Sunday, April 29, 2012

Is it too late for an Earth Day drawing?

I don't think so.

EASL Art Heist

Here are photos from last night's "Art Heist" benefiting the Emergency Artists' Support League. It was held at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, in Fort Worth. My painting "Meadow 4" was among those "heisted".
"Meadow 4" is snagged by its generous new owner.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Jump

This is a rejected (apparently, since I never heard back from the potential client) sketch for a diptych painting intended for a children's hospital. The kids depicted aren't exactly jumping, but they're flying after navigating through a series of challenges. But one has to jump before one can fly, don't you think?

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

EASL

The Emergency Artists' Support League provides emergency funding for Dallas/Fort Worth area visual artists and arts professionals. You can read more about the organization at this link. They have an annual fund raising art auction, and this year's is Saturday, April 28. This is my contribution to the auction.
It's titled "Meadow 4" and it's 8 by 10 inches, acrylic on canvas.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Sketchbook section

I have added a new "Sketchbooks" section to my web site, showing random drawings in pencil, ink and sometimes ink and watercolor.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Square the circle, or circle the square?

That's the puzzle for our time. One solution may be to just blend the colors, but as that process becomes more common I'm always amazed at the resistance to the idea.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Favorite paintings*


In 1984-ish, I was visiting the University of North Texas campus in Denton, Texas. I was upstairs in an atrium, where the art department's gallery walls were visible below. This painting dominated everything in the room, and got my attention right away. I asked my escort about it, and if the artist would be interested in selling it. He said he would find out. Later he called me with a price, which I agreed to, the artist, somewhat surprised I think, delivered to my apartment and I've had it ever since.

Bruce Schiefelbein was the artist. He was in a Masters program and later told me that the piece was the source of some...well not controversy really, but some talk during the exhibition. At six by four feet, it certainly has considerable presence and asserts itself in any environment. I've always liked what I thought looked like the mashup of Picasso, De Kooning and Ub Iwerks and yet was none of them and entirely Bruce.

In the ensuing years Bruce has continued to paint with considerable gusto. We acquired another of his paintings, "Nandi Bear", pictured below, a couple of years ago, and a work on paper I don't presently have a photo of. We're happy to have all of them and to be friends with Bruce and his charming wife Nancy.





*That I also happen to own.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Robert Frost and John Steinbeck

In the search for subjects to explore in this graphic style I've been developing, I decided on two of my favorite writers, poet Robert Frost and prose author John Steinbeck. I'm deciding on a third, in order to make it a trifecta. Odd numbers are more interesting than even ones, much like people.

Frost used New England as a subject for much of his work. Although I have spent little time in New England, especially in the winter (anywhere lakes freeze over so hard one can drive a car on them is going to be too cold for me), it holds such an iconic place in American culture it seems to belong to all of us, regardless of our geographic origins or preferences. I do enjoy the rare snowfalls we get in Texas, so his invocations of snow resonate with me. I used the snowflake motif as an overall pattern that disappears into and re-emerges out of his dignified white hair.

Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath also resonates, if not with me on a personal experience level, certainly with the current economic and political environment. These days we don't have Nature going after us, in the form of massive dust storms, on top of ill-advised policy repercussions, but the story of institutions giving more value to profit than people and the animosity in some sectors toward organized labor seems very familiar.
The background suggests the tone and color of dust and the oppressive conditions of the Great Depression.

Click on these images to see them larger.