Long Awaited Update

Again it's been forever since I've updated. I've been working on things on and off, and have some new work finished. At the moment though I'm just going to upload some of my older work that I never got around to, but mentioned previously.






Set 15

This is the finished version of Set 15 that I promised. I don't have much to say about this anymore, other than that I think, in retrospect, this was the most successful of the found object manipulations I did.







Set 23

This is the final piece in the lonely cities set. If you were to view the sets as a narrative (which they aren't, incidentally) this would be the penultimate piece. All of the pieces in this series are visual metaphors for a depressive and lonely state of mind. The idea this piece visualizes is that lingering belief that you'll wake up the next morning, no matter how oppressive your mind has become during the night.
Set 23 was constructed, from beginning to end, in under a week, making it my fastest painting of this size. Although, as you can see in the previous post from yesteryear, the idea for this piece was worked out in smaller paintings and sketchwork before I started in on this. I think that this illustrates my growth as a creator, being able to conceive and bring an idea to fruition in a fraction the time it normally takes me. Of course this might have just been a fluke.


As for the next post, I completed Set 22 around the same time as Set 23, and will document and post that soon. There's also a handful of paintings I've finished in the last year that I'll post. This new work is part of a different series and isn't nearly as personal as lonely cities was, although there are many visual similarities. I've also got a large piece I'm doing that's intended to be a final bit of closure for something I really should be done with, so I'll eventually get that finished and posted up.

Edit: On second thought, Set 17 is a better found object work! It's way down the page, and considering I did it over a year and some change ago I must've forgotten it. As for the next post I've got the documentation done, I just need to get it formatted for the blog. So expect it by the end of week at the latest.

Sets 16, 20, 21 and sketchwork

Set 16



Yeah it's been a while since I've posted. I've been busy working on things, but haven't really finished much till just now. This is a reworking of Set 16, since I wasn't satisfied with the previous result. I think this one is less of a compromise between imagery and the object I was working with. I'm also currently reworking Set 15 so expect that to be posted sometime soon.

Set 20



This is another piece done on metal. Not steel this time, thank god-steel was too heavy to work with. It's kind of simple in execution, but I'm not trying to communicate more than a simple image with these so it's kind of appropriate.

Set 21



This piece was actually done around christmas time, but I forgot I hadn't uploaded it. It's kinda of rough, and more a first pass at attempting a really heavy night sequence. However, not very far into it, I realized that there are some major elements I needed to change. I've continued with the concept in another painting.




This piece is a sketch for that painting. You can see some of the compositional changes I've made, as well as a slight shift in tone and emotion. And that horribly huge moon, that won't be in the final painting.

Anyhow I've got this painting on the go at a relatively early state, a monster of a painting I've been working months on with no sign of success, and a couple smaller things that might be done soonish. I'll post things up when I've got more done.

Set 19

Set 19



Another of the paintings I finished for the end of the year. I should have a couple more pieces from the last semester up soon, whenever I can get around to photographing them. I'll probably be doing mainly sketchwork over the next month, so it'll be a little bit until I get a more worked over piece done.

End of year, sets 14-18

Well it's the end of the semester now, and that means that a lot of projects that I'd been working on have gotten done. The majority of the new work is actually in the form of my found object work, where I find an interesting piece of wood, and edit it to create an image. The work is straying a bit from my original ideas, but the core painting work remains the same so I'm not really worried. I should have more work posted up within the next week or so, as there are still more that I'm not sure if I'm done with them yet.


Set 14



This is perhaps the "big" painting of the semester, started as soon as school let back in, and just now finished. It was hard shaking off the influence of my monoprints when I was doing this.


Set 15




Set 16



Set 16 is perhaps the piece I'm most uncomfortable with, in terms of the found object work.

Set 17




Set 18

Ramblings on process, sets 9-13

Set9



I'd like to take a moment to talk about my overall process. I haven't really dived too much in the nuts and bolts of what I do, mostly because I forget sometimes that other people don't know. At the base stage, I either work from a constructed image based on sketches from nature, or I create a mess and construct my sketch from that. By create a mess, I mean that I rather haphazardly or carelessly apply paint and medium to a canvas by whatever whim strikes me at the moment. I then analyze this abstraction, take notes on the composition, sketch it out a city\landscape format, and then use this sketch to "fix" the painting. The latter approach is how I began this particular piece. From the base stage, I then proceed to layer on more and more oil paint as the previous layer dries. With each layer, I get more and more careful and precise with my paint application, both fixing errors from the earlier stages and considering each mark or blotch of paint in it's own purely aesthetic light. Every so often, I will remove segments entirely by sanding or chipping them off. In this way I'm able to both experiment with abstraction, and mold it from relative chaos into a coherent image.
The reason I'm bringing this up in relation to this piece is that I think it's a particularly good example of this approach, and how it can create paintings that meet somewhere between abstraction and expressionism. It's that sort of ambiguousness that I'm in love with from a technical standpoint. My current paintings are an attempt to marry this approach to subject matter that I think is fascinating, and create a new meeting place between the lonely cities in the image, and the process used to create them.


Set13



This piece is a more literal experiment with the same goal. In this I'm trying to create this "meeting place" not through my application of paint (which is in itself an abstract concept) but rather through my choice of materials. I'm now hunting for pieces of run-down and eroded buildings, found objects which have already been shaped by nature. I'm then taking the abstractions of the surfaces and editing them in a similar manner to how I edit my paintings. Perhaps the main challenge of these new pieces is the idea of how much do I change? Where do I draw the line between too much interference or not worked over enough?


Set10



I'd received a critique on this painting very early on in its lifespan. The critique went to the tune that it was perfect and shouldn't be worked on any further. Unfortunately I'd only put maybe two layers on it, and really hadn't even started in my mind. I suddenly became precious with it and was terrified of changing it whatsoever. It took me a couple months to realize how childish I was acting, and I definately think the paintings suffered for it. Still it's turned out okay. There's more I could probably do with it, but the moment has more than passed. I'm just pleased I managed to bring it to some sort of resolution, after the paralyzing fear of change I'd suffered with it earlier.


Set11



This is another piece that started from unrestrained abstraction, and bloomed into a refined painting. Similar to the last piece, I'm sure I could nitpick and work on this for a while longer. However I think that any more work would undermine the overall process, and that it's inconsistancies and mistakes add more to it than if I were to fix them.


Set12



This piece was more of a quick sketch than a fully developed painting. It was done in very few passes, mostly as a distraction from other paintings. Not much to say about it.