Finished this last year, I was finally pleased with it and is one of my favorites. I had spent off and on several years getting it to Goldilocks just right…where I liked it. This originally was started in an abstract class shaping cones with string, I preferred doing it freehand. The colors in the painting match the frame texture and color with uncanny likeness.
My studio is full of art works I may have decreed allegedly finished and then I look at them and decide to improve them, of course this mostly would be oils or acrylic…watercolor would be another story.
I like this one to the degree, I may make it my blog header.
Surreal work I have on my studio door, mixed media 30×30
This is done in acrylics, it started out to be an abstract but turned out to be the devils play ground. I was trying out my new quart bottles of acrylic paint using a two inch brush, mostly to see if the the bottled acrylic colors would be vibrant and intense, and how they felt on panel. They did a good job…and with acrylics I find working in the zone most necessary. (zone tuning everything else out).
I was inspired by Gauguin’s use of color and his work “vision after the sermon”. Being inspired by other artists is so important in my view, as part of growing.
“Plato has Socrates describe a gathering of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to designate names to these shadows. The shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners.”
“Allegory of the cave” from Wikipedia”.
Now I did not read all of the synopsis written from Wikipedia…I recall the person who was freed (escaped in my version) from the cave returns and tells the others about… real reality and they do not believe him and end his life, which seems hard to fathom when they where chained up? I sort of look at Plato’s Cave as our Mass Media… especially biased news, always calling wolf.
Anyway I painted Plato’s Cave from me minds eye and it is oil on panel, if I recall I used a pallet knife and mixed all my colors from the basic color wheel back when I was determined to mix my own colors.
Oil on board 36×36
The analogy of Platos Cave came to mind recently when I saw this on UTube, a poem called the Matrix. I find it cogent:
When I feel the urge to try something different in my painting, this is an example. I took this photograph of a declining cypress tree at a place called Jughandle State Park in California. For some strange reason I wanted to try doing a watercolor using yopo paper, because I had heard the name yopo before. (My uncle served in the army with an alleged Samoan Prince named Yopo… whom I met as a small kid). So I painted trying out the Yopo paper, which is a slick shiney paper, the watercolors are not absorbed like in most watercolor papers, so painting on yopo required a different approach, like nothing else I ever painted on before. I may have to try doing a watercolor on yopo paper again.
For some reason the painting came out as an oval, actually it is full sheet matted and framed, but I find it a real challenge just to take a photo through glass. I will attempt one more time to take another photo of Jughandle. Painting the cypress tree was interesting…I could not capture the water in the background as I wanted, but over all I am pleased.
After my negativity about acrylics, please let me apologize…I have had some fun with acrylics also. This work was done from me minds eye and done quickly using pint jars of acrylic paint on canvas. I like to use a large brush and paint fast to get the basic work done and if I am not happy with it I finish it in oil. Now, I do not remember if I finished this in oil so to be safe I will say I did and this in mixed media. Soon as I find two other acrylic works which I am sure I did not finish in oil I will post them, one is called the “tree of life” and the other is named “Carob” (name of a horse).
I find doing this blog helps me focus on my art and forces me to pay attention to what I have done in the past.
This was my first acrylic work and it was not my last, but I find acrylics annoying because they dry so darn fast and seem to scratch on the canvas compared to oils which flow. This is from a photograph I took which was a practice in capturing moving water and using acrylics.
One of the few seascapes I have painted, this was done several years ago, it was from a photograph I took at Monterey long ago. Seascapes can be challenging, particularly if one does not do them regularly. I need to do another seascape, recently I visited a motel in Westport Ca. where there was a seascape which really attracted my attention. If I can find the photo I took of the painting in the motel, I will post it, the artist really captured the mood and energy of the sea extremely well done.
Okay…I had used this painting as my header for a very short time, but I wanted to have a more generic abstract which is what you see for the time being as my blog header.
When I saw this as a colored photo in a local newspaper, which was covering the topic about the demise of newspapers. I suppose, my experience delivering newspapers for 4 years as a youngster caught my eye and I fell in love with the contrasting colors. This is called farewell to newspapers… mixed media on canvas, 18×24
Sometimes I find an art work which inspires me to paint or emulate it,in this case one of my favorite artists John Singer Sargent.
Recently I emulated one of John Singer Sergeants paintings in mixed media it was one he called Black Creek. Soon as I find the Jpg file I will post it for you to see.
Right now I am intrigued by one of Sergeants paintings called Street in Venice, I found it so intriguing for two reasons. One the composition really strikes me and two, I recently saw a photo of a displaced mother and her child in a war torn street in Syria which was just as striking, but screaming sadness as opposed to Sergeants work, which is amusingly sexist… I would paint the Syrian displaced mother, but I cannot find the photo. Anyway here is John Singer Sergeants work which I plan to paint in oil on linen.
I painted this from a photograph taken by a friend, one of my more recent works…from last summer. Apparently the photo called me to paint it since I love doing impressionist technique painting. This is oil on linen and I believe 12×14.
Piousunyn 