Trampoline

This is a music video I produced last Summer with the band, The Curios. Nancy Hall and Lee Parvin are a very talented duo from Pacifica, CA.

Here's their website: http://www.thecurios.com/

The video premiered at their 2008 Winter Concert.

Self Portraits Can Be Fun

What can be more fun than creating a self portrait? Yeah sure there are lots of things that are more fun. For me, it's something I always go back to in my work. I do a couple of self portraits every year. I find it satisfying. Maybe it's like doing graffiti. Leaving my mark. So people know that I am here.

Anyway, this is a piece I started yesterday. It's still in progress. What you see here is the grisaille with a glaze of Cyprus burnt umber. Needs several more glazes...some flesh tones, some cool colors in the shadows...

Click here to see more of my self portrait work.

In A Gorky Mood

Arshile Gorky was one of my favorite artists a long time ago. Yesterday, I was surfing for images of his paintings and stumbled onto a couple of pages with biographical information.

Gorky has been called the last Surrealist and the first Abstract Expressionist and he did indeed influence some of the AbEx artists. He had a painfully difficult if not tragic life. Born Vostanik Manoog Adoyan, in the village of Khorkom, Turkish Armenia. His family was forced from their home by the Turks in Turkey's second Armenian genocide (call it what you will) during WWI. They eventually ended up in Russia. There, far from his homeland, he lost his mother, who died of starvation. Eventually, he and his sisters emigrated to the United States. In the U.S.he changed his name to Arshile Gorky and pursued an art career.

Elements of his paintings hearken to his homeland and his work completed in the years before his death are unique in the history of Modern art.

Here are some links with information about Gorky:

http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles1997/Articles0297/AGorky.html

http://wwar.com/masters/g/gorky-arshile.html

http://www.haberarts.com/gorkybio.htm



Arshile Gorky, The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1944).

Time Marches On

Facebook? I like it. Lately, I've been connecting with people I have not talked to in many years. Time flies. So nice to connect with friends!

Whatever I am teaching seems to influence the kind of work I do. Here are some more recent figure drawings.





Untitled Figure I (after Prud’Hon), Charcoal and conté on paper, 18” x 24”

















Untitled (Two figures), Charcoal on paper, 18” x 24”

















Wende III, Charcoal on paper, 18” x 24”

Happy New Year!

Ok it's 2009. Time is passing way too quickly. And too much to do. I am feeling quite hopeful and looking forward to a new year with optimism.

GO OBAMA!
Nice to have a leader with brains. And the man is gettin down to business.
Change is good.

I have some new work to go along with a renewed optimism. Have been teaching life drawing and working with the figure. Here's a small piece I finished last month.

Untitled (Two nudes) 2008, Oil and Conte on panel

Another Self Portrait

Here's a painting I just finished.  This painting is a bit looser and  has certain qualities like a drawing. 

Untitled (Self Portrait)

Oil and charcoal on canvas, completed 10/08.

When in doubt, paint a self portrait.

Here's a self portrait from 2007.

Oil on canvas 24" x 30"

entitled Skeptic