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paintings

photography, women, paintings
Black Candy
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Black Candy
Digital photographs and spray paint on rice paper
October 2008

This is the final concept of Black Candy. It is not so much of a diptych as a magazine spread-type concept. The idea was to, of course, make a poster-size painting for a blacklight art show, but also to evoke a strong emotional response from the viewer in the relationship between the photo and the painting. The photo, which is pixelated, amateurish, evocative, fleshy, almost like a film still, contrasts with the stark neon Pop Art minimalism of the painting, made even more vulgar - in the sense of naive ignorance and inappropriateness, not so much intentional offensiveness - by the fact that it is spray paint on a very lovely rice paper.

Photo outtakes and original paintings here.
paintings
love/hate
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love/hate
Acrylic and latex on wood
August 2008; the background I painted in 2004.

Desktop size available here for your enjoyment.
paintings
vino
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April/May 2008
Acrylic & paper mache on canvas

I’m donating this to the MODA/VINO “Spirit of Italy” silent auction fundraiser for Heart House Austin. The idea was to do something that looked like a Bed Bath & Beyond print. It’s less edgy so hopefully that will bring in more money for the kiddos. It was easy on me - an hour, maybe hour and a half of work - plus I painted over an old canvas that was just taking up space in my closet. And, I get a nice date night out of it too. Art donors get two free tickets to the event with full wine tasting, food nibbling, fashion showing priviledges ($100 value)!
paintings
The Treachery of Words
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After René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images

Ceci n’est pas un bong.

Ceci n’est pas un dildo.

February-March 2008

Acrylic and spray paint on canvas

SOLD
collage, paintings
The Heavens Above
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November 27-28, 2007

Acrylic and pastel with fabric and paper collage on paper.

It was difficult to get a good photo, there was a glare on the paper no matter what angle I shot from.

$200
culture, paintings, ideas, critique, observations
Beauty vs Decoration
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Revisiting the bird silhouette that was a major element in my 2004 paintings has made me realize how much my experiences over the past 3-4 years have changed my approach to making art. When I first started using the bird silhouette, it was basically a copy of some hipster pop art I saw on Gallery Lombardi’s website. I say the bird was an “element” or an “image” rather than a “theme” because theme would imply there was some kind of meaning behind it. There wasn’t.

The same goes for a lot of hipster pop art. Art, for this sort, means a cool design with a lot of well-executed elements, but no theme or underlying idea. Which is why I really dug AMOA’s recent exhibit EXTRA-ORDINARY: The Everyday Object in American Art. The docent who gave the tour I went on admitted that a few of the pieces in the show didn’t really have a particular message, their purpose was more about the quintessential postmodern experience: to throw more questions back in the face of the viewer, to unsettle one’s perspective. Was it art or design… or neither? There was something deeply satisfying about hearing this question actually being acknowledged to the public by an art institution.

This question arose again as I re-worked my bird paintings. It was the first time I had fun painting in quite some time. The graphic designer part of my mind took over and went into cruise mode - the side that can easily make very simple things look interesting. Not that I don’t enjoy doing “real” paintings, instead the thought process at work there is a meditation on the execution of the piece.

Since most of my work over the past couple of years grown more in that direction, I embarked on the new-old bird paintings as a lab experiment in beauty vs decoration. Decoration makes people happy. Beauty makes them think. Decoration is cute, superficial. Beauty can appear ugly or pleasing, the beauty itself is in underlying (in the process, the meaning, the mystery).

I don’t think average people want to buy or learn or educate themselves about beautiful things these days. I’ve tried to see how/why one can call something art, and what goes into the making of it. I don’t think the bird paintings are art. They are design, they are decoration. Maybe there’s a little meaning - the bird is such an archetypal metaphor - but not too much. Just enough to make people feel elevated a little without dealing with the guilt of a message or solving a mystery. Art Lite.

On this note, I’m also conducting a marketing experiment during E.A.S.T. I’m not displaying any of my “real” work, only the Art Lite bird paintings. I get a lot of positive feedback about my plates and fabric paintings, whether to my face or whether I mill about my work at a show as a fly on the wall. But I get the impression that people don’t know what to make of it (I’m well-aware that I need to improve my presentation - I think that would help). If these decorative pieces prove to be more popular, I want to see that dynamic in action. Who knows, I might even sell one to a total stranger.

Then I’ll go back to painting on pillowcases.
collage, paintings
The Sky Below
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“The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless…The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away.”
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

November 2007

Acrylic and pastel with fabric and paper collage on paper.

The ladder collage is from a Holly Hobbie party tablecloth I got at Thrift Town. It was still in the package and had an old Gibson’s pricetag on it, a 5-10 store my mom used to take me to in the early 80’s. Imagine my surprise when I found out this is what Holly Hobbie looks like now! The background paper came from a set of wrapping papers featuring reproductions of 18th century floral patterns.

$200
collage, paintings
Bird painting III
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November 2007, reworked from 2004-ish.

Acrylic, colored pencil and paper collage on peg board

SOLD