New Painting: Boy Angel flying over the remains of a bird

New painting: August 6, 2016

New painting: Storm

New painting: Beaches

Click to enlarge

New painting August 3, 2016

New painting August 2, 2016

New Painting: "Newborn"

Finished this new painting today. Acrylic on paper. Letters stenciled in black and gray spraypaint. The letters come from a crossword book I got from the dollar store. The puzzle topic was "Newborn". The words in the picture are associated with a baby's birth:

• Nursery
• Little
• Hospital
• Birth
• Delivery
• Small
• Miracle
• Family
• Doctor
• Daughter
• Son
• Boy
• Crib
• Beautiful

New painting July 30, 2016

New artwork: Sun and Surf

Sun and Surf

Cardboard cut out and blue ink

20 cm by 20 cm (7 in by 3 in) 

New painting: Untitled

Untitled
Paint marker on paper
60 cm by 60 cm (2ft by 2ft)

New painting: Mother and Child

Mother and Child
Acrylic and pencil on paper
2ft by 2ft
150cm by 150 cm

New painting: "Reading"

"Reading"
Acrylic and colored pencil on paper
1ft by 1.5 ft
60 cm by 80 cm 

New painting: No title

No title
Acrylic on paper
60cm by 100cm
2ft by 1.5ft

New drawing: "Industry"

"Industry"

New picture: The Sisters

The Sisters

Painting: Kids playing ball, mother calling them for dinner

Kids playing ball, mother calling for dinner

New drawing/digital picture: No title

New painting: The piece that's missing

The piece that's missing

New painting: Shame

Shame

I wanted this picture to come out a bit more vivid with the red color of the two people, but I had only a red pen. Biblical images and stories are still very powerful to me. I also think it's fun to play with colors that mean things. Red, the color of blushing and embarrassment, works well here for the story.

New painting: Lamentation of Christ

Lamentation of Christ

This picture was inspired by the Lamentation of Christ that I saw at a nearby church here in the Karlin District of Prague. There's Jesus to the bottom right laying on the ground, his arm is laying across the bottom of the picture left to right. The blue faced woman is Mary. The head to the right above Jesus is John the Apostle trying to console Mary. To the left is a family of people, a man, a woman, a baby, and a young child. The kids are looking at the hand of Jesus that's lying in the green grass at the bottom left of the picture. There's some stuff that you can't even see since it's a photo. The hand of Jesus is actually gold glitter paper and the green bits of grass above Jesus's fingers is reflective paper. There are also about 50 or so rolled papers of all sorts of colors on top of the picture that give it physical texture and like a 3D sort of feel.

New painting: Sun, water and grass

Sun, water and grass

New painting: Troops, do you.

Troops, do you.

This is a picture of a soldier walking through a jungle. His head and helmet are in the middle of the picture. There's an huge toucan very close to the viewer on the right side. There's an enemy soldier (in blue) mimicking the shape of the toucan. To the left is a monkey looking at the blue man and putting up his arm as well. Below the monkey is a horse with a handmade blanket over him. Inside the arch of the horses neck is a baby elephant. 

New painting: No title

Drawing: The Jaws of life

The Jaws of life

New painting: Color & Love

Color & Love

New painting: The Glory (man choking a man in wheelchair)

The Glory

New blog post: Trying to figure out the way forward

As more time passes and I don't work, things get sort of weird. I know it's not good for me to stay out of the work loop. I know I have to work and have a job, just that every time I look at what's on offer out there I get bummed out because it all sounds so boring. I end up just Xing out of the window and going on to do something else, like write or work on a painting I am enjoying. The areas I have the most experience in are boring to me, but I could do those jobs wells. It's endless. The pull of knowing there's something you could do for a job, and the pull in the opposite direction that it would bore the living hell out of you and feel like a waste of time.

It's very hard here to get galleries to look at my paintings. When they do, they don't see anything special, but I just love them and think they're great. There is a special energy to them and the choices are interesting. Paintings are made up of hundreds of little choices.

I've always used paper since I started years ago. I've never had much space to work, and living over here in Prague, I figured if I ever wanted to transport pictures back to the US, it would be easier if I could fold them up and stuff them away. Now I see that doing things that way frees you up to make pictures as large as you like. You can build them, spread them left or right up or down as the picture sort of tells you where it wants to go. I try to listen to what the picture wants to be, how big it wants to be, what shape it wants to be. I would like to play with different shapes and sizes and materials, but there's no space for it right now. Paper is the way for now. As far as paints, I used to paint with oils but they take too long to dry, folding paper with oil paint on it bleeds the paint onto all sides and generally ruins a picture. Acrylic is the way to go for now. It dries fast and doesn't crack or come off. Basically everything about the pictures comes down to efficiency. I don't want to spend an hour perfecting a hand. I'd rather trace my own hand, cut it out and paste it on the picture. There. A hand. A perfectly good hand done quickly. I don't really understand working to draw a perfect human figure when a rough outline tells the story just as well. But everyone's different.

I just thought I would write as much as possible. Maybe I'll stick with the plan this time to actually write daily. I don't know. I'm not even sure I get any actual readers to this blog after all these years. It's still mostly for me, to make something, to write something. At least to have something for myself.

Part of the journey

It would be nice just to show something I've made that I'm proud of in a gallery or anywhere really.

There are days when all that matters to me is to do what you enjoy, to make something, to be in the moment and ignoring stress and worry. On those days, I'm making something special and beautiful regardless if it's seen. I am perfectly ready to receive it, and it arrives perfectly. I'm not focused on myself. Something full of color, proportion, and sentiment, gets made, and I'm there to be part of it.

When I do get through to some place by phone or email, they tell me to send some work. That usually sends me on a tear to make a bunch of new paintings to have something new and fresh to show. Once I send the pictures I rarely get a response.

This is all part of the journey, part of the story, so I believe. You have to talk about it. The ups and downs. The difficulty. The fear and confusion. All that matters is to figure out what's important to you and to do that. That's the only way.

New painting: Dar à luz

Dar à luz

This is a picture of a person giving birth. On the right is a person reaching up to the sun. On the left is the bottom half upside down of a person giving birth and there's a baby on the top left. Here's a clearer diagram of it:

In Spanish "Dar à luz" means to give birth. Literally though it means "to give to light

Picture dimensions and materials:

5 ft (3m) tall, 4ft (3m) wide

Acrylic and chalk on paper

New painting: Sunrise on the Sower

Sun rise on the Sower
Acrylic on paper
3ft by 3ft
Aug 2015

The top portion of this picture could be bolder and there could be more of a contrast, but it's hard when you're trying to take a photo of a painting. It never comes out quite as bold as it should I think because the camera tries to balance sharply contrasting colors. Anyway I use my ipad to take the photos and I imagine they would be better pics if I used a camera. At some point I guess it's important to realize it doesn't really matter if a picture is perfectly finished or not. The color is what I'm after, that the picture is balanced. For a while I've fallen away from what I originally wanted the pictures to be about: something spiritual and colorful. I suppose I've had this image stuck in my head for a long long while.