, (76cm. X 102cm.) Acrylic on stretched Linen (If you’d like to see a larger picture, here’s a link: http://www.grotesque.com/museum/NewVmmPages/Night_Trawlers_II.html)
This is a commissioned “re-painting” of an older painting, ‘NIGHT TRAWLER’, which can be seen here: http://www.grotesque.com/museum/NewVmmPages/NightTrawler.html
I was very happy to accept this commission because this painting has a lot of personal meaning for me.
I want to walk into this picture and disappear. I wish to leave the absurd trials and tribulations of men behind, and become part of my painted world. A more interesting and mysterious world where fish rise up above the water to stare at men. Where fish can fly like birds, and translucent creatures swim across the starry night sky shimmering in moon light.
Many years ago, when I was a young boy, my father would wake me before dawn to go fishing in the Ocean. We would drive through the foggy San Francisco streets to “Muni Pier” , buy bait wrapped in yesterdays newspaper, and drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. There my father had moored an old 26 foot inboard with a cabin. To my young eyes a Ship! As the first false dawn light began to color the world, we would board with our gear. Trembling with the morning chill, breathing out hot steam into the cold, he’d start the engine. The smell of gasoline, bait and salt water is a heavenly memory.
We made slowly out the jetty and into the San Francisco Bay to cross the “Potato Patch”. This is an area of rough water under the Golden Gate bridge where many a small boat has gone down in a sudden storm. Past this fearful patch of rough water lay the beautiful blue waters off Marin County, California. We would skirt the shore, find a still cove and drop anchor. These coves were always surrounded by high cliffs with wild trees overhanging the edges. The Cliffs were natural wind breaks. The water was blue black with its depth, and still as a mirror. The smell there was pine forest mixed with salt water, morning sun, exhaust fumes and dead fish. When I die, if I smell this, I will know there is a heaven after all.
My excitement to begin was so extreme that my fingers would tremble while I set my hooks and sinkers. My father and I would sit side by side in lawn chairs as the boat gently swayed in the calm morning water. The fog would clear in spots and open holes in the sky. Through these openings rays of white orange sunlight would appear. Someone called these “The Fingers of God”.
And what fish we caught! I never knew what monstrous beauty I might pull from those waters! Creatures from science fiction! Things that I was sure no one had ever seen before! Huge green purple kelp fish with bulging eyes and fins that looked more like seaweed than fish fins, mottled with countless of hues of blues, greens and violets and blacks. They were covered with tiny slithering worms and tiny jittering crustacean fleas. Amazing things that I would stare at with the wide eyed wonder of a seven year old boy.
There were Leopard Sharks with beautiful black spots. Fish that looked like futuristic cylindrical space ships, Crabs, giant jellyfish, White sharks as big as our boat! (Very scary!) and so many more! The sea’s imagination knows no bounds!
The fish my father wanted were the Salmon and Stripped Bass. He once caught a 50 pound Salmon off the Gate! There were big Bat Rays that might take 3 hours for my father to land. He would never know what they were until it surfaced. He always thought he might have a huge salmon, and would curse in rage when it was only a “F-ING RAY” that he had sweated hours to bring to the surface!
My favorite times were slow and silent. When our lines made the only ripple upon the water. The only sound was the soft lapping of the dark water against our boat, the sound of gulls, and my fathers breathing. I would try to match my breaths to my fathers as we sat in silence. I was a miniature version of him, looking into the dark waters thinking our thoughts. I wonder now what he was thinking. I wanted to be him. He was perfection. It was the perfect harmony of a father and son. It’s a precious jewel of a memory.
In my painting are remembrances of the rocky cliffs and the calm waters of these pristine California coves. I wonder if they are still there as they were way back then? (Circa 1958) I think not.
NANOFAUNA on Flickr.
Here’s something a little different. Entitled “NANOFAUNA” (9” x 12”, Acrylic on board)
I enjoyed making this painting. It never bored me. It has a complexity that I find fascinating. On the other hand, it doesn’t have a lot of “life”. What I’d like to do is try to blend this sort of complex structure with my life forms, inject more “organic” into it, … give it more life.
