transparency

All of the images in this post are the same painting in stages, chronologically from top down. The bottom photo is the current and final stage in the process and the image above is where i started tonight.

Not complete, but it came a long way over the past two weeks. More in the morning.

I made some much-needed updates to the website this morning. The gallery is a work in progress, so bear with me for a few weeks. I'm making work faster than I can document and upload it (which is a good thing). I hope to do a heavy re-design at the end of the year, during our long semester break and hopefully on a mac.

The new photo on the "about" page was shot by my friend and super-Pro, Andrew Howard. He was instrumental in the book, the film and has been a good friend and a tremendous help to me for many years. (Howie, if you're reading this the faculty show is next Thursday and you guys are welcome to stay with us).

I hear back from UVA about my entries for the juried show today. I'll tweet that information as soon as it is confirmed. Submitted 2 paintings, but there was a TON of art there, so I don't know if both (or either) will be accepted. Still, I press on.

Lots of travel coming up in the next 2 months, sadly very little of it art-related. I'm planning my first day trip to NYC in mid-October, the weekend before Matisse comes down. Fly in early, take in MoMA all day and then jump out late that evening. If you're the City and haven't seen the show (or want to see it again) drop me a line. Time-permitting I'd like to jump down to Chelsea and peep the galleries as well.

"first I'm gonna make it, and then I'm gonna break it 'til it falls apart."

-Echo and the Bunnymen

Spent the first cool night of the end of summer in the studio, working on this larger painting and beginning another in the current series.

After I laid down the base layer of color (the most uplifting red I've seen in some time), I reclaimed the famous orange chair and just enjoyed looking at that red before I started to bury it.

Had some visitors stop by and I realized that I've started re-connecting to the world outside the studio walls. In that peaceful moment, in my chair, I realized that I have been in a state of chrysalis, and that now I am emerging a changed being.

They say that Scorpios go through 3 distinct phases. I have entered into my phoenix stage, where I am both aware of and at peace with the full extent of my powers, and I have realized the largest battles I fight are solely with myself. Despite the catastrophe of my personality over the course of my life, I have survived these attacks of self on self, and now I feel stronger and more confident in virtually every aspect of my being. This applies to the work as well.

If sleep disorders have returned temporarily to my life, it is largely out of excitement rather than anxiety. I feel that I see the road ahead more clearly than I have in years, possibly decades. And if my particular corner of the zodiac is sometimes seen as magical and intense, my recent self-awareness has amped up these energies to particular effect.

I have to say it feels good to begin the arduous process of getting out there once again. I've a way to go in terms of building enough work in this current series, but I expect to maintain my pace. We will see what the response is this weekend and throughout the month as the exhibition runs through October.

I am contemplating resurrecting MDM as part of the website overhaul.

First things first. I apologize for the quality of the photos. I'm temporarily on a PC and the stock photo-editing software in a word, sucks. These two paintings are off to Greenville this weekend for submission to a group show. I'll post the dates when/if the work is accepted.

I'm wrapping them up tonight and we're a go for tomorrow. It's been a crazy week. Someone at my new job asked me when I get time to paint, and I said I had to eliminate extraneous uses of time; namely, sleep. I discovered that sleep is overrated in college. I suffered from intense bouts of insomnia in my early 20's. By the time I moved to California, this had mostly subsided, but at its peak I would be up for 3 or 4 days at a time. When you don't get sleep, you're never fully awake. The strangest experiences ever were usually about day 3, when your body forces a kind of walking REM cycle. I would be walking around, doing stuff, but I would dream for what seemed like seconds. Long, complicated dreams, usually mirroring whatever I was doing, sort of like playing a video loop except you're living it. Needless to say, I loved Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club the moment I read it, though this was a decade after my own experiences.

I confess that hit the wall today. Thus the rambling....

So, back to the work. I borrowed the shadow-box frame from a painter friend in LA. Saw his work in Brooklyn last year and loved the frames. We talked about them on the phone and I'm pleased with how they came out and the extra "umph" they give the work. I feel good about the work.

I was finally able to order more canvases and hope to get back into a routine next week. I'm frustrated with not being able to blog as much as I'd like and the quality of the photos, but I will keep at it. Thanks for reading...whoever you are.

And thanks to those of you who comment and communicate with me via twitter or email. It means a lot to have your support and feedback.

Posted some of the current series on my Facebook page. Got a few thumbs up, which always feels good for a few moments. I'm off to buy lumber to make frames for the two submissions I'll be delivering next week, plus a larger painting I've decided to put in my new office.

I have some medium arriving this week and I can get back to work.

I told a friend recently that I'm ready to take my career to the next level, but I don't really know how to do that. It's been a crazy year, and even though there's lots to remain negative and even fatalistic about, I for one just don't have it in me anymore. We may lose a large chunk of our government to right-wing wackos (yeah, I said it) this november, but well, good luck with that people. As the fab four said, "we'd all love to see the plan."

None of that changes going into the studio and laying it down and spending time letting the work speak. In some ways I feel like this current work is very technical, and yet it seems to have an unprecedented mass appeal. It's arguably the most non-objective painting I've ever done, while at the same time existing as almost straight-ahead landscapes. It's also a hell of a lot of fun to paint, so I see a lot of it coming.

For once in my life, I'm trying hard not to stop doing something because people tell me they like it. How's that for career-pathing?

I'm also really sick of hearing myself bitch and moan about being remote. I love being remote 99% of the time. I love NYC, but 48 hours of it and I'm ready to be in a big, open field by myself, or out on the beach. I don't think the vistas I'm creating could come from my previous life as an urban-dweller. The lack of density I have lived in this past decade has gotten me in touch with my childhood sense of space from the Southwest. The new work is small (by my standards) and ready to hang, so I've eliminated one of the many, and very real obstacles to exhibiting elsewhere.

For those handful of people that I know have followed me from the MDM blog and have a sense of the arc of my work in the past 3 or 4 years, I think there is a new maturity in this recent stuff. I'd like to hear from you. Not flattery either, just observations. Part of this blog, as well as MDM was about transparent process. Part of that process is a fair amount of self doubt and inhibition and even hesitation. Until recently, I held back on some approaches I wanted to embrace. Now I feel a new confidence and focus. I just need to figure out how to translate that into getting me and my work to a broader audience, preferably in person.

Took apart the large table last night and stood it up as a mock-up wall. I've been kicking around some reconfiguration ideas over the past few months. Long trip to Mississippi, and I've had a hard time bouncing back this week. I don't travel like I used to, though I enjoyed the journey immensely.

I got an exhibition call from one of the Greenville arts groups I was a member of last year. I'm going to submit a couple of the current works to their group show, and see how they are received. I've honestly no idea.

I had some time to sit and think about the studio and next year. There's much to be said for a room of one's own. Even with the loss of working time due to extremes in temperature, I am able to work for 3/4 of the year in bad years and more normally. During my frantic periods of production I tend to churn it out, so it still seems worth it.

Yeah, Greenville. Sort of a crap shoot really, the last show (gallerist aside, who was wonderful) was a glorious waste of time. But I have reworked the brand, so to speak, and these current paintings are smaller and to me at least, distilled. They pack a lot of presence into a more compact visual space. I feel the price is fair, but again the Greenville market surprises me (not always pleasantly) when it comes to sophistication....nuff said in a public forum.

Felt good being back in the space last night after so much of the last month out. Reminded me how vital the studio practice is to my over all health and life.