Getting dressed, the Open Studios - Oct 11,12 & 18,19

The studio is getting dressed for its first day out in public.

This year, I’m participating in the Portland Open Studios. This artist run organization brings together and opens the studios of 98 artists in the Portland area. The public is invited in to see and learn about the work and the process. It’s a diverse group with people working in a wide range of media saying just about everything you can imagine trying to say with art.

http://www.portlandopenstudios.com

The event spans two weekends - October 11,12 and 17,18. My studio will be open both weekends from 10 am to 5 pm.

While my space is open to anyone who wishes to come by, you can pick up a Tour Guide ($15) in calendar format that comes with...

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New show, new gallery: BICA

I’m very pleased to write that I’ve been invited to join in the opening exhibit of a new gallery, Bend Independent Contemporary Art, in Bend, OR. Bend is a fast growing community on the east side of the Cascades that’s becoming an arts center, sort of Oregon’s take on Taos, attracting boomers and more from California and beyond. This new gallery is a  promising opportunity and, more importantly, the people putting it together are good people and are trying to do it right.

I’ll have a handful of paintings from still lifes to landscapes on display through the end of October. Included will be this new landscape:

Oregon Landscape 2, Oil on Canvas, 36″ x 36″

And perhaps for my...

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Lamb

A friend said the key  to writing is “substance”. It’s a running joke. When either of us gets down to the making of something because of a real event or real thing (something of “substance”), the work is that much better.

Mt. Lamb, 7″ x 8″, oil on panel

It’s been another summer. I made some  paintings. I banged through the dirt on my motorcycle on a trip to Wyoming. I enjoyed the company of my dear wife, off from her teaching duties. I dug large holes - real holes in real earth - with my parents. I had work hanging in a fine gallery in Maine. I started relationships with new galleries. And I started it all with the loss of my beloved grandmother (Goodbye Angela).

Somewhere...

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Send the work to Maine

For the next couple months, ten of the still lifes - including the pair of unmentionable meats, the new pork chop and drum stick - will be on view at Susan Maasch Fine Art in Portland, Maine. They are being shown in conjunction with a much bigger exhibition of work by William Bailey and Walter Horak. Bailey’s work can be found in collections ranging from the MOMA to the Smithsonian. This is, for me, a big deal. The show opens tonight but, alas, I will not be able to attend.

Susan Maasch Fine Art
29 Forest Avenue
Portland, Maine 04101
207 - 699 - 2966

I am especially excited that my paintings will be shown alongside the still lifes of my old friend, Shawn Kenney. He and I have known each other for nearly 19 years...

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Greedy: The apple and the old turkey

I think I’ll be greedy.

Bitten Apple, 5″ x 6″

While in college, of all things, I painted the head of a Turkey. A few years after graduation I was showing an old professor some of my newest work. With hand on chin, a knowing smile and a glint in an eye shrouded by wild graying hair, he responded, “Do you remember that Turkey you painted? That was a great turkey.” On my way to what I’d naively thought would be a touchdown, I’d rolled an ankle.

I had shown him a series of paintings based on some time in Bermuda. The colors and shapes were relatively crisp and flat. With their more traditional aspects - clear perspective, light and shadow, and so on- they intentionally contrasted to the more intuitive and somewhat splashy approach that...

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Still Hungry: the Lucky Pork Chop

With the brimstone aroma of questionable meat still in the air, I chose the other white meat as my subject. If I felt good about the beef, I feel even better about the pork.

Lucky Pork Chop, 8″ x 8″, oil on panel

I’ve been painting and drawing and making things now for some number of decades. You would imagine that by now I wouldn’t be so surprised when something turns out well. I don’t mean to imply that it always happens or is even common (see the post about the recent Habanero). But when it does happen, it’s as though someone has handed me a winning lottery ticket. Maybe someone has. Good things are afoot. Several new galleries have contacted me about showing work. I don’t know that I believe in luck but let’s pretend I do. Please...

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Hungry: Rib steak

The theme continues. I may not hit the first pitch, or even the second, but I’ll find the ball eventually.

Rib Steak, 12″ x 9″, oil on canvas

With the larger subject matter, the smaller panels wouldn’t be enough. I wanted to see how these still lifes, this approach to painting, would translate to a larger piece, albeit still modest in size. And, as I tackle other much larger paintings, I wanted to try out these still lifes on canvas. It was and is somewhat different. I am unabashedly pleased. In the flesh, so to speak, the reds in the painting are more diverse - there’s more brown, more magenta, more spice. It is meat.

The first pitch didn’t go as well. I swung harder and only managed to make something I would describe as “competent.”...

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Stubborn, another Habanero

I painted a pepper yesterday, a small habanero. Actually, I painted four.

As the first fell into a gloomy haze of brown and orange, I stepped back, cracked my knuckles and, said to a visiting friend, “Ok. Warm up is over. Now I bring it!” As the second crashed and burned, I swore and stomped. When the paint isn’t cooperating, I know better than to keep going. Or so I thought.

The hours were ticking by, my attempts to distract myself with work had failed, and I was back at it, working on the third. Tenacity? Obsessive compulsive disorder? A fear of being beaten by a belligerent little orange vegetable? I swore I would win this fight.

Sorry, Scott. That’s no pepper. That’s a collection of awkward paint smears. Those aren’t highlights, glints of light off...

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The root vegetable, the pliers, and the girl

I keep thinking about a swatch of red against a scumbled green below a mass of tumultuous gray, warm and cool. It’s the a cargo ship on the Willamette river, the clouds torn and low. It isn’t the painting I first think to paint, but that red and gray begs for it. Perhaps tomorrow, but not yet.

In the mean time, I continue my digging. A turnip - rosey, upended and cut from the dirt.
Turnip, 5″ x 6″, available

The small works, for all that they do for me, aren’t the answer. I still want to explore the narrative possibilities of the figure. I have to wrestle these into being. The clear idea that seemed so perfect in a sketch and when first drawn on the canvas stalls with the first paint. The choices aren’t dictated in the way they...

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Thinking about Potatoes

The potato is the new golden calf. You think about it constantly. The skin is rich and nuanced with color and blemish. The eyes are also nose and mouth. It’s the man in the moon. The shape is forgiving and oh so earthly right. No one will notice a wrong curve. Give it weight, give it light and shadow, give it form, maybe even some dirt, and it’ll be a potato - and we will like it. If, on the other hand, you intended to paint a portrait and we thought it was a potato, perhaps it’s time to step away from the canvas.

A purple potato, almost royal. With this, the fight is on. This potato could launch ships.

Royal Potato, 5″ x 6″, available

Back to a more tangible reality; The small landscapes have me wanting to speed up my hand. In those...

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