New ones

New paintings!

For Kristine

Galaxy

Created things

Some recent ones:

Spray paint! I'm miffed the photo doesn't show off the eye-stabbingly fluorescent orange color it actually is. 

12x12 canvas, acrylic and ink

Piece of plywood, acrylic and ink

Huge piece of plywood, acrylic and ink

Breathe

The show opening is coming up! It's happening at Pure Wine Cafe on Monday, August 23, 6:30 - 10:30pm. There will be art and food and free bubbles!

There's an RSVPable facebook event here.

Updates

I've got a few things going on, mostly exciting!

First, I'm framing a number of paintings for the show at the Pure Wine Cafe in Ellicott City. This entails many hours in the basement every day, playing with power tools and painting things and otherwise fooling around and getting covered in schmutz. Pictures to come...

There have been many adventures with Wowbagger, including swimming holes, night hikes followed by swimming holes, and a beautiful 18th century graveyard we stumbled upon after a relaxing tubing session down a river and an epic barefoot trek through knee-deep mud (whilst trying to get back to the parking lot).

I have a job! I will be tutoring nervous high school kidlings in the dark arts of the SAT. Had to retake the bloody test in its entirety to get the job - needless to say, I am not as smart as I was in high school - but it seems to have been worth it. I start in September. I never thought my first job out of college would require business casual and respectable conduct, but so it goes.

Finally, I've found another venue that might be interested in my art. I've been slacking recently, but I'm gonna have to start churning out new ones again. This is exciting!

A rough draft of my latest:

She's going to be a maenad. With prehensile hair.

Art show!

One of my paintings got accepted to an art show at Pure Wine Cafe! It's a swanky little wine bar in Ellicott City, outside Baltimore.

The piece is a 3-panel painting of bubbles rising up the wall. 

I'm wildly excited about this - I've never had my work exhibited anywhere before! It will hang in the wine bar for three months, starting in August. Not sure about pricing yet, but I think it will go - if it goes - for much more than I'd been thinking of asking for it. 

The theme of the show is "Breath". I just started another breath-themed painting... with luck, this one could make it into the show as well.

This is a WIP - I'll post the finished version later.

This is exciting!

Whaling news + new art

After a week-long circle jerk, the 62nd International Whaling Commission meeting in Morocco has ended. The 24-year old moratorium on commercial whaling remains in place, but no progress has been made. From the WWF:

But it could have been worse. The IWC was considering a worrying new proposal that could allow commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean for the first time in almost 25 years – and would also set commercial whaling quotas for whales listed as threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).


WWF has always fully supported the maintenance of the IWC’s 1982 moratorium on commercial whaling. Unfortunately, whaling at a commercial scale continues by a small number of countries. We want to see all whaling come under stricter IWC control.

An interview with Iceland's "whaling king" reveals the jackassery that environmentalists face in some countries:

Kristjan Loftsson, Iceland's millionaire whaling king, doesn't really see the difference: "whales are just another fish," he said at a crunch meeting of the International Whaling Commission.


...


Loftsson is untouched by a wave of recent research showing that cetaceans -- the order grouping whales, dolphins and porpoises -- are closer to humans that once thought in their ability to communicate, recognizing themselves in a mirror, and create what anthropologists would call culture.


"I don't believe it. If they are so intelligent, why don't they stay outside of Iceland's territorial waters?" he shot back, attributing such ideas to "a bunch of crazies."

Yup. The stupid, it burns.

A few more recent articles on cetaceans:

• Chicago biologist fears Gulf oil threat to dolphins
• Russia's new oil exploration threatens gray whales
  

And a new painting!

Quite the weekend

The first part of this weekend was hikes and assorted adventures with Wowbagger: there was an 80's band, some trouble with the law, and a lovely beach. Atrocious sunburns aside (always reapply, kids), it was a great success. 

For Wowbagger

Today was something of a blow to the ego: sat at a farmer's market for 7 hours as people walked past my table of paintings. Almost none of them stopped. One or two came over and looked for a moment, and I even got some compliments, but I didn't sell a single painting. I think it was because I was just across from a table overflowing with pretty shiny beads. I can't compete with shiny things: people love shiny things.

It wasn't a total loss, though. I met a sweet, vague man called Angel. Angel chases storms and photographs clouds. He asked me what kind of weather I liked best. I told him I liked the unpredictable kind, when it's sunny one moment and pouring the next. He flipped through his photos and gave me a picture of just that: looming storm clouds against a blue sky. Then he explained very earnestly that the beams of sunlight coming through the clouds were actually angels coming down to Earth. I nodded. He smiled,  handed me a little figurine of a baby, and wished me luck.

Then I met Crazy Joe. Crazy Joe introduced himself with a dirty joke - the middle-aged ladies nearby giggled in horror - and took a picture of me with my paintings for posterity. He used to sell hand-blown bongs and pipes - "everything but the weed" - at this very farm market 20 years ago. He made quite a living for himself, but things went downhill after he discovered cocaine, and now he wanders around the place hitting on starving artists with pink hair.

It was actually significantly less creepy than it sounds now. The amusing crazy overwhelmed the alarming creepy, and talking to Crazy Joe was a lot more fun than reading patronizing GRE prep books or staring off into space.

Quite the weekend. Now it's time for more aloe and a nap.

Good intentions

Two new ones.

 

Peppermint Narwhal

Good intentions

Last days

I'm up to my neck in writing, but there are just  a few days left. By my calculations, I've got about 15 pages left to go before Thursday.


Some recent additions to the wall:

Shitty white paint cracks when you apply it too thick. I thought that was cool.

My grandma's cat

22

It's my birthday!

I was feeling nostalgic for the Netherlands, so I made a little landscape with clouds, acrylic and enamel again. I think it's Delft, but you can pick your own city if you like.

Productive

Crunching away on the thesis, filling my walls with the artistic thoughtbunnies of an increasingly scrambled mind.

Penny

Untitled (suggestions?)

The Boy in sunglasses

Hertzsprung-Russell

Flux/Peak

Artistic procrastination

Same story as last week. Thesis moving slowly, overwhelmed by a continuous flow of paint.

Amber

Bonsai

Self portrait as Che Guevara

New Jersey

for Pickle

Enamel

I've been playing around with enamel recently. It's great: mix it with water and it makes the most beautiful swirly patterns as it diffuses. It comes out shiny and textured, and stains your hands forever. No amount of turpentine will get it all off - you just have to wait a week or so for the skin to slough off. Artistic stigmata. It's well worth it. 

So, instead of working on my thesis this week, I made a tree and... something else! The pictures are crap because of the shininess, apologies.

I'm not a great fan of Impressionism - it's very pleasant and serene, and it just doesn't capture me - but I love Van Gogh. I'd like to think that the second one is in the spirit of what he would have made had he been able to see the Earth from space. 

Self-portrait

Does what it says on the tin. It's not the greatest likeness, and I'm not even sure it's finished, but it captures something.

Drip and flow

More paintings!

I went to the Met the other day, saw a huge Jackson Pollock, and was inspired. Immediately went home and started pouring shiny enamel everywhere. Ecce:

 

Complex they're not, but they were fun to make.Washing my hands with turpentine afterwards was fun too.

Bubble triptych

I've finished my 3-panel bubblestream, and it's climbing up my wall!

 

Each panel is 11 x 14.

That leaves one big, blank wall still to cover. I'm out of ideas for the moment, but I imagine something silly will occur to me at some point, and I'll be back to sitting hunched over on my floor with paint all over me once more. I'm working on a few more projects for friends, but those will remain mysterious until complete.

Now it's time to pretend that I am a student and start reading.

Painting

I've been painting up a storm instead of working. I've never really painted before, but I find it very relaxing, and it provides me with satisfyingly pretty things to put on my walls.

In the spirit of this blog's theme, here's one of my recent ones. I thought it came out particularly well.

It's going to be a present for someone.


More after the jump!