R&R Part Deux

R&R

 This week I took a few days to head to South Alabama not to so much unwind as to get some ideas for new work, do a little visual collecting, if you will.   Had a great time and got some ideas to catapult me (hopefully) into some new drawings/paintings.  This is a place that has been in the family a long time and has managed to survive all the hurricanes.  Part of its charm is that it hasn't changed a whole lot despite flooding and storms and (changing tastes in interior decor!)   Had a great time, ready to get to work.

Thomas Ovlisen

Came across this guy on the ArtCat site and thought his work was pretty interesting.  He uses car paints over polystyrene and then sands the gloss down, gives it a history.  I start thinking about perfection and the human hand or at least touch and how those ideas sort of meet at yearning.  There's always something about artwork that has that subtractive quality, of being sanded down then worked over again that creates the desire in the viewer to touch, even with just the eyes.  Anyways, here are some examples of his work.  Couldn't find a lot of large images to bring over but he does have some photos on Flickr.  Also a website at http://thomas.ovilsen.com/

Turbulence

  One of my intentions for this blog is to use it to journal, post research and pull the threads of what interest me from journaling into my paintings and drawings.  I've been thinking about the way in which nature is constant in that it is always moving, it repeats itself, it is unstoppable. It is always in process. To that end, in some ways I am more engrossed by the process than the product.  Work begets work, etc. The more we are in the studio, the more we find new directions in which to explore.  But Processes also become part of my work  and shape the forms that appear.  I have been experimenting with them and have stumbled upon some interesting techniques for making paintings. Although this is new and is by no means perfected, it is exciting to be in the "lab" with no preconceptions about what will happen.  I do not wish to turn this site into a slick representation of what I do, which is all fine and good -  but I want to share the ups and downs too (perhaps I'm a masochist!).  I may regret it but I feel compelled to show some of the steps that it took to get where I got.  

There are some aspects of this painting that I really like, and parts I find to be clumsy.  But I have been layering and layering for months and think I'm going to say it's finished.  Not the most elegant piece ever but I learned a lot from it as it kicked my ass.