Have I Ever Told You About The Time. . .

. . . when we were walking through the park?

Zaida and I went on a little photo safari the other day. One can't help but consider walking through Lithia Park when on a photo safari. In fact, upon entering the wilds of the park, we were confronted with, what looked like to me, a Julien brand easel. We approached it from behind. Zaida tried to distract me, "Ooo, look at that red tree!" she nudged. I mumbled something to the effect of "Of course, of course, that tree is wonderful and, my! how it compliments the dirty yellow-green of the grass." But really, all I was doing was steering Zaida towards what I hoped was a killer plein air painting.

I like to think that it is pretty hard to throw me for a loop. I tell you what, the fella who was wielding this brush, just expanded my loop envelope.

I was embarrassed by my assumptions. And yet, proud of humanity.

It is summer vacation in my part of humanity.




Summer Vacation was a great song idea that Steve Turner gave to a band I was in called Love and Respect.

Whiting Tennis was in that band too.

I came across this assemblage of wood while we were at Carkeek Park the other day. I'd thought I'd walked upon a Whiting Tennis memorial.I don't know who made this sculpture. I needed a sculpture garden password to get that. Seriously.

Summer vacation for me has turned out to be an inverted busman's holiday. I drove up to the San Juan Islands again in order to help my friend Micajah make some sculptures for Juan Alonso.

The prehistoric bluff and ravine landscape of my childhood has created my sense of space and composition.
Here is one of three pieces that Juan has sent to Micajah for fabrication. Actually, this is the first piece before we bead blast the surface. iPhone photographs of the booth we built just for the occasion are forthcoming.

"No-one gives a shit what you think. No-one gives a shit what you do. No-one gives a shit what you say, so you might as well do it anyway." - 'No-one Gives a Shit' - Steve Turner.

Outshine Them All

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. - Thomas A. Edison
Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy. - William S. Burroughs
Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard. - Paul McCartney


The pencil box contains no pencils. Surely the printed colors have faded. The linen is gorgeously stained. Between the two "See and Draw Copier" boxes, I can put together one working armature. It is a fussy exercise in appropriate lighting (and squinting) to make it work. It is a novelty and doesn't help a person draw one bit.

Gillian Carnegie (TLP1000)

This will be my second attempt at writing a little something about paintings that I see as jpgs on the Internet. Actually, I am working my way backwards from the list on the Thousand Living Painters blog. I wanted to dive into these images with nothing more than my visceral honesty, but lo-and-behold, I am instantly struck dumb by Carnegie's paintings. I'm not sure I can write about beautiful butts. The phrase "loaded" comes to mind. And then there is the fact that there are virtual reams of words written about Carnegie and that makes me nervous that I will be missing something obvious or overlooking a revealing nuance that everybody else can plainly glean. I don't want to glean from the reams, I want to trust my gut.

Carnegie handles the paint beautifully. I am enchanted by the reserved palette. There is a comparison to Graham Durward's monochromatic range that I didn't touch on in the previous installment. Maybe I could learn something from this temperament.


I'm too old to be interested in the psychological implications of my voyeurism. I don't feel the need to rationalize my visits to the weekly drawing sessions anymore. It has been almost twenty years since a graduate school dialog about the male gaze and I live nowhere near other painters who would ever consider deconstructing anything. I like Carnegie's paintings. It occurs to me, after two of these exercises, that I fundamentally like them because I don't think I could paint them myself. I found Durward's paintings accessible because the marks were familiar to me. I didn't swoon over them because of the subject matter. Carnegie's paintings however, seem to be built by a much more sculptural hand. I wish I could paint with those blocky planes of value.

I like Carnegie's paintings because the flowers and butts seem like the ultimate-empty-double-dare-painter-challenge which, ironically to those of us in-the-know, isn't empty at all. They are like writing a catchy pop song, if it was so easy, everyone would do it.

Disrupting Patterns Informed by Sensibility

I feel like I did when I was a boy playing with my vibrating football game. A screaming metal piston in a magnetic coil agitates the sheet metal and I am spending hours looking for patterns. Everything is shaking around me. All I need to do is block out the ambient din and focus on the developing designs.

The hosting venue for my Tuesday night drawing sessions has closed. Another tourist-town experiment comes into real estate. That is to say, another art-bar dies.

I did, however, get to spend a few hours painting a model at another venue recently. I habitually spent too much time working my way "up" to the model from the background. My deep-space-to-foreground-method left a ghost.

In three hours, I dialed in the dog before the fleas. What that means is, I didn't have time to grab smaller brushes or focus on details. The vibrating football chaos was unplugged right when I started to recognize patterns.

That's cool. I'm not a figure painter anyway. Sometimes I wonder though, what it would be like to pay a model to pose for unlimited hours. I bet, given enough time, I could make a painting that looked like a painting of a figure. As I remember, given enough time, it was easy to predict the actions of my vibrating football players.

Spring Cleaning

I'm in one of those get-rid-of-junk moods.

But. . . what is junk?

I've had this Melt'n Color under the house for years. I can't find anything about it on the internet, except a 1965 patent for the exclusive "Pressflo" brush which is this really cool wand that melts crayons. The box is damaged and all the cards and frames are gone or used. Only the "brush" remains. It isn't really in good enough condition to put on eBay. I'm just a sucker for these sorts of things. One afternoon I might still melt all of Zaida's crayons.

Now. . . is this junk?

The box is mashed but it appears to have all the original tools. I LOVE these step-by-step kits. Gnagy was the original television art instructor.


I couldn't find a set like Gnagy's on eBay either, but mine isn't mint and there doesn't seem to be a demand. Same thing with this Conni Gordon box I have, even though it comes with a 33 rpm flexi disc. The contents are fantastic. Really charming. I made this video from her audio and booklet.


Most of my junk is fairly junky. I should just use it or lose it. Stacy, on the other hand, has some cool junk. We're selling this rare Tex Avery Wolfie lamp on eBay this week. I guess it was featured in that horrible movie "The Mask".

Click here if you want to bid on it.

One of those ideas I'll likely not follow through on (TLP1001)

I thought I might work my way through a Thousand Living Painters, starting with 1001, Graham Durward.

Graham Durward, Untitled (Incense Positive) 2007
Oil on linen 121.9 x 106.7 cm

Durward's paintings contain subtly rewarding compositions of wet pushes and dull pulls dappled with a hint of atmospheric glazing. I'm looking at jay-pegs so I can only imagine the scale of his marks. 121 cm is almost four feet so it appears that Durward doesn't fancy a brush smaller than half an inch. I bet he paints with his whole arm while glancing over at a photograph. I rather like his marks. They are familiar in a "I could have done that" sort of way. Even the smokey faux abstractions of his incense pieces feel right on. I can almost overlook all the loaded implications of incense and ritual. Incense has never been a part of my space or time, except as a negative sensory stimulus. The craft of painting is nostalgic enough by nature as it is; maybe I'm looking for a contemporary level of spirituality?

Maybe that is what Durward is shooting for? The whole seduction and denial thing? I am seduced by his marks and yet repelled by their context. If that is the case, his paintings with figures in them are even better.

Graham Durward, Untitled (Man With Fruit) 2007
Oil on linen 86.4 x 61 cm

Male torsos with their faces blocked out instantly make me think of every figure drawing class I've ever attended or taught in which invariably someone tries to cover up their shitty drawing chops by avoiding the face. To be fair, these people usually avoid hands and feet too but Durward manages a beautiful hand in the image above. Clearly there is something "symbolic" going on here. It occurs to me that someone who can clearly paint with such seductive marks, and yet doesn't want to tread deeply in the waters of abstraction, must then load their subject matter with symbolism. Great marks while filtering nature though painting is a plien air session. Great marks while glancing at a photograph is something else. This process demands that a greater level of meaning be constructed.

Although I have empathy for Graham Durward's paint handling, composition and palette, the more I dig into the subject matter, the less interested I become. But even that observation seems harsh. Maybe it isn't that I'm not interested, it is simply that I don't have a craggy bottom for his hook to catch upon. I'd sure like to meet him.

Last painting from this cluster

Steven LaRose, Too Many Choices For The Jack Ass, 2011
Oil on acrylic on wood, 6 x 7 inches

Fire under my tush.

Recently, Melanie Parke posted this image of a crate on facebook. She is shipping some paintings to the Marji Gallery in Santa Fe, just like me. Here is one of Melanie's paintings:

Her crate was built by her husband Richard Kooyman who is also a great painter. Here is one of his paintings:
Initially I was daunted by Richard's crate but then I remembered that because I paint on wood, I don't have to take all the precautions that the canvas folk do. I merely have to create a cardboard version of a crate. I found this honeycombed material at Precision Paper Company out in White City.
The people out there were extremely helpful and generous. They gave me a slightly damaged 4 x 8 sheet for free. Plus, I was able to grab as many of these laminated paper edges as I wanted.

I felt obligated to pay for something, so I bought a roll of tape. I've always used clear packing tape before, but now I am a new convert to this webbed paper tape.

I was able to put together an economical and elegant box for five paintings. Maybe not crate-style, but light enough to travel UPS ground.


That is one item that I can scratch off the list.
The next thing in my way is this stack of Sculpture magazines that Micajah loaned me.

But then, I keep getting distracted by things like the doorknob in my studio. I never really noticed how cool it is.

I swear I'll get back to painting as soon as this pie is finished.

I did have a good excuse this week because I was painting the Labyrinth below, but now that that is done, I am closer to indulging my own thang.

Plus, and finally for this afternoon, Carla has posted her curatorial statement for the upcoming Asynchronous Salon exhibit. If that isn't inspirational, I don't know what is.