Journal
Practice & process notes
Occasional writing on my art practice, techniques, process, and the ideas behind the work.
6 articles on Then & Now
November 8, 2023
Then, And Now (Part 5)
"Then, And Now" or "Then & Now" in the blog search feature, is an ongoing occasional series where themes of progression, time, and memory are explored. "White Mountains Sunset" / Oil on Canvas Panel / 8 x 10 inches / 2023 This painting has an interesting backstory, starting in 2015 when I took an amazing plein air landscape painting workshop in New Hampshire from Thomas Kegler, offered through the Grand Central Atelier. I was brand new to the genre of landscape after having done still life painting for years, and on this evening a sunset painting meetup with renowned landscape painter Erik Koeppel and others was scheduled, which would be my first time ever attempting the extreme challenge of capturing a live sunset in paint. I was thrilled to be painting alongside these legends of the genre and did my best to soak up any knowledge I could while absolutely speed-panic painting my way through a much too short sunset. It was a memorable experience for me and the artistic result was far less important than the practice and mental impressions made. "White Mountains Sunset" / Oil on Canvas Panel / 8 x 10 inches / 2015 As such, I was never happy with the results of my painting and it sat on my studio drying rack since that trip, offering a great memory and calling out faintly to be resolved into a product I can be more happy with. As fate would have it, and I won’t attempt to even speculate why, these past few months was when the random spark of an idea and inspiration finally came to me after 8 years, and I knew it was time to rework this thing. I focused on accuracy this time around, as it had been so long that I was resigned to using photo references from that evening rather than relying on memory, and I always hated how inaccurate the mountains turned out the first time. The rest of the original study was encouragingly accurate to the hazy color diffusion of those moments and the rest of the spatial proportions. I regret losing that hazy pastel color chord in my reworking, which ended up being based on a later stage of the sunset when the forest and mountains had become much darker and cooler, no longer bathed in amber glow. But despite changing its palette and color harmony, I believe it to be a better painting now overall, and feel a sense of closure that this at least won’t be haunting me from the studio wall anymore. Side note: improvement is guaranteed if you just show up and put in the time and effort consistently! So if you’ve been grinding, don’t be afraid to revisit old work when the time finally feels right. Finishing paintings, no matter how long after the fact, allows an artist to learn more lessons and ultimately improve more than abandoning unfinished projects for good.
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March 15, 2023
The Three Hands Of God
A triptych spanning 12 years and a few different eras of my painting and stylistic evolution, this trio of paintings addresses the tense and often fraught human relationship with power, and in particular the power of forces beyond our control–those within us, in our world, and the cosmos beyond. The concept for the original version occurred to me in 2010 while working on a series of paintings featuring surgical subject matter as a metaphor for the reductionist, manifest destined worldview I saw as predominant in American culture at the time. In this first iteration, the massive hand of the elite neocon / neolib political and cultural caste imposes its will on the flesh of this world. A few years later, in the wake of several natural and man-made disasters in the American Gulf region and beyond, while reckoning personally with the ideas of climate change and ecological destruction I saw as resulting from the worldview described above, I revisited the concept with another surgeon's hand, this time piercing the fragile veil of our atmosphere to wreak its destruction with pinpoint cruelty on the Earth. In this second iteration, the cosmic viewpoint of our planet leaves all of our insignificant and fleeting individual lives too tiny to be depicted or acknowledged. "The operation succeeded, but the patient died." In the decade that passed since that 2013 painting, so much internally and externally had changed, that when the spark of inspiration for this concept struck me again I knew I had to act on it, if for no other reason than to ironically demonstrate that in fact, nothing has actually changed. Our planet is still being destroyed, still largely by our own doing, and those same powerful cultural forces I believe to be the cause of this destruction still exist, perhaps in new forms. The present always suffers the consequences of the mistakes of the past. As if to drive this point home even further, in a regretful twist of life imitating art imitating life, a series of massive earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria at the very time I was painting the rubble of collapsed buildings depicted in the third Hand Of God installment. This poignant connection of symbolism grew more monstrous still, when a train derailment due to greed and negligence caused a toxic chemical spill in Palestine, Ohio at the very time I was painting toxic waste oozing from a broken pipe into a pristine river. At times like these, it seems as though the hand of God might very well indeed be that of a gloved cartoon mouse, amusing itself with sick jokes of frivolous caricatured violence that threaten our very existence. Finding reassurance amidst the destruction we are forced to bear witness to and solace amidst the shattered loves we must endure feels like a Where's Waldo search for our better selves. “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down / the master’s finest, finest tools are found / slack-jawed and placid amidst the cacophony / of screaming billboards and Disney-fied history” —Propagandhi, “Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes” As a sensitive and perceptive person, the angst and despair caused by all of this is something I've always wrestled with, and in eras past I took these emotional states out on myself and my closest relationships. But I've slowly learned healthier ways of processing grief while examining my relationship to power and my attempts to control that which I fundamentally cannot. One of these methods is of course, to make paintings about it, to transmute the inner state of grief into an external communication that may draw awareness to the most pressing issues of our time so that we can continue to examine ourselves and course-correct where we're headed. There is a little flame of hope that burns at the heart of all that, and it's a feeling I try to guard fiercely while harnessing its warmth as a positivity that drives me onward, "unburied, death-defying, unbowed."
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August 9, 2013
Then, And Now (4)
My father spent most of my childhood building a 40 foot sailboat out of wood with his bare hands, in hopes of sailing around the globe. Around the turn of the millennium, during a time when we did not speak, he and my mother abandoned their suburban life and set sail across the Atlantic, eventually reaching northern Africa before returning across the Atlantic once more, barely averting several fatal disasters. This beautifully quixotic quest–an act of sheer determination, bravery, and defiant adventurism–will go unheralded by the populace and the records of history due mostly to my father’s self-imposed social isolation and constantly troubled mind. The beaten and weathered vessel On Eagles’ Wings, my father’s former pride and joy, has remained at his dock ever since, a relic of an unfinished journey. With a bleached white, filthy imprint all that remains of its once brilliant blue name, it haunts with the specter of unrequited longing. This accomplishment of devotion, undertaken not for profit nor fame, is what I’ve grown to respect most about my father. Even though, like everything between he and I, it resonates with a confusing blend of mixed feelings, this modern tale of triumph and tragedy should be properly commended, here, on my little island in the digital ocean, in honor of his August 8th birthday. I can imagine the freedom of the gaping ocean pulling my father back to it with the tides. Commanding his ship through the open waters is perhaps the only time I’ve known my father to be fully alive or truly happy, and from the outskirts of the wreckage of his life on land, I long for him to return to his floating home there, to be at peace, to complete his circumnavigation of the blue unknown.
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November 22, 2012
Then, And Now 3
My recent post about medium format photography adventures reminded me of the last time I had some fun with it, in 2009 when my parents were in town for a visit. My photographer friend got ahold of a loaner Hasselblad 6 x 6 medium format camera and a tilt-shift lens for the occasion, and I dug out some expired old film to see what would happen. Here are my favorite images from that day. (Hasselblad 6 x 6 medium format with tilt-shift lens on Fujicolor Reala 100. Negative scan to digital, Photoshop) (Hasselblad 6 x 6 medium format with tilt-shift lens on Ilford Delta 3200 Pro. Negative scan to digital, Photoshop)
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April 15, 2012
Then, And Now 2
While looking through a file cabinet today I unearthed a relic from one of my more memorable childhood artistic phases, centered around a lively obsession with the comic book, cartoon, toy, and eventual movie franchise Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’m not sure how old I was when I produced this mess masterpiece, but thankfully my skills have developed since that time. I often wonder, with no shortage of amusement, if the seed of my current deep appreciation for the Italian Renaissance masters was planted as a child by these cultural icons of my 80’s generation. I find it fascinating, in hindsight, the attention I paid to more intricate anatomical details like veins, even at this young age......considering how this focus has remained and evolved up to the present day.
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January 7, 2012
Then, And Now
The dawning of 2012 brought me to my parents’ house, an eclectic vortex of saved childhood possessions and weird emotional frequencies densely packed into a many-acred patch of wilderness falling off the eastern edge of the North American continent. Visiting this environment never fails to bring back a flock of the old ghosts that made me into the artist I am now, as I walk past the dusty shelves of my childhood picture books haphazardly assembled into stacks and rows. Many fond moments have been spent revisiting the sense of awe and wonder these books created in me—indelible impressions that formed the foundations of my artistic sensibilities, despite the difference in my current chosen subject matter. Childhood inspirations. These books went missing from the shelves, but were just as important.
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