Festival of Lights

The video above is from last year. It essentially represents what happened this year. For some reason, last Friday, I only managed the image below.
Today we made our little light shrine to ward off the impending darkness.

Penziluv, 12

Flickr does the job

Steven LaRose, Spring's Guest Chamber 1997
Varathane and acrylic on wood, 32 x 40"

I used to take fairly adequate slides of my paintings. Then, about six years ago, when it was clear that digital was the future, and while I was working at a hurry-up-and-wait production studio, I scanned all of my slides and burned them to discs. Needless to say, I didn't take the time to transfer the titles as well. I was scanning on the fly between things I was "supposed" to be doing. That is why I have a set of paintings in my 1997 Flickr set that I have lost the titles for.

Recently, I had a collector fill in one of the titles for me. Spring's Guest Chamber. SLAM. Of course. How could I have forgotten such a perfect title.

This is one of the itsy-bitsiest things I am thankful for.

Time for "Best of 2008" lists

The sketch above was made by Charmagne Coe. I snatched the image from her Flickr page. I was scrutinizing her work because she recently included me in her "Favorites from 2008" list over at her blog my coffee-name is sally. Charmagne obviously has a refined eye for a particular sort of line quality. In a thank-you email I sent her, I called her a "soul sister." It must be the appreciation for a trail that skips intuitively along with confidence. You can see in the sketch above that her tool is not only exploring the surface of the picture plane, grabbing contours out of the mist, but it is also rising up and down and sculpting in that delicate realm that is the thickness of ink.

I am proud to have made her list. I also wonder if I could come up with my own Top Ten Blogs of 2008? Or, maybe I should create categories like "Most improved painting blog" or create a "Painter/Blogger Hall of Fame." I still have a month. I'm also a little curious if any of you have new favorite painter blogs? I have not been actively trolling like I did when I first started three years ago. I've become lazy and comfortable with the few sites I visit. There must be thousands more out there, and yet, my little links list is still the same.

Anyway, Thanks Charmagne.

In a far less deserved list, my video of Nirvana at Lamefest 1989 made Billboard's Music Milestones 20 cool videos from 20 years of SubPop bands. My resume is complete.

Penziluv, 11

Two more selfown, Flora and Fauna

Cell phone image recovery

I have had a lame cell phone for two years. I assumed that it was not compatible with our Macs. I stopped using the camera because I thought the images were inaccessible. Yesterday however, I learned a little about Bluetooth and fairly easily transferred the thirty fuzzy images onto our desktop. Thirty ghosts from two years ago. It is too bad that in that time, I have lost my enthusiasm for found Rothkos.

My New Favorite Color Resides Between Alizarin Crimson and Raw Umber

Imagine painting a painting of the person you have made a pledge to

(still not done yet)

I can't bring myself to recycle this

This was found in an attic of a Chicago rental. There was a stack of thousands. I should have taken them all. Instead, I cropped only one and forced it into an inherited frame.

DipTic

I call this my Art

Steven LaRose, Mums, 2008

Acrylic and oil on wood, 20 x 16 inches

I just finished this painting. Or, rather, it found a terminal extremity. A final resting place. I am not entirely pleased with the painting's Gestalt, but I've learned that I am a poor judge of these things and that often times the paintings that I find uncomfortable are those that are appreciated by others.

Craft in progress

I have a hard time getting started on paintings like this. It is difficult to find the spirit. Reproducing a photograph with paint can be tedious if you forget your goal. Eventually, the image disappears and each mark strives for resonance. A sea of vibrating potential, orchestrated for an instant in the form of my daughter and dog on a couch.

No it isn't done yet.

Pond Porn

I am painting a simple scumbled glaze this week. At least the backyard is nice.

Painting From Photographs (third phase) (it ain't done yet)

MORATORIUM EXTENSION ALERT!!! Roberta Smith on photography based painting - "as art formulas go, nothing beats paintings based on photographs".... "it is something of an art-world plague". JUST in Time! The Jerry Saltz call for a four-year moratorium on photography based painting expired this year!

research assistance: Brother Bromirski

Steven LaRose, Johannes Gutenberg, 2008
Acrylic and oil on wood, 20 x 16 inches

Moments ago I finished the painting above.
I am pleased and bewildered by the write-up below.

The Art Scene, by Julie VandenBerg.
November 6, 2008
The Sneak Preview, page 29.

"Lately, I have been pondering our societal tendency to put things into black and white terms, especially with our current presidential election. Many people feel forced to choose the lesser of evils because they don’t feel that the two party system is working. So much of it seems like a big commercial, sponsoring corporate views.

With all this on m mind, I perused galleries, looking for a show to spark my interest. I came upon Steven LaRose’s paintings at SOU’s Thorndike Gallery in the Art Building. Steven LaRose teaches painting at SOU. He titled his show, which will be up until 11/15, “Life Science.”

I find it interesting that many artists who seem to express contemplation of truth beyond the black and white explore that expression through the combination of science and art, or at least through their perception of that combination. Some of the art from these “seeking” artists looks scientific and some doesn’t, but I think the merge with science often takes place in the way the artist views his process and how he approaches the art-making itself.

I especially like the painting, “A Place Called Sleep,” in which LaRose has a nonsensical pathway imposed over a wall-paper-like background, leading to a black haze.

LaRose states that, “Painting is a kind of thinking that requires an infinite appreciation for variables and relativity. Thinking with paint is an antidote to the black-and-white endgame that appears to be poisoning our society. There is no slick link of right and wrong, only sticky webs of possibility. Within the grayscale there lies the Truth. Black and white exist merely to define the configurations of intuitive meaning that make up the matrix of complex and oftentimes, contradictory relations between things and no-things. In the alchemical laboratory that is the studio, the painter balances intention with accident. . . in a search for the equilibrium of surprise and predictability.”

Steven’s statement aligned (in my mind) with something I read recently – the introduction for the book Modern Prints & Drawings by Paul Sachs (1954). Sachs quotes Thornton Wilder’s 1951 Harvard Commencement address in his introduction.

Wilder Says that, “I have been an intermittent teacher all my life and when I return to a university I find myself continually drawing comparisons, not comparisons between institutions, but comparisons between something far more striking and instructive – comparison between atitutdes, tacit assumptions, the thought and literature that are about us all and it is how they are assimilated that is interesting to us.”

Wilder goes on to state that, “the modern student is all alive to the complexity of man in himself and others. He is profoundly interested not only in good but in evil, and he assumes that life is morally difficult.”

Life is morally difficult. I believe that’s what artists like Steven LaRose use art as a means to decipher the world’s complexity, as a place to explore issues that don’t fit neatly into a system, as a medium to seek.

Happy Election!"

Penziluv

I rode a motorcycle for the first time today. I figure this is next.

I almost missed this:

"Lost At E Minor is an online publication of inspiring art, illustration, photography, music, fashion, film, and more, featuring our latest discoveries in the ever-changing world of contemporary pop culture.

Since 2005, a worldwide team of editors and writers — based in cities as diverse as Bogota, Berlin, Manila, New York, Melbourne and more places in between — have kept their ear to the ground of 21st century civilization in order to inspire our readers with their latest finds.

Everything we feature is there because we like it, not because some ridiculously rich sponsor has thrown a stack of greenbacks our way. Not that we don’t like ‘da duckets’. In fact, we welcome any economic ’subsidies’ we can get. But at the end of the day, our iPhones are tax write-offs, and we do this out of love, not for money."

You can see my fifteen minutes by clicking here.

Looking to conspire: Web animator who will work for Art.

How hard would it be to tween these two images?

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

SF bay area craigslist > san francisco > artists

please flag with care:

miscategorized
prohibited
spam/overpost
best of craigslist

local artist seeks art patron/lover with table saw (alamo square / nopa)

---

Reply to: comm-903266092@craigslist.org ^[?]
Date: 2008-11-02, 3:40PM PST

local artist working on completing a 6 month series of works, seeking local art lover/patron who has a table/miter/scroll saw. want to build the final framing for my works (collage on masonite) and prefer to manufacture to my own specifications than pay someone to do it.

looking to build a working relationship, share conversation and libation, as well as share works with those who keep my energy progressing.

my work can be seen at www.chrisrusak.com

live in alamo square area, would be great if you were closeby as I'll need to transport my stuff to your saw.

in simple terms: Looking to borrow usage time of your table/miter/scroll saw. I supply all the materials.
you: get free artwork and incidental libations.

that simple.

your local artist thanks you.

• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 903266092

The Back Burner's Revenge

What a great name for a band! The Back Burners.
Q - What are your influences?
A - The less important passions of three serious painters.
Q - Sounds kind of Slacker
A - Do you mean Gen-ex?
Q - Yeah, but not the branded sloth of slackerdom, but the Sisyphean slacker born in 1963.
A - No way! Malcom what's his name was born around that time. . . wait. . . was it William Gibson who wrote that book?
Q - Which book?
A - Generation X!
Q - . . .
A - Come on. You've never read Generation X?
Q - . . .
A - But you have a clear definition of slacker?
I've started two paintings based entirely on photographs. Each photograph (if we can still call them that) was taken by my wife Stacy (and I don't mean anything possessive when I say my). The first image is of Zaida and Miso on the sofa. Stacy downloaded it from her iPhone. She captured the other image with the Photo Booth application and the just as small lens built in to the laptop. Stacy is currently using the image as her avatar or profile picture on the social networking system (cancer?) called facebook.My mother wanted to put the image from the iPhone in a specific frame she had previously purchased at a yard sale. Much to my Mom's surprise, a 72 dpi image taken with a lens the size of a (very small thing) did not reproduce well at 12 x 16 inches. It is a sweet image. I volunteered to reproduce it with paint. To somehow make it better with scale.

And then there is this unfinished Vermeer I hang up in times like this.

CastRose: A visual duet. (Rhythm section seeks lead vocalist)

I've cleaned up my studio and painted the walls white. The main course has been served and the temperature can be turned up on the back burners.
Here are six paintings that I'm going to be shipping to Anthony Castro. He has touched all of these paintings at some point. A couple of the paintings have flown across the country several times. I am hoping that Anthony can wrap some of these up as well as push some deeper. I am hoping that he will be more confusing and more decisive.
I am hoping that he will start two more for me.
We don't know what we are doing. Except for a standard dimension, we haven't made a plan.
Anthony has been exploring a technique that utilizes frisket paper and/or tape-stencils. This old shtick seems to be re-charged in his hands. He is able to create a hard-edge lattice that is surprisingly organic. I feel a kinship to his respectful irreverance of Craft. Anthony's sexy line-quality could make him the DJ Spooky of calligraphy.
Funny thing is, I barely see the bouquet of marks he is capable of in these six paintings. In fact, the most obvious marks seem to be my attempts to impress him. Me trying to be fluid and sensitive but coming off as ham-fisted and goofy.
I am appreciating the balance of large pulls and obsessive flicks. This is what I imagine jazz is like. There is a call and response that we painters miss out on. We are cloistered away in our studios. Maybe the next step is to form a band of painters? That would be soooooo hard. How do musicians do it? Imagine being one of the three members of the Cream of painters.

Would anyone be interested in being part of a painting triumvir?
(auditions forthcoming)

Here is a post from three years ago today. Yikes. I've created blog sediment.

Inspirational Women Painters

Here are some low-budge' pix of a mural I did in my daughter's bathroom. It is simply a pastiche of Mary Blair's work, who I found to be a profound and early inspiration.

In response to Amy's question from Sunday:
"If you were to do a set of these *foundation* sketches today, would there be any women represented as inspiring artists? and would they all still be paintings about painters?"
The paintings would always be about painters no matter how much I would want to be a conceptual artist or a musical artist or a legal artist or a garden artist. But today's inspirational pool to choose from is enormous. Here are some women painters from my bookmark list, click on their names to see how they kick my butt:
Julie Heffernan,
Hilary Harkness, Nina Bovasso, Jennifer Reeves, Isabella Kirkland, Kysa Johnson, Kaye Donachie, Andrea Hersh, Jane Fine, Karin Davie,
Molly Vidor, Kim Squaglia, Jane Callister,

3 comments:

amy t. said...

i really like how the work of over half of these artists has an immediately obvious kinship with your paintings, and helps to prove the point i was hoping would be proven with my leading question from the other day, which is . . . you've grown as an artist and as a viewer since 1992.

i'm not surprised you're still a devoted painter or a devoted talker. i'm not over art. some work does rock me. i'm even still charmed by the occasional painting. but what is most interesting to me about this visit to your site is that what i really want to hear more about is your garden and brock's social work.

11:51 PM

Steven LaRose said...

I've grown? I must have been insufferable. I feel the same if not behind. I'm surprised that I'm still painting. I thought I could give it up anytime. Alas and alak, I am jumping back in with full devotion. I'll tell you about my garden but should everyone else have to read it? Well, I guess they could stop reading any time but why make sharing human and personal stories available to people you don't know? Some of the worst examples of blogs are up in the corner of this one when you click on "Next Blog" just surf that wacky world and get bored (and occassionally surprised I must admit). We ate the last tomato tonight.Have you been painting? Drawing? Why or why not? Why should or shouldn't you answer me in an e-mail?

11:45 PM

amy t. said...

you're right. taking part in this whole exercise makes me feel like i should just be a better letter writer.

but then, there's also the real draw of this sort of conversation operating like a group of friends standing around at an opening . . . talking with everyone at once . . . sometimes feeling more inspired and inspiring than other times.

regarding the question of sharing personal stories with strangers: at best, i think of those strangers as people who might be standing in the circle next to us at an opening and maybe there is crossover and maybe they have something funny and new to say or maybe they're completely unfunny and bland. but there's some chance of including someone new in an interesting conversation. and also a chance of reconnecting with someone you've lost touch with.

maybe we *should* keep the garden talk private, but maybe someone else would be unexpectedly charmed by the conversation. i don't know. further thoughts?

This is an eraser. NOT CANDY

They call it a "parade" but I'm certain the word "procession" is more apt. The townsfolk gather at the intersection by the library. Zaida arrived with one friend, and then quickly met a third.

When the four girls were united, the procession began. During this march, the locals take back the town from the theater going tourists. People are preparing for dark times ahead. Storefronts are closed. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival announces "the worst deficit we've ever seen." What was with all the smiles then? Laughter is a proven medicine? Joy boosts the immune system? We sure are an animal that likes to herd. Is mockery a good defense against things that are unknown (or scary)? There were dozens of presidential and v-p candidates in the procession.

These four were my favorite however:

After it got dark, my daughter and her three friends did the traditional door to door routine. When they returned and dumped their piles on the kitchen table, there was discovered a fortune cookie size piece of paper that read: "This is an eraser. NOT CANDY"

We are still looking for the eraser.