Shows

Until recently I have had a lot of energy-consuming activities taking place going on in my personal life -- minor things like getting married, buying a house, etc. I have continued to make art through all of that, although for much of the time at a very not-very-prolific pace. Trying to get into shows, however, had to take a back seat, thus I didn't have anything exhibiting publicly since my painting "The Reward" was in a show at the Parlor Gallery (which was then called the Crybaby Art Gallery) in Asbury Park, NJ a couple of years ago. Over the last few months I have been very much more active as far as submitting material to juried group shows. I got into a couple of shows, was rejected by another, and took part in a sort of ad-hoc group show at the Loop Lounge in Passaic, NJ. It has been fun getting some of my work out of my house and onto gallery walls again. Group shows are enjoyable, but now I need to get my act together a little further, put together a legit submissions package, and try to go beyond the occasional juried group show. Anyhow, here are some photos from a couple of the shows I have taken part in recently.

 This is a shot of some of my work hanging at the Loop Lounge Art Show, held on June 30, 2010. I had a lot of fun, met a couple of other artists whose work I found very interesting (especially Nick Colbert, another painter hanging his stuff at the Loop that night), and got a lot of nice feedback on my stuff.

Another shot from the Loop Lounge. That's my good friend Jason Yerkes. He's a great photographer & digital artist. I'd link to his website, but he doesn't have one just yet....

I also have a piece in this year's "Strange Figurations" show at the Limner Gallery in Hudson, NY (show hanging from Sept. 8 - Oct. 11, 2010). I love the Limner Gallery, and am a big fan of Tim Slowinski's painting. Here are a couple of installation shots from this show:

I will have a piece in the upcoming Nexus NJ show at the Arts Guild New Jersey, from Oct. 17th - Nov. 4th, 2010. More information & photos from that to come.

The Garden of Pharmaceutical Delights

"The Garden of Pharmaceutical Delights" is a painting that I finished in August of 2009. It is oil on canvas, and measures 40" high and 30" wide.
One day, I was looking through some nick-knacks and tchockies at the apartment of my then-girlfriend (and current wife).  At one point I found an alarm clock, which consisted of the little figure of a purple, grinning ape holding a clock that was as large as he was. This particular piece was given to my wife by some doctor she used to work for, and was an advertisement for a prescription drug, the name and purpose of which escapes me at the moment.
"Holy shit!" I thought, "They're making up cartoon characters to sell drugs now!!" I guess "they" have been doing that for a long time (we all remember Joe Camel),  but every once in a while I actually take notice of some of the wacky things advertisers do (most of the time it all blends into a consistent, non-descript hum in the background), and am struck by how creepy it all can be.  I notice this a lot when I am in grocery stores.  I don't have children myself, but it's not hard to imagine a parent's lament as I amble down the cereal aisle, beset on both sides by variations of maniacally grinning toucans and whacked-out extreme-sports grizzly bears, preying on childrens' susceptibility to loud colors and fun-looking characters in order to hock an array of sugar-frosted, honey-combed, berry-slathered, wheat-infused, cookie-bombed breakfast fun. It seems so cynical. Looking at the cereal aisle, one can see first-hand the millions of dollars these manufacturers have invested to make sure the visual elements of their packaging conforms to a precise formula that instantly attracts kids.  Children, in turn, will pester their worn-out parents into buying the cereal, and Kellogg moves product. The alarm clock I found amongst my wife's stuff made me feel about pharmaceuticals something similar to what walking down the cereal aisle makes me feel about childrens' breakfast foods. I pretty much knew the moment I found the clock that I wanted to use it in a piece of art in some manner.
        

Fissure

"Fissure" is a painting I made in 2008.  It is acrylic on Arches watercolor paper, and is 14" high by 10" wide. Last I heard, it hung on the wall at the Spider's Den tattoo parlor in Garden Grove, CA.
The reasons why I made this painting are varied.  First, the human face and head are probably my favorite subject matter, and I love distorting elements of their structure and mass while retaining a relatively natural color scheme.  Also, I am interested in the idea of one element springing forth unintended from a prior element -- an original idea begetting a new idea, the unintended consequences of a particular action, one person having descended from another.

                                                                                

Like much of my painting, "Fissure" was made in sort of an organic way.  Rather than beginning with detailed preparatory drawings, I start a lot of these by allowing a smear of very-thinned paint of various colors to dry out on whatever painting surface I happen to be working on. Carefully studying what I have in front of me, I then use the shapes of the dried paint as the starting point for the different elements of what will become the finished image.  When I start these, I sometimes have a vague idea of the shape of the image I want, the basic compositional structure, or some kind of fuzzy notion of what (if anything) I want the picture to be about. Most often, the image I end up with looks quite different than whatever idea I had when I started. 

Fashion Worm

This is a painting that I made in 2004, that I call "Fashion Worm...or, The Perfect Nose."  It is 48" wide by 36" high, and is acrylic on canvas.  The original stretcher bars had warped over the few years since its completion, so I recently removed the canvas from those stretchers and put it on new ones.
I had some of the general ideas for this painting floating around in my skull prior to painting this, but I was really inspired when I happened to watch a special on MTV about young men & women who were getting plastic surgery for purely cosmetic reasons.  I was struck by the thought of just how far we as a society are willing to warp our bodies and minds for the sake of appearances; how the "next big thing" that society clamors for and is fascinated by is often just watered-down pablum spewed forth by media executives and their focus groups; and by the idea that no matter how much we twist ourselves up over superficial bullshit, death is always there waiting for us in the end...the great equalizer.  I tried to get those ideas across in this painting.

   

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The world has been clamoring for it, and now it has finally arrived....another blog focused on fine art, comics, food, and other important stuff.
This is my web site. On it, you will find pieces of art I have created.