Fries & A Coke

The students in Mrs. Waterman's first grade class at Crosby Elementary in Garden Grove, California, sat rigid in their little desks, eyeing one another through weary sidelong glances, wondering which two among them would be brave or foolish enough to make their way to the front of the classroom and take on the challenge.  Two large circles had been drawn next to each other, and the assignment we had been given was for two volunteers to each use one of those circles as the starting point to make a drawing of whatever we could think of.  Mrs. Waterman, about whom I can't remember much (except that I really liked her because she was always smiling and seemed to genuinely like us), would judge the drawings, awarding a prize (about which I also don't recall much) to the student who used the simple shape in the most imaginative way.
I don't recall what my competitor drew with her circle, but I do remember that I used mine to draw an image of our planet, with certain 'tall things' -- such as skyscrapers, giraffes, and perhaps a rocket or two -- jutting out or being launched from the Earth's surface. Whatever the prize was, my drawing won it. That was, I'm sure, the first time I noticed that I could impress people by making pictures. I liked that feeling.
Thirty some-odd years later, I'm still doing that. Obviously, I derive a lot of pleasure on my own doing this stuff, but every time my wife and I have a visitor I corner them -- "Hey, you wanna see the new stuff I'm working on?"
Speaking of which...

"Fries & A Coke"  2011 10" x 8" Oil on Canvas

Carl Mehrbach

I spend a good portion of most days slogging through the intranets looking for art that captures my attention, and plan on posting about my findings with much more frequency going forward. Disregarding the likelihood that my plan will more closely resemble that of a mice than that of a man, I'd like to share with you the art of Carl Mehrbach:

"Nude in the Green" Oil on Canvas, 54"x60"   Copyright 2011 Carl Mehrbach

Carl Mehrbach's captivating paintings and drawings can be viewed on his website.

Eggs On Top

I made the drawing you see below a couple years ago after I began to get the idea that paintings of piles of food might be interesting.

After almost two years I finally finished a painting based on this motif -- little things like getting married, buying a house, and working on other paintings get in the way. 

                                                     "Eggs On Top" 2011 Acrylic 16" x 12"

In this painting (and a few others like it that are currently in progress) I'm not trying to mess around with perspective, space, and / or mass, as I enjoy doing in much of my cartoon / cubist influenced figurative work. Rather, I'm employing a more straight forward illusionistic approach to form and space. The reason I was attracted to the idea of paintings of piles of food is because I feel they can convey a variety of meanings to different viewers. For one, they can refer to America's affluence, and how fortunate we as Americans are to be born in a time and place where we can afford to not only consume but also dispose of literally tons of food on a regular basis, while the majority of man's experience in the world has been one deprivation. This of course reminds me at the same time of our voracious, unhealthy appetite for more. For myself, though, the most important thing is that I simply enjoyed making this painting and am excited for the potential for those still in progress. American food is very colorful, and when piled on top of one another, these various snacks and sandwiches and other delectables can take on a humorous, squirming effect.  I like food. Food is good.

Comics

When I decided to start this blog, I had an image of myself posting frequently and using it as a tool to better organize my thoughts and, possibly, network a little. Well, neither one of those worked out.
I also described it in the header as a "Comics / Art Blog." I have yet, until this point, to post any comics here. I currently have a number of different stories of varying length in varying stages of completion, so here are some old ones I did.

I did these in 99 or so, for a self-published comic I did a couple issues of back then. Pussy Turd and his buddy Johnson are a couple of twisted, horny creeps. They have hearts of gold, though. It seems like most of the characters I think of are twisted creeps.

Martyr's Last

This is a painting completed in 2010, acrylic on paper, 14" x 10".  Like many of my other paintings, "Martyr's Last" began with heavily watered-down layers of paint allowed to dry on the paper. The image developed from there in an organic fashion, eventually becoming what we see here.

I had a good idea of what I wanted this painting to convey and what I wanted it to look like fairly early in the process of making it. Sometime in 2007 (perhaps 2008) I had been reading an account of the horrific violence then taking place as part of the insurgency in Iraq. One article relayed an incident that had occurred at either an Iraqi police station or army base. A man approached the front gate of the facility, strapped to his eyeballs with explosives and carrying an AK-47, which he fired at the men guarding the facility.  One of the guards explained to the author of the article that they quickly returned fire, but before they brought the would-be bomber down he yelled repeatedly, "God is great! I'm going to kill you!" That phrase struck me immediately, and I have thought about it ever since. Of course, people have been slaughtering each other in the name of their various conceptions of god(s) practically since the dawn of time and it is very easy (for me, at least) to not concern one's self with acts of savagery in other parts of the world, but sometimes things happen or things are said that put it in very stark terms and remind me of the horror and stupidity of it all. I've never been one to begrudge someone their religious beliefs, but being a somewhat disinterested agnostic myself, I've never understood or experienced the passion religious or spiritual beliefs can create in a person's life.

The idea I had in mind when making "Martyr's Last" was the change in understanding of the word 'martyr,' from someone willing to give up their own life to someone willing to inflict massive violent death on as many people they can. In this picture I hoped to use exaggerated, cartoonish visual forms to convey a notion of insanity, destruction, and absurd violence inflicted on the self and outward onto others.