Aoelian Electric Guitar

Into the light.

Oil wash landscape.

This is a selection of paintings from a series of about nine landscape studies. Using thin washes of oil paint on gesso'd paper I practiced different techniques for painting the sky, clouds, and the sun. In many ways these feel more successful than some of my larger works. Its that idea of somehow creating the conditions for uncontrived and effortless paintings. Beginning a work with expectations is beginning a work with a deficit.

During a recent studio visit, the galleryist was questioning the relevance of my painting practice with my conceptual and performative work. She said that she just couldn't accept the traditional work along with my other ideas. I asked her if she thought this set of paintings worked with my Australia project. Her reply, "Oh those well yeah of course those work they are beautiful." Huh?

Arturo, 2008

Arturo, 2009.

Oil on Canvas, 48" x 36.

This is a portrait of my dear friend Arturo. It was a gift for his 60th birthday. I wish the image was better but he wanted it before I could shoot it properly. I can't stress how important it is to take good images of your work BEFORE it leaves your studio. 

I worked on this one for about three months, and it is my first portrait in a decade. I asked Arturo to think of someone he loved when I took the reference photos for the painting and I think I captured an interesting mood. He refers to the piece as," The new me. What I aspire to be."

I was playing around with Robert Doak's Flemish white and copal medium(among many other ingredients). If you've never been to Doak's place, you must spend an afternoon over there. The man knows his painting and his Flemish White recipe has been written about and celebrated by artists like John Currin. I learned more about oil painting from him in two hours than at 5 years at the Museum School.

I used many applications of thin fleshtone washes mixed with lead glass powder which I think adds a luminosity to the skin especially on the right cheek and the contour lines around the head.

In the end I see this as a portrait of punk, as Arturo was witness to its birth and its ups and downs.

The Simulacrum

Drums and Roses, 2009.

oil on canvas, 18" x 14".

Fuck Plato, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard, distortion, truth, and the hyppereal. When I attempt to copy reality, or in this case depict a performative idea, the painting is subservient to the process of painting. The process of painting has a consecrative impact, a crystallization. My goal as a painter is that the copy, the depiction of reality, should resonate with an afterglow of discourse and meditation.

Self Portrait in Autumn, 2009.

Self Portrait in Autumn, 2009.

oil on canvas, 18" x 24".

A self portrait I completed in Spring 09. I'm portrayed sitting in a art nouveau bed and breakfast in Atlanta, GA. I like the mood of this one but it's a bit weird. Most people ask what the brass fireplace cover is. Since I've never seen one before I don't take that question personally, however it is a bit discouraging. 

My favorite area is the front corner of the bed. This kind of accidental moment can really make a painting. One of my teachers at SVA, Jake Berthot, used to try an emphasize being sensitive to moments like this and leaving them alone. I ran into Jake at the Turner show at the MET a few weeks before I went to Australia to score and paint a sunrise on the opposite side of the Earth which made me feel like the trip was blessed. 

My cousin Katy, who is a poet, sent me this quote after a night on the roof of the studio.

"We're made so that we love

First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better, painted--better to us,
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;
God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out."
--R. Browning, "Fra Lippo Lippi"