Snarling Dick

Powerful men can really screw things up. Two wars, a lapse in civil liberties, torture, eight years of pain and on and on and on. What a legacy. Here's a portrait of a real life villain and puppetmaster, Snarling Dick.

Heads Up

For the last three years or so I have been painting various heads - people I know, my own head, mugshots, political figures, and at least one pundit. It's not easy painting someone you can't stand to look at. Here's a painting of Ann Coulter. The piece is unfinished.

Sad Ann
Oil on canvas
2006

More New Work

Have had a productive Summer. I completed several new abstract pieces as well as a self portrait. Here's the final version of the self portrait I started in June. You can see the first draft before I had applied a series of oil glazes, at my June 13, 2009 post http://maliciousmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/06/self-portraits-can-be-fun.html

6/09 Self Portrait, Oil on canvas

And an abstract that had vexed me but now is quite satisfying...

Still Life with Vase and Oranges, Acrylic and collage on linen.

Click here to see more of my self portrait work.

9/9/09

So what's so special about number nine? I dunno. It just IS. Here's what Heather Whipps at LiveScience says about this date: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090908/sc_livescience/why090909issospecial

An experimental animation celebrating 9.

Have Another Donut

Red Donut, 2001-2009, Oil on panel

Here's a recent painting destined for the SJICA (San Jose institute of Contemporary Art). Red Donut was part of a triptych completed in 2001.  I have reworked the painting. I've changed the red a bit and intensified the 3D illusion.

Warm Weather Makes Paint Dry Faster

A Dish of Pears, 2009, Oil on Canvas, 11" x 14"



I like warm weather for many reasons but when it comes to painting in oils, the warmth makes the paint dry faster and I can get more work done. Here's a piece I started a year ago and finally got back to and finished today.









Self Portrait, 2007, Acrylic on vinyl, 12" x 12"

Here's a self portrait I created a couple of years ago. It's painted on an old LP.

Cubismo.

Momento Mori, 2009, Mixed Media on canvas.

A new piece finished a couple of days ago.

Want to know more about Cubism?
go to: http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/c/cubism.html

More work by Mark Nobriga: http://www.marknobriga.com

Cubismo!

Still Life with Uke, 2009, 12" x 12"
Mixed Media on Canvas

I have rediscovered my interest in Cubism. Here's the first in a series of Cubist-inspired works.

Health Care Reform NOW!

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