Pictures from Maine

After a few months without making any new pictures, I had the chance to sit down and make a few during a vacation in Surry, Maine. These pictures are gouache on paper. The backgrounds were all made using seawater. After scratching the paper with beach sand to give it extra tooth, I would float the paper in the bay while I added the gouache backgrounds.

Marakanda, 2008
Gouache on paper
17" x 30"

Marakanda, 2008
Gouache on paper
22 1/4" x 30"

Marakanda, 2008
Gouache on paper
22 1/4" x 30"

Marakanda, 2008
Gouache on paper
22 1/4" x 30"

Marakanda, 2008
Gouache on paper
12" x 30"

A New Still Life

A New Still Life, 2008
Oil on canvas
18" x 24"

During the months of February and March, I've created a new series of pictures based on a collection of items that I experimented with in past pictures. I have a large red table in my studio and on top of that I place the images of the cane (which is a stand in for myself) and the botanical (Karen). What's new in this series is the introduction of a light source. Only after I made about 10 versions did I realize that the light is a symbol of the upcoming birth of my first child (Mara). I really find it funny that sometimes I only see what I'm doing after I've done it.

I made so many variations of this picture that I have not had time to properly title them and only came up with "A New Still Life" during the writing of this post. I fully expect to rename them in the future.

Below are 3 additional examples from this series.



A New Still Life (2), 2008
Oil on canvas
18" x 24"


A New Still Life (3), 2008
Oil on canvas
18" x 24"


A New Still Life (4) - in progress, 2008
Oil on canvas
18" x 24"

#17 from 100 pictures book - Untitled

Untitled, 2001
Oil on wood
48" x 24

This is an unusual piece for me in that there were no sketches and no similar pictures that came after it. So unusual that I never gave it a proper title. This picture was painted in the beginning part of the year because after 9/11, I started my Imaginary Botanicals series and abandoned all other works.

The central figure comes from an old rubber stamp that I own. It is a doctor's stamp that they used before they had copy machines. The doctor would use this stamp to help diagram a patients symptoms. What I really enjoy about it is that the left half shows the front of the image and the right half the back. I thought it was great that it implied that the figure has two sides even though it is a simple line drawing. I also liked it because I thought it also could imply that the figure was spinning. I believe that is what made me add the other figures. Those are from Matisse's famous Dance, 1910. The combination of the two just seemed to fit.

#58 from 100 pictures book - The Ghost and the Spirit

The Ghost and the Spirit, 2005
Oil on canvas
18" x 24"

This picture was made shortly after my good friend Sam Maitin passed away and cannot help but be tied to his memory. I had been his studio assistant for many years and looked at him as a teacher and a friend.

In the corner of my house there is a fireplace with a wide mantle. On that mantle sits a white plaster bird made years ago by a friend of mine. Next to the fireplace hangs a picture and below that, a potted plant. I removed the picture and left only an empty frame and took the fire out of the fireplace and gave it to the plant. The plant also contains the form of one of my Imaginary Botanicals figures.

Something about this simple arrangement caught my eye as I as I was thinking about the similarities and differences in the words ghost and spirit. I liked how the meanings could shift when used to describe a friend rather than just an unknown person. The spirit in particular seemed to shift most upon realizing that it can contain both the energy the person had while alive and their accumulated knowledge.

# 25 from 100 pictures book - Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve, 1997
Oil on canvas
72" X 92" (2 panels)

I’ve always liked how this painting turned out and I find the story behind it’s construction is just as interesting as the picture itself.

One of the most interesting parts of the story was that during it’s construction, I moved to a new studio just down the street. I had completed the Adam portion of the picture (right side) and was forced to hold the image of Eve in my head for 6 months while I waited for my new studio to be set up. This was a bit complicated as I did not have any sketches of Eve to reference.  Since I wanted to construct the figures right on the canvas, there were very few sketches done beforehand.

The idea for this picture came about during a time when I was preparing to get married. I had been thinking about my own experiences of how men and women interact and form relationships and I felt that I wanted to somehow talk about that.  This made me ask myself, if I'm going to make a painting of the first man and woman, when in their lives would it be most interesting to portray? I knew it was going to be a new experience to get married and the idea of being very new to something caught my attention.  So I created these two figures at almost the moment of their creation.  So new to the world that they were unaware of their own nakedness let alone their surroundings. So new, that their skin has yet to fully form and all eyes are not yet open.  Although they share the same space, I put them on separate canvases to reinforce the idea that although they make up one picture, they are still very much separate beings.

Among the figures I decided to place a few references to artists and ideas that I had been working with in previous pictures. Each selected for the ideas that they bring to our understanding of the world. (see addition information below)

After this painting was finished, I did several other variations (but none this large). The Adam figure evolved into a stand alone figure in the series of Saturn portraits (see image #29, Saturn) and the idea of the two figures together reappears some years later as the Artist and Model series (see image #51, Artist and Model).

Additional information about the painting:

• The Adam figure is a figure just born. So new, that he has yet to develop a skin. So new, that his focus is on the “fig leaf” before realizing that it is purpose is for covering himself.
• Adam is holding onto a cane in his right hand. This cane had been used in previous pictures (see The Guide, image #1) and was a reference to the act of seeing (rather than just looking). Since The Guide cane is really a reference to me (the artist), giving this tool to Adam implies that Adam is me.
  
• Each of the four corners references specific artists that were very influential to me at the time. The swirl (resembling smoke) was a reference to late Matisse cutouts. The book and the table cloth with the cross-hatch pattern in the lower right hand corner is a reference to Jasper Johns. The candle (missing the flame) in the lower left corner was lifted from a Picasso painting. The open window with the rain spilling in is a reference to Van Gogh’s Rain painting (one of my all-time favorite paintings that resides in the Philadelphia Museum of Art just down the street from my studio).
  
• Eve’s left foot being under the green table is a suggestion that she is being viewed laying down from above. Her orange shadow suggests the possibility of pregnancy and underlines her femininity.
• The green table is the same table in both pictures which implies that although separate pictures, both figures are in the same space.

first picture of 2008

Studio, 2008
22" x 20"
Watercolor and pencil on paper

Since I only date my pictures by year (and usually always on the reverse side), I've always liked the first and last of each years' production. I find that I always pay particular attention to them as they are usually the only ones that I can pin an exact date to.

What I like about this picture is that it's the first picture to includes a new roof deck that we recently had completed and how the bottom half drifted into a lazy architectural map of the first few floors of the house.

last painting of 2007

Marakanda, 2007
20" x 40"
oil on canvas

This work was commissioned for the owners of a beach house where we stayed during this past summer. The image is of the house that sits right next to the inlet in Surry, Maine. It's got a huge private beach and is one of the most beautiful places we've ever visited. In the background are the mountain peaks of Acadia National Park. The house itself is named Marakanda so I ended up creating the house with the structure of the letter M. Several smaller sketches were made during that trip. This painting is a larger version of one of those sketches.

Welcome

Here we go.

In terms of picture-making, I've felt that deciding to add the aritst's voice to an image for explanation often ruins a perfectly good moment for the audience. That moment in time when a viewer first sees an unknown image and is forced to use their imagination in order to make sense of it is a beautiful thing for me. Disrupting that moment has made it difficult for me to actually start writing this blog. That and the fact that I always find it difficult to reread my own writings after a bit of time has passed. I always want to delete or rewrite them.

Let's see if I can refrain...