Paintings

More On The Way

buzzbabyjesus — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:51:28 +0000

click on image for a closer look

"More On The Way" acrylic on canvas 30" x 40"

I think by painting this picture I kept the snow away. But I had to buy the car. It’s a Suburban, and I spent awhile getting it right, although I considered making it an indeterminate make and model since SUV’s all look the same. Shortly after finishing the picture we were visiting my mom in Connecticut, not far from the location depicted, when while making a left turn, another driver came up from behind in an attempt to pass, totalling our car.
Fortunately no one was hurt.
I ended up replacing it with a dark blue 4Runner, which from a distance looks pretty much the same as the car in the painting.

I’m not superstitious, but I’m currently working on a picture of my dream house.

Ocean Grove

buzzbabyjesus — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:23:02 +0000

click on image for a closer look

"Ocean Grove" 30" x 40" acrylic on canvas

No back story this time. We were visiting friends in Ocean grove, when I snapped this picture.
In the photograph the houses are virtual silhouettes, which is okay for a snapshot, but not for a painting.
Pulling out enough detail to tell the story was a fun challenge.

I enjoyed listening to Ken Nordine’s “Word Jazz” during the later stages of this painting.
Below find a cut from the album.

The Sound Museum

My Renaissance

buzzbabyjesus — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:04:48 +0000

(click on image for closer look)

"Firenze" 36" x 48" Acrylic On Canvas

At the end of 2005, I attended the Florence Bienalle. An artist friend,Jon Singer, was invited to exhibit his work, so I tagged along. I’d always wanted to see Tuscany. Unfortunately, as departure grew near I entered a difficult period of transition characterized by continuous upheaval and change. I brooded all through the trip, but enjoyed the food.
At the time I wasn’t making any paintings. Photography was documentary.
I merely wanted to capture the light.
Every afternoon, often just after a deluge, the sun emerged, gloriously bathing the city in a pale golden glow so famously rendered by renaissance painters.
Despite my heavy load I could not fail to notice it’s spectacular beauty.
I hadn’t seen any of the pictures since the trip and was surprised to find them on an unmarked memory stick.
I liked this rooftop view from my hotel, especially the TV antennas. Despite the complexity, I thought it would be relatively easy once I worked out the palette. That I could simply treat it as an exercise, like painting a pile of blocks. I was mistaken.
I had some colors mixed from “Mission Hills”, which is similar architecture, and at the same time of day, but they did not work at all. The “golden hour” in Florence is altogether different.
Capturing the shadows was the real challenge, though.
After a fair amount of trial and error I finally found my “European” palette.
Is it a coincidence that Naples Yellow figured so prominently?
Michaelangelo’s David lives in a building on the far right at the horizon.
My renaissance as a painter really began in the birthplace of the original.

I finished “Firenze” in the morning and still had some gas in the tank so I painted “Niagara Sunset” in about an hour.

"Niagara Sunset" 9" x 12" acrylic on canvas

This leads to “The Little Paintings”.

Red Barn On Curve

buzzbabyjesus — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:25:55 +0000

Red Barn On Curve 24" x 36" acrylic on canvas

click on image for a closer look

I’ve just finished this. The location is Route 148, in eastern Connecticut, and there isn’t a story about it, other than I liked something about the elements and the admittedly odd composition.
I’m in the middle of putting together a longer post about The Little Paintings, a complicated turn of events concerning a series of small paintings, all done very quickly, but I wanted to get something new posted in the mean time. This painting was meant to be a “big” little painting, in that it was my intention to paint it in the same manner, but that’s not what it wanted to be. A funny thing about process, once begun it takes a life of it’s own and you can either fight it every inch of the way, or work with it, which is always my preferred method. I began this quickly and loosely, but it wanted a little more precision to really work.

The Fishtych

buzzbabyjesus — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:28:43 +0000

(click on image for a closer look)

"Fishtych" Acrylic on Canvas 36"x 74"

I dug a pond in the backyard. It took a few seasons to get a handle on maintaining it without killing the fish or turning it into an algae farm.
Two Spring’s ago I took Tulsi to the local pet store and bought 10 “feeder” goldfish for a dollar. I requested a variety, as they were going into a pond. It wasn’t easy being choosy in a 55 gallon tank stuffed with tiny goldfish. Two of the fish didn’t survive the parking lot so we immediately returned for replacements. We ended up with a baker’s dozen. A month or so later, we were back purchasing fish food when I noticed the “feeder” fish were still 10 for a dollar, unless you wanted a “custom” order, then they were $1.79 each. We felt responsible for this policy change.

Anyway 6 fish ended up surviving, one gold, two white, and three two-tone. They grew very quickly.
That fall I took a few hundred pictures of them, trying to get the “perfect” shot, like a Japanese print; elegant, simple, and hopefully worthy of Wabi-sabi.
from wikipedia-
“Wabi-sabi is the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of traditional Japanese beauty and it occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West.”[1] “if an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi.”[2] “[Wabi-sabi] nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”

I didn’t get the “perfect” shot, but there was plenty to work with. I had pair of blank canvases wanting to be a diptych. I wondered if I’d paint one and then the other, or what?
Capturing the Wabi Sabi of the moment proved to be harder than I thought. While they were painted side by side simultaneously, and are attached to one another, they are very different paintings. There is a cliche concerning yin and yang I’ll avoid invoking directly here.
Incredibly the fish survived the winter, even when there was six inches of snow and ice covering the pond.
And getting bigger.

Mission Hills

buzzbabyjesus — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:05:46 +0000

This house is anything but a dump, and it’s not here because we almost rented it, but because of the way the light divides the picture in half. The stairs lead out of the late afternoon shadows into the glow of the golden hour. At 48″ x 60″ it’s the largest so far.

"Mission Hills" 48" x 60" Acrylic on Canvas

Click on image for a closer look.

I didn’t make a video of this one as I take paintings outdoors to photograph and this is too big to drag up and down the stairs from my studio. Also I’ve found the videos take up a lot of time and energy I should really be painting.

If I’d made a video this would have been the soundtrack:
Steel Reserve

Music by Me

The Secret Spot

buzzbabyjesus — Mon, 23 May 2011 18:13:56 +0000

I recently finished “The Secret Spot”, so named to protect it’s location as a premier surf spot.
There are a few clues as to where it is. I’m sure some will instantly recognize it.
This isn’t a contest, and there are no prizes to be awarded, but anyone who contacts me with a correct guess, will get credit in the comments. Here’s a clue: It’s on the East Coast of the USA.

"The Secret Spot" acrylic on canvas 28" x 42"

(click on image for a closer look)

Here is a brief video concerning it’s creation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Ot1oQxg1A

Music by me.

Lost At Sea

The Little Paintings

buzzbabyjesus — Fri, 06 May 2011 00:29:46 +0000

The “Little Paintings” are an interesting cul-de-sac in my evolution as an artist. Although the path is twisted and complicated, I’m going to try to boil it down into an anecdote concerning creative process.
After many years, I reconnected with “Mr. Nick”, my favorite teacher. It was funny how quickly we reverted to our old roles. A lot of what he taught me was how to avoid making bad pictures by overworking them.
“First off”, he reminded me, “You’ve got to be quick”. His specialty is water colors, where speed and confidence are key.
Last year I bought a bunch of smallish readymade canvasses. I thought they might be good for studies or something.
“Secret Spot #2″ was painted in about a day, then I spent too long on “Ithaca Barn”, so I got back to finishing “Mission Hills”.

"Secret Spot #2" 16" x 20" Acrylic On Canvas

"Ithaca Barn" "16 x 20" Acrylic On Canvas

At the same time my better half, Mollie, was finishing her Art degree (we met at Art Center). She had a challenging professor in an experimental painting class. The ideas she was bringing home annoyed me, because they were valid and messed with my status quo.
For an assignment, She checked out a book on Franz Kline. I never gave two shits about abstract expressionism, in fact I thought it was a dead end and likely not to wear well historically.
I flipped through it and found a pair of paintings that blew my mind and served as portal into the rest. I regret not making note of the titles, but they had more tonal variety in them than most, and reminded me of stormy skies over the city.
Unrelated to this I’m the caretaker of a really nice marimba*.
About 10 years ago I made some mallets for beating on a 55 gallon drum by dipping dowels into raw latex. They’re real ugly but make the best sound.
Unfortunately latex is famously impermanent, and in time will turn into goo unless treated. I took them down to my basement studio to coat with acrylic medium. I thought they might as well be a color. Which color then? I guessed they’d likely end up in a live setting, under black light, so I mixed up a batch of dayglo pink/orange.
The mallets are still ugly, but now they glow.
I was standing next to a blank 18″ x 24″ canvas holding a half quart of leftover paint when it occurred to me that whatever else happened, it needed to get “pinked”. As I was doing this, I had a vision for painting a really rough Franz Kline sky. While it dried I looked through my image archive for inspiration.

"Secret Spot #3" 18" x 24" Acrylic on Canvas.

Painting “Secret Spot #3″ was a game changer for me.
Afterwards I told Mollie, “Tomorrow I’m going to paint two of them”. “Meadowlands” and “Ithaca” came just as quickly.

"Meadowlands" 18" x 24" acrylic on canvas

"Ithaca" 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

I used to think I could only paint one picture at a time.
The next day I painted another one, and the day after another, and so on.

"Meadowlands ll" 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

"CT River" 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

"Clinton Beach" 18" x 24" acrylic on canvas

"Chester" 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

"Hammonasset Girl" 18" x 24" acrylic on canvas

"Skyland" 18" x 24" acrylic on canvas

"Secret Spot #4" 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

"For Lease" 18" x 24" acrylic on canvas

"Girls Gone Fishing" 18" x 24" acrylic on canvas

Anyway I got quick. Thanks, Mr. Nick.

"Niagara Sunset" 9" x12" acrylic on canvas

The marimba and the ugly mallets sound like this: Marimba 2

Videos/East Haddam

buzzbabyjesus — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:14:29 +0000

East Haddam 22" x 36" Acrylic On Canvas

I wish I could say that this was part of a grand plan, but making the videos came about quite by accident. When I started the second painting of the series, “East Haddam”, I sent around an image of the first day’s work to a few painter friends. One of my best and oldest, Snow Mack, emailed that she had it as her desktop. The next day I sent another image saying, “This is better”. And the day after that I sent another. She wrote back that she had them animating. An imaginary light bulb appeared above my head. The videos are not technologically sophisticated, but I think sharing some of the process is an interesting addition. While I sometimes hesitate to call myself a musician, I make a fair amount of it, and the videos are a fun outlet for that as well. Now finishing a painting means signing it, and making a video and soundtrack, something Van Gogh never got to do.

I post on YouTube because more people tune in, and Vimeo, because the quality is better. Interestingly, someone contacted me through YouTube saying that they’d lived in that East Haddam house for 3 1/2 years.

click here to view:

http://vimeo.com/3945387

This Video features the music of The Smoove Sailor’s, of which I’m a member. If you like the music, click here to download or listen to the whole piece.

Laden With Goods*

*Right click and “save as” to download to your computer. MAC users (cntrl click and choose “save target as” or “save link as”)

For more about this unique ensemble go here: http://www.thesmoovesailors.com/

Pure Process

buzzbabyjesus — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 13:04:25 +0000

(This post was completely rewritten 06/24/11)

The Grid paintings.

I usually start with a grid to translate the photo into a drawing on the canvas.
When I’d done that to “Mission Hills”, I saw something in the pencil lines that revealed a composition for a “process” painting.
I enjoy art that looks like a simple set of rules were followed and in the process a piece of art occurred.
In general, that method doesn’t work for me, so I got really excited.
Fortunately I had a supply of 16″ x 20″ canvasses waiting for a project. I got started immediately.
I did one after the other, my technique evolving as I went. The last ones were made almost entirely with stencils cut from quart yogurt lids. While working on it, I thought about the possibility of putting together a fool-proof painting kit, kind of like a post- modern paint-by-numbers.
You’d get a canvas laid out in a grid, a bunch of paints, the stencils, and some optional strategies.
Then I pictured going broke getting them made, ultimately losing my shirt, and having them end up on the clearance rack at Jerry’s. I realized you could provide everything except talent.
These were transitional and led to “The Little Paintings”, more about which later.

"process 1" 2011 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

"process 2" 2011 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

"process 3" 2011 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

"process 4" 2011 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas

"process 5" 2011 16" x 20" acrylic on canvas