I discovered this morning that RAW is featuring my art on their home page this week, which is accompanied by an interview. I tried to keep it frothy-it gets tougher to answer 'where do get your inspiration?' without sounding like a scratched record.
Barely any air flow through the studio today, so I'm feeling dizzy on the turpentine,or it could be my enthusiasm for the 'Ghost' piece which is almost complete. I'll be premiering it at the RAW show this Friday.
I'm also showcasing the other two smaller Ghost studies I produced in May. I was so dreadfully disheartened by the lack of bids on EBay for these,so I'm really rather hoping they'll find a more discerning audience at exhibit.
Artistically, it probably looks like I'm all over the map at the moment.
It certainly feels that way. If the only concession to being on EBay, is my artistic evolution through a series of experimental sketches, then so be it. Like most daubers, there is always that niggle to grasp that middle place between the figurative and the intangible. Abstraction has always struck me as a cynical compromise-a cop out toward a vague, indefinable, incohesion, that immediately separates itself as anything substantive for the viewer to grasp . Often it asks for so much latitude of depth, where often there is none. An arcane spatter for flourishing effect.
There are a few artists I can think of who to my mind bridge that chasm-De Kooning, Kitaj and of course Bacon-come immediately to the fore, and so-expanding on the Ghost piece that I really liked, today I put brush where my mouth is. The resulting stew (or spew) is what I can only think to describe as the fossilizing of souls, a disintergration of the physical to an ossified intergration with the ether. It also looks apocalyptic, like freshly fried corpses being decimated by some nuclear wind. It was inspired by a vague memory I have of a painting I saw in a magazine in the 70's called Man, Myth and Magic, which depicted a kind of atavism. I also drew on a set of pieces I was painting fifteen years ago, called Dispositions, which were abstract ruminations on the fire weed I'd seen locally, influenced by Graham Sutherlands work.
Anyway, I'm really pleased with the way the pieces are evolving-Ebay chicanery aside-I can see a through line in the set of oils I've been working on, from Disambiguous Foresight to Ghost onwards.
Is abstraction a natural process of an artist evolution, or is just a shorthand I wonder?
On Friday, we wandered over to Alex Salazars new gallery downtown. With more than a nod to Jenny Saville, the huge smeared portraits of adolescent boys, weathered faces and a bloodied newborn by Justin Bower may take the lions share of attention, but its the work of Renzo that held me captivated. In a city still without any culturally artistic center, its a welcome addition here and should do very well. And a new solo show fell in my lap this morning, on the back of my showing at Thumbprint. I shall be exhibiting from April 24th to June 5th at the San Diego Art Institute, with opening reception May 14th. I have my work cut out for me, I have at least three new pieces I want to finish before drop off, and our trip back to the UK at the end of April will be such a relief.
Finally, the scaled oil is coming along, which with three days before showtime is a good omen. After working three pieces, I am barely able to keep my eyes open, so I'll post more after a good nights rest.
The latest piece has felt like a revelation for me-it's almost a sister piece to the merging skull compositions I've been working on-Trinity, Life After Death and Disambiguous foresight with the exception that it feels like I made some sort of evolution in my painting.
Apart from when I've included the skulls in a figurative environment, the background element has always felt detached, like an object oscillating in a none space-its relationship has only been measured by color or what I would call a theatrical backdrop to instill an ominous grandeur that isn't there.
With this piece, I feel I've bridged that gap-making it seem like the space around the skull has fossilized and somehow biomorphically suffused with bone. Hard space if you will.
I was also trying to introduce a spiritual element as a counterpoint to the cold hollow skull motif, working on the notion that the cavities and shadows harbor echoes of thoughts past, almost in the same way phantasms haunt an old room following some emotionally traumatic event.
As a result, I've entitled it 'Ghost', I'm delighted with the result, and shall develop the piece to larger scale as a part of this particular group.
Here's that wonderful abstract piece of avant garde also called 'Ghosts' by David Sylvian from the early 80's. Hard to believe that anything so odd could ever be in the charts, but it was a different and better time then.
Title: Trinity Size: 11" x 14" Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
As Nietzsche said "if you gaze long into the abyss, then the abyss will gaze back at you"..In the shadows of my abyss are the triumvirate of friends I lost to colliding cars and disease. The temptation then was to give the piece names like some sort of plaque, but then to do so would be to suggest a monument to heroes, and as much as they were to me, there is nothing heroic about an end snuffed out prematurely. In the crevices of these melting angular craniums, there are echoes that there is no open armed three-tiered father figure to kiss away the rich vestiges of fleeting life with a new one. What the fuck could such an entity say to indemnify such cruelly snatched fate anyway? For the concept is as empty and brittle as a skull. A fossil of something that was once vivid, animated and filled with potential. A wasteland where nothing will ever grow. Almost certainly, this will be one of the scaled pieces for the shows in October. I've been listening to Big Audio Dynamites brilliant classic E=mc2 and feeling like the angry young man of my teens again, suffused with rage for the robbery of living at the hands of power brokers and merchants behind closed doors. Which is why I shall not be revealing the next piece until tomorrow, because its informed by some of the vitriol I've been feeling lately about the 'situation' here in the US, and as such could be possibly seen as controversial.
You can't tell, but the background for this piece has given me real contention, and I've reworked it half a dozen times. God, I'm turning into one of 'those artists', who worry over a shade of white. It just needed texture but I didn't want to compromise the sense of the image floating in a milky space. In the end, I imagined the skulls was emerging from a primeval fog, which seemed to do the trick. When doesn't emerging from primeval fog help, I ask myself? I've been forcing myself to spend sometime with Beksinski again. I say forcing myself, because he's one hell of a yardstick to beat oneself with. Francis Bacon and Goya have the same effect on me in all honesty, and I feel like a fucking serf in their wake. I long to be lost in the contemplation of large scale works fully-the diminutive keeping one foot in the affordable format feels like its dwindling my ambition, but the truth of it is that the large works just aren't selling right now, and I wish I could sell something-I really need to. Shit, if I sold one of those larger works a month, things would be so much less of a struggle for us. This living from dollar to dollar is as fucking old as I am. Despite that, I worked a piece today which I think may turn out to be one of the best things I've done when I rework it. I'm calling it Trinity,and I'll list it on the online yard sale tomorrow.
Title: Bring me the head of Leonardo da Vinci Medium: Acrylic on Canvas Size: 11" x 14"
Some weeks back, I read with wry amusement, that a group of scientists hoped to excavate the skull of da Vinci, in an attempt to recreate his features, thereby proving the theory that Mona Lisa, was in fact a portrait of the master in drag. With over five hundred years since his demise, I could give a toss about the whole sacrilege of the act, and I shalln't even venture into the fact that with world economy's tanking, the money that will go into the exercise would serve better say, in finding a cure for cancer. I do however find it galling that so much energy should be devoted to a work whose only enigma to my mind, is that it ever came to such hyperbolic prominence in the first place.
The piece took me around three and a half hours in all-a new record for me I think, and one which should justify the low price tag. Sadly, last night, I took the show down from Mosaic. The good news is that for anyone who missed that show, two pieces shall be on permanent display as part of their continuing collection,which means I shall be attending their opening night again next weekend. I also have another featured show next month at a gallery called Thumbprint on March 13th-which is a month from today. They've asked me to design the flyer,so I'll post more details soon.
Title: Disambiguous Foresight (Visions of the Afterlife) Size: 11 " x 14" Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Whilst I'm happy with the way this one turned out, the color didn't quite translate the way I envisioned it in my head, so I'm keen as mustard to transfer this and the last piece to scaled up oils. Working these pieces as comps first is really helping me flesh out the vision of this series, and giving me an ambition for what I'm hoping to achieve with it.
I've managed to paint five of the promised six paintings this month-although I shouldn't be too hard on myself since I've juggled two shows and a 36" x 42" fully painted commission in between. Out of those five, I've sold three, and at least the two that I mentioned, shall be repainted for the Big featured show in October. The show at Mosaic is being extended to the 19th of February too, so anyone who missed the chance to see the pieces should definately catch what is currently the best art exhibit in the city.
I also have two further shows scheduled-another featured show at the new Thumbprint venue, which will run from March 13th, and then on April 7th, I shall be showing and raffling a live painting for the Keep-A-Breast foundation at the Belly Up. Full details are up on my Appearances page, but I'll repost flyers here, closer to the date.
1.As the week draws to a close, I am putting the final touches to the piece which has taken me almost three months to complete. All being well, I should be able to post a final portrait soon.
The show at Belly Up has also been confirmed for November the 12th, and having seen the venue, I am beside myself with excitement. I shall be setting up my paints for a live painting event at around 6pm, as well as hanging the new piece and others, before the bands come on. Full details are at the following link: 2.And I posted another piece -the mentor painting, which I am reticent to sell because of its personal nature, but space is becoming an issue with so many pieces lining the walls now, and I need to let work go just as I do any emotions that manifest them to begin with.
3.So the best laid plans of mice and men-given my distaste for rodents, the quote always struck me as diminishing human achievement to nothing more than rats foraging for moldy cheese and spreading pestilence and plague with our infestation. Certainly following today's events at the Fort Hood facility, and the subsequent bile peddled by so called experts on various tv news channels, gives one pause that perhaps the sentiment isn't too far from the truth. Reflection rather than accusation takes precedent at such times, and as I watched the images, I felt moved listening to Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack on my ipod today. Sometimes the endless diatribe of reportage is so numbing, that one feels detached from the true tragedy of such events.
I discovered this morning that RAW is featuring my art on their home page this week, which is accompanied by an interview. I tried to keep it frothy-it gets tougher to answer 'where do get your inspiration?' without sounding like a scratched record.
