Love / Hate

Boy do I have mixed emotions about this sort of thing.

Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

Snow dusted our town the other day and my daughter wanted to get to school early in order to take advantage of the pristine field.

I thought I might post some more "in progress" stills of the paintings I am working on.

Whatchya doin?

Miso and her favorite texture roller.

The new paintings in progress.
I'm reluctant to show full images until I am done.

A sketchbook doodle/painting study.

Fodder, Mirror, or Competition

Karen Jacobs linked me to the block prints of Keiji Shinohara

I can see why too.
Here is a snipit from an interview with Keiji at the above link put together by Wesleyan University's Learning Objects Studio.

Can you describe your background training and how it influences your present work?
I studied for 10 years with master printer Uesugi in the ukiyoe style, which is about a 1,000-year-old woodblock tradition and usually depicts either landscapes or beautiful women. Both color and form are very controlled and precise, and the imagery is always realistic. Both my sense of color and composition come from studying the masters of ukiyoe: Hiroshige, Hokusai and Utamaro. Although I personally am attracted to a more abstract style, I still like to retain some sense of a landscape in my compositions. I actually like that grey area of something in between a landscape and a completely abstract image. It leaves room for the viewer's imagination to fill in the ambiguity.

So if you no longer compose figuratively, what qualities are you trying to express in your work?
To me, each piece of work is its own world. Within that universe I am very interested in motion, and how it stops. So within each composition there is one area that has dynamic feeling, lots of movement and action, but there are also areas of stillness, to contrast, offset and balance the active areas. These areas where you stop are important because they anchor the whole piece and give it stability.

Chris Rywalt linked me to the paintings of

Leigh Ann Davis
I am new to Leigh Ann's paintings and certainly found some common ground in them. Unfortunately, I found myself wincing a bit while reading her "artist statement". I'm going to have to come up with one of these myself. I think I "get" what she says here, but I occasionally cloud over while I am reading it. If you have been a frequent visitor to this blog, you know that this is a totally unfair, if not hypocritical, criticism coming from me but it just seems too mushy in the mouth. Like they aren't her words. Even if she did spend a lot of time crafting this statement, it seems slightly dishonest. But I should walk the walk first. Here is her statement:

The genesis of my work is developed through a modus operandi, where inspiration meets operation, and methodologies are formed. Creating what I interpret as the abstract from the understood. As Paul Klee once said "Art does not reproduce the visible, rather makes visible".

These methodologies reconstitute a web of motivation and interpretation into functions producing both the physicality of painting as well as the independent manifestations. Which themselves originate similarly but multiply and evolve into diverse figures and characters embodied in organic constellations. Each art form is fashioned both individually as well as a unit in an alphabet-like language of fundamental symbols and elements, redefining their role in each environment.

I do not duplicate the human anatomy but rather systematically dissect and anatomize it, so I may untangle my own insecurities and mentally assimilate the artificial immortality that our society impresses upon us. My imagery, with that understood, stems from mental surveillance coupled with abstract dissection of the human anatomy and spiritual being. Thus, resulting in the physical recreation of the body by way of various mediums. This intuitive impulse to penetrate, distort and ultimately reconfigure the nuclear body to the point that I express it in an organic and topographical manner, has led me to the investigation of ownership, identity and control through self-manifestation.

In exploring these transitory emotions of inadequacy and safety which associate themselves with self-control, this body of work procreates many parallel images through a ceremonial reverberation of space, color, transparency, placement and ownership.


Bill Gusky recently posted a link toSquare America

"No matter how artful the photographer," the critic Walter Benjamin once wrote, "no matter how carefully posed his subject, the beholder feels an irresistible urge to search such a picture for the tiny spark of contingency, of the here and now, with which reality has (so to speak) seared the subject, to find the inconspicuous spot where in the immediacy of that long-forgotten moment the future nests so eloquently that we, looking back, my rediscover it."

Reason to blog

Study for painting, 1, 2006
Pen and ink on bristol
9" x 12"

The first year, I used this blog for many different purposes. Ultimately, however, it was always about painting. One of the unmeasurable payoffs for me is that the blogging has contributed to my first solo exhibition (in a non-alternative space) since 1995's Klein Art Works show. It will be held next year at the Kristi Engle Gallery in Los Angeles, November 10 - December 22 (2007). I fully intend to blog my way there in Year Two. Thanks Kristi.

Self Own Cell Phone

My cell phone has some old pictures on it.
I've been ignoring it for some reason.
I bought the phone because I couldn't afford a camera at the time.
It turned out to be a pretty cool investment.
Check out the painterly beauty of this vandalized storefront:

Hopefully you live somewhere where the kids still take pride in their work:

Here are two plein air paintings that I'll never get around to painting:

This one is fucking brilliant:

Our new dog Miso recently fell asleep in my shoe.

Cute, but check out her dark side:

Here is a fantastic deep space flip flop.
There is no photoshop here, just a cell phone camera up close to a car window.
If you focus properly, you can see inside and outside.

My daughter attended a birthday party recently.
Can you believe that six and seven year old girls can focus like this?

We left the party with some balloons.I thought I might close with a rainbow observation:

Belief

From This American Life's Superpowers episode of Feburary 2001, "John Hodgman conducts an informal survey in which he asks the age old question: which is better? The power of flight, or the power of invisibility? He finds that how you answer tells a lot about what kind of person you are. And also, no matter which power people choose, they never use it to fight crime." (It has a great prologue with ChrisWare).

Thanks to Bill Watterson whose strips I'm posting above without his permission. My daughter is having me read the entire Calvin and Hobbes anthology to her this week. I think she is about Calvin's age. I sense that she is understanding about 20% of the jokes, and yet she can't get enough of it. This morning she tried to convince me that she was her "duplicate" and didn't need to go to school, I was supposed to look around the house for the real Zaida. I wonder what Bill Watterson is doing now?

Which would you rather have?
	The power of flight?
	The power of invisiblity?
pollcode.com free polls

1998 Back Catalogue

I loved making these paintings. I was in a groove with this cluster. My making and thinking reinforced one another. I kept finding new meaning in them and the process was full of surprises that made the act of painting exhilarating. My many reasons for stopping this shtick seem rather empty and jaded from where I sit today. Click here to see some other paintings from this cluster. (Sorry, the images at the Flickr link above have all sold.)Memory of Twin Lakes, 1998
Polyurethane and acrylic on panel
11" x 11"
$300

The Fold Stands Empty, 1998
Polyurethane and acrylic on panel
11" x 11"

$300

1994 Back Catalogue

I don't suppose that I have ever stressed how much I have been influenced by Rhoda Kellogg. It was her research and books about the Psychology of Children's Art that turned me onto the notion that "from Korea to Kansas and from Spain to Siam, children everywhere draw the same things in the same way at the same age." This gave me hope for painting as being something that might be able to build on our common heritage rather than focus upon our differences. You know, something that transcends time and place. I have gone through phases where I have tried to tap into that, dare I say it, universal truth. And yet, I've also been taught to be wary of anything claiming to be universal ( Joseph Campbell bashing can be placed here). So I want to make it clear that I never channelled the"child-like" marks in the paintings below. Rather they are calculated symbols wallowing in a sea of controlled accidents. I sense that these paintings (found under my parent's bed during a recent move) which have never been exhibited anywhere, are having a profound influence on my current work. Shepherd Rod, 1994

Polyurethane and acrylic on panel

12" x 12"
$300

Cloak Float, 1994

Polyurethane and acrylic on panel
12" x 12"
$300

Pediment Complete

At night, I was carving this in the old carriage house (soon to be my wife's sewing chamber and your guest room).
Through that open door, chemicals known in the State of California to cause cancer were flying.
I finally finished this pediment project. It looks a little lighter because I took the pictures below right after I had put on the final coat of paint and it is still drying.

Now I might have time to do some painting.

Identity Management

When I took a break from blogging recently, I couldn't help but check my stat counter for the weeks I was off line. I thoroughly expected my daily hits to eventually trickle to zero. I was surprised to find that even without posting anything, I was able to maintain an average of 30 visitors a day! This is all thanks to Google. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but my understanding is that if someone Googles something and then follows a link, then that link moves up a notch in Google's ranking. Am I wrong? The outrageous result is that someone's mistake can force someone else's mistake so that a blog like mine can accrue a very high ranking for searches for a chair or a car. I never even posted these images, only links to them, and now I have a steady stream of (understandably) dumbfounded visitors. Who are these people looking at my blog? I don't really have control of my audience do I? In fact, I received a recent e-mail from an artist/blogger/friend regarding my comments about my drinking habits: "Your confession on your blog is pretty frank. It's either really honest or, er, uh, foolish. Guess you're not concerned about future job hunts or running for office." I initially shrugged off his comment and wrote back about my blog identity being slightly fictional, like I believed all histories to be etc. etc. but then NPR just went and reported "Startups Help Clean Up Online Reputations" and I lost a little of my conviction. Is the fact that I like to drink beer (or that I did like to drink beer I should say) embarrassing information that needs to be scrubbed? Just in case I should ever apply for a faculty position somewhere, should I publicly state right now that I find blogging an art form and I therefore am allowed a hyperbolic license? I've never had a beer in my life! That would be against the first rule of the Secret Society of Openness. Plus, how am I supposed to get a job teaching anyway, when painters like Matthew Brown can't even land a teaching gig? You Los Angles folks should go see Matthew's current show at Michael Kohn Gallery. Below is his Sailwind Preserve, 2006. He is so great. Hire him.

Untitled Block Print 1

Last year I made no effort to sell my work on the blog.
That is not entirely true. The whole year could be considered an effort to establish a context for the thing I love to do. Newer visitors can check the "archives" for a chronological record of the year, or one could also peruse the "labels" for a different kind of reason to the rhyme. Both the "archives" and the "labels" can be found in the "sidebar" on the right. Update: I've moved the "labels" to the bottom of the page, they were too long and ugly, but useful. Also in the sidebar is a category of links called "Daily Dose". These are links to blogs that I like to read which are (for the most part) made by talented makers and thinkers. The sidebar is always in a slow flux. The body, or post, which you are reading now, changes whenever I feel like it. The newest change is that I am going to start selling things through this blog. Starting with this block print and some older paintings that you'll find below when you scroll down.
I've posted three different examples of the block print so that you can see that the grain will be different on every one and that the print itself is intentionally crude, but not poorly done (there may be a glitch here or there, but nicer glitches than any inkjet printer could do!). They were printed with Daniel Smith's Traditional Relief Black#79 which has a unsurpassed "blackness". They are printed on 8 and 7/8th inch squares of quarter inch wood panel. This will be a signed limited edition run of 20 prints. Different from last year's Art For the Masses Giveaway, these are for sale for $40. An introductory low offer for sure, and subsequent prices will be more appropriate.

Untitled Block Print 1, 2006
8 7/8" x 8 7/8"
Ink on wood

Edition of 20 (15 left)
$40

Orient the Five

OK. So it has been harder than I thought to make five paintings that I am really proud of right now. I blame the beer. Its the beer that I'm not drinking that is holding me back. I want to make it clear that nothing bad has happened, there has been no traumatic episode which has been the catalyst for my not drinking (I am soooo lucky). I just made the completely insane decision to see what would happen to my life if I stopped drinking for a year. I know, I know. One hundred percent macadamia nuts. But, ever since I could read, I've assumed that some horrifically tragic event would compel me to change my life with a romantic, righteous, and obsessive focus. I figured if Bruce Wayne could become Batman, so could I. All I needed was to witness my parents being gunned down by a thug. . . and lots of money. When I turned 43 I finally realized that neither of those things were going to happen. So, after 25 years of an average of 6 beers a night, I am about three weeks into the Strait Life. It has been crystal clear and boring. Beer allowed me to ignore how utterly stupid painting is. Delusions of grandeur are kind of addictive too. Anyway, I'm on the upswing of a brief well curve . Already, I've lost 5 pounds without lifting a finger (well, I have been walking the dog) and I have a verbal agreement to show at a gallery in LosAngeles in a year (more on that soon). The five new paintings are coming. But to fill the time and test the Paypal system, I've posted the block prints above and the five paintings from 2001 below. These paintings are all four foot squares. Oil on panel. They are sitting in storage and really need a home. I've priced them low at $1500 which factors out to be below minimum wage. But I can't stand to see them in storage (or would that be not see them?) I also chose these paintings because Chris Rywalt recently posted about Sara Eichner's paintings and I saw some of myself in Sara's work. The five paintings that I posted below are from a cluster I did while trying to teach myself how to oil paint. What I find interesting is that at the time, I really found the painting's orientation important. That is, which end is up made a difference. It seems it is important to Sara too. The interesting thing is that today, I am making images that need to be rotated. If they don't work in all four orientations, I think I've done something wrong. In fact, I relish in the psychological shift that occurs when my new works on paper are viewed from each of their four possibilities (click here to see those new works on paper). Anyway, I like the following five paintings. I'm proud of them. And just remember, you will never see prices like this again.

Context for the older five

Back in 2001 when I was painting the five paintings below, Matthew Landkammer came to my studio and wrote the following for a early art e-zine called, I think, Redheaded Stepchild.

Steve LaRose once had a huge, sun-drenched studio in Chicago with wood floors and windows on two opposing sides. When he moved to Seattle he found himself working in a basement with virtually no natural light, in what he describes as "a very claustrophobic space where you can only look at one painting at a time-the one you are working on." Recently, though, he landed a space in the South Lake Union neighborhood. This space has southern exposure and overlooks Aurora, the Space Needle, and Frank Gehry's latest architectural achievement.

Reveling in all this new space, LaRose has covered the walls in his studio with what amounts to a small retrospective of his work. Many artists hang recent work on their walls and put the rest away in the "stacks." LaRose likes to be able to sit and look at his past work and see how it's evolved. He recently realized, for instance, after looking through eight years' worth of old slides, that he's been on a perpetual quest for just the right blue. Attempts at this blue-a blue he describes as "the blue of an old Volkswagen, faded and flat"-creep into his work all along the way.

The evolution started with pieces LaRose made more than a decade ago- pieces built up from a background of patterned wallpaper or fabric, then layered over with strong geometric patterns and, on the top layer, floating abstract squiggles. A profound visual depth is created with well-restrained layers of glaze. "I found," he said, "that four layers of glazes was just about right. If you do more, it gets confusing." Because of this visual depth, the viewer can't look at the painting all at once. You need to "flip through focus planes" to discern the different layers; a kind of active viewing is necessary to take in the entire painting.

These paintings evolved into abstract works in which an initial layer of heavy paint puddles were totally obscured by many layers of solid colors, and then excavated with sandpaper to create a field of abstract shapes. Each shape (the original dots or puddles) has thin rings surrounding it, evidence of all the layers of paint that have been sanded away. These paintings are depth-rich, too-but in a different way. From afar, they resemble psychedelic swirls or graphic dot patterns. When the viewer approaches, though, there is a visual vibration that occurs because of the close concentric paint rings around each dot or squiggle. LaRose was interested in the way these paintings created a sort of macro/micro environment; they read in vastly different ways, depending on how close the viewer is.

When he showed these paintings at Oddfellows Hall on Capitol Hill last year, there were groups of kids who kept coming back, and brought different friends each time. "[The paintings] were really popular with the ravers," he said. This psychedelic edge was the undoing of LaRose's relationship with a Chicago gallery: "Once I felt like [the owner] wasn't responding to the work anymore, I knew it was time to leave the gallery."

After leaving the gallery, LaRose was no longer expected to do work that fit a particular style, and began to experiment-to, as he put it, "figure out how to paint [again]." One experiment involved choosing a word from the dictionary for each letter of the alphabet, and then making 26 marker drawings to illustrate each chosen word. Identical in medium and format, the images themselves seem to be all over the map-suggesting the liberation that grows out of working within tight boundaries.

LaRose is currently working on a painting that hangs on a wall next to the window. On either side of the canvas run vertical wood strips with large nails parading up the edge. I asked if this was a leftover from the previous tenant; in fact, it is a structure that LaRose built in order to work on this painting. The background of the painting resembles old wallpaper, and LaRose is painstakingly painting and repainting the edges of each shape (again, the concentric lines of color, this time laboriously hand-painted). A wooden pole rests in the crooks created by the nails, and gives LaRose a bar to steady his hand against as he works.

In the middle of the canvas, just off-center to the left, is an orange oval, which looks as though an orange spotlight were shining on this bluish wallpaper. The effect is that of an orange glaze, but in fact the colors are opaque and precisely mixed to create this effect-a trompe l'oeil lighting trick. LaRose's day job is painting sets for a local theater. When asked if the "spotlight" was a reference to this, he told a story of having created-with paint-the impression of light on the stage surface, then watching as actors approached the area and looked over their shoulders to ascertain the source of the light. This same effect is emerging in this painting.

Another recent painting hung high in the corner is a still life involving a Bambi figurine, a spaceman toy, an antique mirror, and what appears to be a field of small purple flowers. The image is reflected into each corner of the canvas, giving the impression of looking through a crude kaleidoscope. LaRose painted two of the images directly from the still life, then painted the other two reflections from the original two. When he talked about this painting he seemed as delighted as someone at play. He's done other paintings of small plastic toys in his back yard, setting up still lifes on fence railings just to get outside and enjoy the act of painting. He works hard, sure- there's a lot of work on his walls as proof-but when you boil it down, LaRose makes art for the same reason most artists do: for the sheer enjoyment of it.

Kirk & Kirby

Kirk & Kirby, 2001
4' x 4'
oil on panel

Kirk & Kirby (detail)

$1500

Trialogue

Trialogue, 2001
4' x 4'
oil on panel

Trialogue (detail)

$1500