Selected Abstractesque Pieces

Enlightenment Experiment, 2007, oil on canvas, 24" x 48"

Be Ye Still, 2008, oil on canvas, 24" x 24"

We Share Our Mother's Health, 2007, oil on canvas, 48" x 48"

Alternate Realm I, 2006, oil on canvas, 5"x15"

Alternate Realm II, oil on canvas, 15" x 5"

UCD Alumni Exhibition

Join me at the reception and check out a couple new works at the
UCD Alumni Exhibition  .  
August 27 - November 13, 2010  .  Artists Reception October 7; 6-8 PM
Courtyard Partnership Gallery, Courtyard by Marriott Denver Downtown
934 16th Street, Denver, Colorado 80202

Loving and Losing It.

Sound Creating an Eddy in Reality, 2010, oil on canvas, 36"x24"

The Birth of the Electric Tree, 2010, oil on canvas, 30"x40"

Both of these paintings technically reference Piet Mondrian. The Flutist, or Sounds Creating an Eddy in Reality, came first. It captures the struggle of composition vs. narrative, abstraction vs. illustration, and I see it as a stepping stone painting. It also makes use of an idea of artists as shamans or artists (in this case the flute player) affecting reality. As a painter, I can only suggest the way the flute player affects reality through visual representation. I love the way musician's can affect large groups of people and wish I had any notion of stage presence, but I will persist making paintings in isolation, hoping the straggling viewers privately leave with something gained for the positive.
So, The Birth of the Electric Tree began in my mind in the same way the flute player ended. Here are two street musicians, a fiddler and a guitar player, and they are going to affect reality in some massive way. I kept balking at completing this one the way I had set out to complete it, so I detoured with two abstract drawings of the musicians, hoping to reveal their true identities as shamans.

Fiddler Shaman: With Our Love We Can Change the World, 2010, charcoal, watercolor and acrylic on paper, 18"x24"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guitarist Shaman, 2010, charcoal, watercolor and acrylic on paper, 18"x24"

I decided to use these representations of the shaman musicians in my painting, rather than adhering to their photographic forms. One more concept I've been toying with, which I feel the Electric Tree painting alludes to, but will appear later in a new painting, is a future where our distinction between nature and home disappears and nature is just like home. Maybe some sort of spiritual symbiosis can occur and the trees will mutate into self-heating tents and other architecture that comforts us. In the meantime, humans would return to their post as servants of the earth and all its creatures.

Addendum: Moyo's Shirt

This summer I was fortunate enough to visit with Moyosore Ogundipe, mentor, teacher and great artist. I gave him the shirt he asked me to paint roses on about two years ago. He liked it and received many compliments on it when he was on his way back home to Nigeria.

Eden in the works.

I'm working on a painting, I think it will be called Regeneration of Eden, and it is mostly filled with an enormous mass of branching trees. The branches cut up the top of the composition into an array of irregular shapes. At this point, I'm working on the distant area past the tree grove on the left side, filling it with shapes and colors that resonate abstractly with the tree. Surprisingly, it is visually appealing to me to make squares and straight lines. This recalls the history of mankind and all the straight lines, perfect squares, perfect circles and so on, that mankind has made or attempted to make. Do perfect shapes occur in nature? As natural creatures, are we purposefully evolved with the capacity and urge to perform these perfect shapes? Is this an accident? It compels me to consider the possibility that our perfect-shape-making is perchance an act of nature creating balance for all the chaotic forms. Think of the rows of trees in an orchard, orderly nature and beautiful.

The appearance of the square and line in this current painting of mine create contrast and balance with the branch shapes. Is there a possibility that our minds find some comfort in the perfect shape? Have we grown to enjoy its control? Maybe our minds have adapted to the box shapes dwelling and find comfort in their forms. Would a child raised in a dome shaped home have a different psychology than the typical right-angle fed child?

                                   Eden in the Works 36" x 48" oil on canvas

That's all for now.