Catching Up

So I figure if the purpose of this blog is to keep track of what I'm doing now, I should probably give some background on what I've been doing up until now.

Last year, I was focused on making large-scale narrative figure paintings. I was making colored pencil sketches of people on public transportation, in cafes, etc (which I think is both a great observational practice and a great way to creep out strangers). Here are some examples of those paintings:

Bus Scene 5'x8' oil on canvas

Cafe Scene 4.5' x 5' oil on canvas

Strangers on the Train 3.5'x6' oil on canvas

I liked drawing and painting people. It felt like getting to know the essence of a person without ever actually speaking to them. But I realized I was more interested in creating a space or a moment for people to connect with, and I felt like my rendering of space was lacking when compared with my rendering of the figures. So, I started focusing on space, and that's the interest I carried with me into my residency at Tyler this past summer.

Philadelphia turned out to be the perfect place to go through this transition, what with all of the abandoned lots and urban decay. I became especially interested in spaces that were being taken over by nature--I would take pictures of crumbling walls and peeling paint and broken windows and overgrowth, and then try to convey my own enthusiasm for those sites through my depiction of them. Here are some exemplary paintings:

Welcome to the Monkey House 4'x6' oil on canvas

The Sound of Your Life Through the Wall 4'x6' oil and refuse on canvas

Here's a closeup of the second one so you can see the "refuse", aka "paint blisters":

And some drawings (because drawings are important too):

Wallpaper Interior 9"x11" watercolor and colored pencil on paper

Broken Window Study 9"x11" watercolor and colored pencil on paper

Broken Window Interior 9"x11" watercolor and colored pencil on paper

Then, I started this painting:

It was this really cool site near Tyler's campus, and I really wanted to translate it into paint, but as I was painting it, it just started to feel wrong. It was too constrained. It was too dependent on the image of the place. None of the consuming energy of the giant leafy plants was getting in. So, I turned the painting into this:

Oozing Surprise 50"x70" oil on canvas

And I felt a whole lot better about it. It's weird, but the further away I got from the concrete representation of what the place looked like, the more I felt like I was really expressing the feeling of the place, or the feeling I got from the place, which is what I was trying to make other people feel in the first place. Anyway, I decided I liked this way of working, and I even made a couple of smaller paintings in a similar vein, loosely representing cracking walls:

Knocking Me Down with the Palm of Your Eye 12"x12" oil, mica powder, and refuse on canvas

The Dimming Divide 12"x12" oil, mica powder, and refuse on canvas

And that pretty much brings us up to the work I did in the early fall when I got back up to Boston. Since this post is starting to feel long, I'll stop here, but there will be more catchup later.