Connective Tissue will make it’s premiere at the Creative Arts Guild in Dalton GA this Friday, July 2nd, 2010. Several new works will be included in the 50+ pieces on display throughout the month of July. Here’s a preview of the paintings. Information and directions to the show.

[View with PicLens]

Opening Reception Saturday, May 1, 2010 at 6:00pm

Seeds
I am primarily a figurative painter and have done only minor exploration of the abstract. The genesis of this series began in Portland, Oregon in 2008. I’d done a painting in acrylic based on an idea suggested by my painting group, anthropomorphism. I had an experiment from a seminar that I’d taught at the Pacific Northwest College of art in my basement which I embellished by pushing and pulling the shapes, adding eyes and rows of teeth. The painting was a great success, a man stopped me on the train and asked if I had a web site and if he could buy the work. I said it wasn’t indicative of my style or subject and set the work aside.
I left Portland in the late Spring of 2009 and stayed with my brother in Wilmington, NC for the Summer. I found myself without models, a studio and not being much of a plein air painter, any inspiration in the landscape. I did have his garage, lots of wood and some acrylics and the memory of the a fore mentioned painting. That’s where the Seeds series was born. They started with small pieces, tiny 6” x 6” images and meandered their way to larger works. I put the paint on the surface and let it take me places that I’d never been, no limits on color, save for the primaries and a few greens, and shape and no desire to be representational.
The Seeds are a metaphor for my journey from designer and illustrator to painter, the germination of a new beginning.

I started this painting with an acid yellow base and red . I asked my model April if I could use her a s brush. She’s small with great definition. I placed green and purple along the edges of the painting, she lied in the paint and water mixture and I guided her back and forth over the surface three or for times until an image emerged. I then spent about 20 hours on the result, finding shapes and edges.  This varies greatly from my normal color palette. I never use an acid green like this and tried to tone it down throughout the painting. I gave up fighting with it about 17 hours into the work and something happened. I used a color that matched the green and the drawing unified. It shimmers in the light like an insect’s wing, impossible to capture with my camera.

I am the featured artist this month at My Color Image Gallery in Chattanooga, TN. Here’s a preview of the featured works and a thanks to Kate O’Brien Clarke, the model for a majority of the Dysphagia Series.

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I’ve never been too found of this shade of yellow but it does work well in this composition.

Here’s a painting that’s been kicking around for a bit. I was packing to move Chattanooga when I stumbled across it. Bob Marley’s Redemption Songs was playing when I found it,  that struck me as a good title, It was done along with the rest of the Seeds Series. I did some pencil work on it, then set aside because I was overwhelmed with the other. I’ll continue to work on it and tighten it a bit.

I’ve been staring at this painting for quite some time, lost in it’s ripples and folds. I used to go fishing with my Dad a lot when I was young. He’d wake me long before sunrise and we’d drive 70 miles to Alabama on the back roads of Georgia. It took forever, slowing down to 20 mph in every small town between Chattanooga and Cedar Bluff, but I loved it. I would sit and stare at the bobber, waiting for a bite and watching the flow of the water.