We're not rich...but we might be someday.

Knowing dupes.

Painting #11

I've been working on #11 in the background as I've slowly resolved my computer issues. I am also trying to reorganize my studio/work space—I think by the weekend I should be able to push this one toward more regular working states.

State #1

State #2

Mostly...

One of my favorite bits of cinema...it's in my head every time things go south at work—or currently, when I watch the news about the mid-term elections.

Swans (aka Skin)

Great cover.
I was just in NYC for work...this played in my head as I scuffed around Chelsea.

Time stamp:
I was there the same afternoon/evening as the tornadoes that hit Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. I didn't realize until the next morning that we just missed a Penn Station sleep-over (trains in every direction down).

Also went to a hilarious garden party under the High Line to celebrate the Pace Gallery's 50th anniversary. We stopped in briefly on the way to the train.

Secret Service style security only hinted at the high-powered guest list (not me or SS). GQ models offered up attitude, despair...and oeur d'oeuvres.

An empty lot was transformed into a spectacular picnic area, complete with a field of sunflowers and plenty of boldfaced names. I mean dozens; such as: Muffie Potter Aston, Alec Baldwin, Larry Bell, Eli Broad,Chuck Close, Tom Campbell (Director, Metropolitan Museum), Jim Dine, Tara Donovan, Rosalyn Drexler, Somers Farkas, Casey Fremont (Director, Art Production Fund), Diane Von Furstenberg, Arne Glimcher (the founder and host), Andrea Glimcher, Kim Heirston, Chrissie Iles (Curator, Whitney), Bob Irwin, Mort Janklow, Leonard Lauder, David Lauren, Glenn Lowry (Director, MoMA), Robert Mangold, Thomas Nozkowski, Claes Oldenburg, Michael Ovitz, Thakoon Panichgul, Robert Ryman, Lucas Samaras, Joel Shapiro, Ann Temkin (Chief Curator, MoMA), James Turrell, Keith Tyson, Corban Walker, Fred Wilson, Beth Rudin de Woody, and Charlie Scheips, to name only a few.

We were too early to catch a glimpse of the luminaries.

Okay, less dirge.

No words can describe...

the joy of my work-life.
 
 

9 hours of this...I should pay them.

Restoring Honor

Image by dengre

Sad and ironic.

The mind-numbing dissonance of today's right-wing politics is by design...it frustrates critics and hoodwinks followers.

Media outlets amplify and mainstream these reactionary and xenophobic political operatives. Glenn Beck cynically maneuvers himself to stand alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and the media puts him there—Beck is elevated and MLK is reduced. It is a slick game.

Update: Throw in a little "christ is the best" shtick and you're good to go. 

Oh look...Gohmert Pyle is back on TV.

What can one really say about this? Good job at reinforcing at least 3 or 4 negative stereotypes.

Painting #10 (final...done)

Painting #10 of 10       (30" x 31 1/4")

Details:

I'm not necessarily happy with this one. There are a lot of things about it that I now like, some having to do with it being—almost—a lost cause. I think the ground was too uniformly dark from the start. This limited the pictorial depth I could work with, incidental or intentional...it closed up too fast.
The tension between gesture and painted form is there and I like the different types of painting used—impulsive and considered (fast and slow).

Some of the difficulties I encountered with this painting go back a long way for me. They revolve around abstraction and its translation, flirting with the literal (space, color, object) and accepting the importance of a mark, shape or painted field without it feeling decorative.

Update: I struggle to make it not feel decorative, but know that it fundamentally is.

View preliminary states and comments below the break.

Frank Black and the Catholics

Bonus track:
David Bowie and Frank Black
Scary Monsters/Super Creeps

Watch for the great Tony Oursler piece at the front of the stage. 

"It will give you a pony that shits $20 dollar bills."

 Your stupidity has killed me...I'm no longer alive.

Quick...must...make...knuckles drag harder

Kepler spacecraft with 95 megapixel camera

Hundreds of new planets have been discovered by Nasa's new space probe, sparking new hope of life outside our solar system.
Up to 140 of the newly-found planets are rocky and Earth-like containing both land and water, conditions which could allow simple lifeforms to develop.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1297499/Deep-space-probe-finds-hundreds-new-planets.html#ixzz0uis2BgFl

This is pretty cool.
Yet, ironically, Know Nothing(ness), Teabaggery and fundamentalism (of every stripe) expands as the world shrinks.

Science has been their enemy all along.

UPDATE:
Apparently the scientist should have said Earth-sized planets instead of "Earth-like" planets.

Painting #9 (final)

Painting #9 of 9        (30" x 31 1/4")

Details:

I continue to figure things out. They are entirely situational (and self-seducing). The process boils down to chasing a series of subjective visual hooks that I eventually blunt, obscure or eliminate..

While each painting has illuminated an aspect of what I want to do, I really am beginning to like doing them. I enjoy it as a practice, something I can do daily with the simple goal of moving on to the next one...and finally...to have a completed painting require the next one.

View preliminary states and comments below the break.

The Pixies

One of the best alternative bands of the late 80s, early 90s.

Complex, loud, and beautiful music.



One more.

Painting #8 (final)

Painting #8 of 8           (30" x 31 1/4")

Details:

My approach is changing as I do these...certainly more thoughtful. Or at least doing more deliberate work alongside the direct and impulsive. I am learning (possibly again) that there are more places I can go as I work...more mindsets. It has been so long since I painted regularly, I honestly don't remember if I was conscious of "wearing different hats" as I painted.

 View preliminary states and comments below the break.

Well done (and bleak)

Animation and Direction by BLU
Produced and Distributed by ARTSH.it
Soundtrack by Andrea Martignoni


Very ambitious on-site painting and animation (check out their equally creative website at blublu.org).
I like how the painting/drawing seeps through and incorporates pre-existing graffiti and urban/industrial decay.

Happy Fourth of July!

Welcome to the 21st century where, politically, we will live out the 20th century in reverse...sort of. Or better yet, to conduct politics as a vaudeville review of the 20th century's low points...to gradually unwind real progress, cultural or scientific, because it's too hard to lie and bamboozle in the face of an enlightened population.
Post-modern empowerment...yay!


Sound familiar?


You can make horseshit look glitzy and informed.


Don't mess with Texas (as it cranks out stupid kids).

For fun, and greater effect, play all the video clips at the same time.

Painting #7 (final)

Painting # 7 of 7              (30" x 31 1/4")


Details:

This one was interesting to work. Even though it required more effort (revisions and re-thinks), I felt more confident that I could get the thing to go in a better direction when it had crashed.
I was able to approach it in different ways as well...not just with "rough-handed" brushwork, but also, at times, a calmer hand.

View preliminary states and comments below the break.

Riding a tiger

When I was doing this years ago, there was always a point where I couldn't work a painting any further without it seizing up, becoming mannered or just tickled (and it showed). With this painting, I was able to keep it suspended longer, make critical changes and course corrections along the way...persist.

Painting #6 of 6       (30" x 31 1/4")

Details:

View preliminary states of the final painting below the break.

This guy is a pitch-perfect political assassin

A couple of things:
The political and media theater that this clip represents is rather disgusting...okay...especially that it followed the Biden's "Super Soaker" picnic that many of these journalists attended.

But...the political instincts of this sharp elbowed Democratic veteran "reluctantly" taking on another tone deaf Republican talking point is brilliant. When finally "coaxed" by the White House Press Corps to address Joe Barton's undemocratic apology to BP, he destroys Barton and the Republican's position on the oil spill. He makes it clear that the corporatist, big business loving, free-market wanking Republicans don't give a shit about the "real americans" they always claim to represent.