Hanging right there on the front wall is a piece by yours truly. This piece, entitled One Thing is Not the Other, sold at the show, and I can honestly say I will miss it because it’s been hanging in my studio for the past few months (seen here on a wall at my Open Studios 2011).

It is 20″x86″, and is done over a photo I shot of a great blue heron at a natural history museum…certainly one of the more unusual taxidermy poses I’ve seen of a heron.

Here’s a close-up of this piece:

1. Wear pants like these (and maybe don’t brush your hair):

2. Wear something that matches your painting (refer to these photos of Claire Thorson, Tom Maderos and I, next to our paintings today):

You can’t see the gleam in my eyes, and therein lies the weakness in blogging to communicate these things.

Honestly, I do feel that I have found something that resonates deeply with me, and I’m thankful for that. I like the scale of these pieces, I like working in mixed-media, I like the fact that I can work at a quick pace but continue to iterate, and modify, and work over. I like the materials I’m using (thin paint, rollers, very nubby/toothy canvas). This might be the most fun I’ve had in the studio in years. Or ever.

Not to say there’s not a struggle to bring the image to fruition. These pieces have just as hard of a time being born as any piece does. I grapple with each one, painting this over, emphasizing that, removing the other thing. Eventually it starts to coalesce into something that makes sense to me.

Here’s one titled Haven, 6′x9′.

Haven, Mixed-Media on unstretched canvas, 72"x108", 2012

And here’s a view of the studio, with three of these pieces up. Obviously the scale is important in these pieces, so this gives a better idea of scale. That middle one is not yet finished, but you’ll be sure to see it on this blog when it is.

This has been satisfying work, and has reminded me how much I enjoy working with mixed-media materials and working large, and how important drawing is to me, even when I’m painting.

Here’s my set-up…

And here I am working on the first piece…

That piece, which was done a few weeks ago, is shown in this short video in various stages of completion…

You can see that I started with a canvas split into two halves, red and white. From there, I drew figures in, then drew and painted and edited over many iterations. The finished piece is titled “Falling and Fallen”.

David Cohen writes in his recent review of Jenny Saville’s show at Gagosian Gallery, ”True pentimenti arise in the struggle to find position, to define form; they are retained either because the artist has no interest in disguising what led to the discovery; or else, sometimes, because they add texture, and thus heft, to an image (think Matisse, whose pentimenti somehow never undermine the illusion of single shot miracle in his charcoal drawings).  Or else, a tolerable mannerism, pentimenti can signal the effort and time that were necessary to fix the image and thus are part of that image (Larry Rivers, Frank Auerbach, Eugene Leroy.)”

My paintings often include pentimenti, as I layer paint over paint and modify color and composition. Sometimes I paint over old paintings, which is technically not pentimenti, but who’s going to argue the point? I like previous layers showing through…it’s less about mannerism and more about adding richness and unexpected passages to a painting.

Migration (I), 2010, Oil on Canvas

Migration (II), 2011, Oil on Canvas

Of course I do! They stare down at me from the paintings on my walls. My figures–and faces–have become more abstracted over the last several years, but facial expressions and body gestures remain of utmost importance. It’s a challenge to see how far I can distill things down while still retaining the humanness of the figure.

Here are some (of many) faces. You can click on the thumbnail to open the complete image.

Sneak previews…

canvases awaiting acrylic sketches

in-progress sculpture

This is one of those studio additions that you don’t know you need until you have it. I was reasonably happy with my smaller table, but this one will be a real luxury. All that space… 4′x8′ of space! I am just itching to get some work done on it, but Open Studios starts this weekend so the last thing I should be doing in my clean studio is welding. It will have to wait.

You can see a large drawing in the background that is ready for Open Studios. Stop by and take a look around. I will be open from 11am-5pm, Saturday and Sunday, at Mission Industrial Studios in Santa Cruz.

Am I ready? Most certainly not. My studio is a mess, but it is immeasurably more interesting to work on artwork than to work at cleaning the studio. But I will clean it–clean enough for visitors–and I’d love to see you there! Here is a preview, but I promise the ladders and clutter will be out of the way …