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4"x6" oil on raymar panel. Yes, it is a grape the size of a bus. A while back I painted a planetary green grape and the experience was such a challenge that the Spousal Unit was dispatched on a global search for a dark purple grape, so that I may try the insanity yet again. Her months long, arduous search finally bore fruit and I was given this diminutive fellow with the Royal command of, "Here. Paint this. Etcetera." You do not want to know what the "Etcetera" is substituting for. Those of you lucky enough to have basked in Her radiance will know, that is a joke. Anyway, all Royal commands must be obeyed, so I present you with this planetary grape. Just as with his predecessor, this little guy is about 1/2" in person (well, not any longer – I ate him), making this painting roughly 650% scale.
Posted August 31, 2010
sold • private collection sherman oaks, ca
11"x14" oil on canvas. Here is a larger painting for you. One of the Spousal Unit's pair of ropers (horse boots). I say "One of...", because she has two pair. Kinda funny for a person who neither ropes or rides. Hey, they're comfortable and they look good. That last sentence may be translated to read: Hey, whatever she wants is fine with me. As far as the painting goes, there is a lot of paint gobbed on there and plenty of manipulation of the light. I had a direction I wanted to go with the painting and those humble boots and a few choice swear words allowed me to take it there.
Posted August 25, 2010
sold • private collection la canada, ca
4"x6" oil on raymar panel. Why the heck would I paint an abandoned building? Just look at her... she's beautiful with her stained siding, lack of windows and missing porch. That's character! I was going to try and paint the overhang's missing posts, basically faking it, but without the stoop it seemed like too much to fake and just a bit too dishonest. She deserves to be dealt with honestly. Maybe I should try to hunt down more abandoned buildings, they can be really interesting subjects. Argh, there's just too much to paint! I usually like to use "Ack," but "Argh" seemed right today.
Posted August 24, 2010sold • private collection south pasadena, ca
4"x6" oil on raymar panel. In addition to my ability to control the weather (a power my son still believes I have), I have the power to command the landscape. This painting is evidence of that power. The field and hills behind the barn were too high and just didn't stage the barn well. So, using my godlike powers, I waved my hands (brush) and lowered them. I even moved the range in the far distance to the left a little. Or was it to the right? We demigods have poor memories. Can't even find my way home... but I can move mountains.
Posted August 20, 2010
sold • private collection
4"x6" oil on raymar panel. I know you think I paint too many barns, but the shadows on this one were great. This is the type of scene you just fly by while driving your truck down a country road hoping to get a good shot at a vulture eating road kill or at least a rattle snake slithering along. I actually did encounter a rather large rattler, but did not run it over, much to the dismay of a couple of ranch hands I later met. They not only thought I should have run over it, but that after running over it, I should have backed up and run over it again. It is hard to find people in better humor than two guys sitting in a pick-up truck by the road picking off ground squirrels (cattle can break their ankles/legs in ground squirrel holes). For them, life is good – the guys in the truck – not the squirrels. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the painting. The shadows and the staging of the barn by the trees, scrub and glowing hill above caught my eye, so here it is in oil. • Let's see if I can pronounce Huasna for you: wahz•nah. Probably wrong, but there you go. Beautiful place. Here is a link to one of its farms: www.huasnavalleyfarm.com
Posted August 19, 2010sold • private collection los angeles, ca
6"x4" oil on raymar panel. The overcast lighting provided quite a challenge. I have absolutely no idea if I succeeded, but here it is for your perusal: cliffs, froth & foam, the Pacific Ocean, and some flying rats.
Posted August 18, 2010sold • private collection west hollywood, ca
10"x8" oil on canvas. Lori is the type of model that, when the painting is finished, you wonder if you have done her beauty justice. There seems to be a revealing pattern in my paintings. They seem to reveal an addictive personality. It would appear that I am addicted to painting portraits, gobbing on paint and carving it, moving my cools and warms around, still life set ups that look like little landscapes, struggles and challenges, etc. Oh yeah, let's not forget the most important painting addiction... cookies! Even the tension of a full day of grappling with a particularly challenging painting can be assuaged by a good batch of cookies hot out of the oven (notice the word "batch" - one or two just won't cut it - painting requires mass quantities!).
Posted August 17, 2010
sold • private collection west hollywood, ca
6"x4" oil on raymar panel. Every now and then, you just need to throw down some stuff and attack/paint it. Actually, I couldn't really throw these bottles down, because they would have broken, but you get the gist. Having somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 bottles in my studio, you would think I would paint more of the them. Many were scavenged from various places – from thrift shops, bushes, or even the royal kitchen. Someday, I will get my courage up and once again attend that satanic ritual they call the Rose Bowl Swap Meet. An artist could blow one heck of a wad on bottles and tchotchkes at that oh-so-evil event (I love it). • About yesterday's painting: Thanks to all who emailed me with their comments. I have never received so many messages containing the word "dark" so emphatically used before.
Posted August 13, 2010sold • private collection osler, saskatchewan, canada
4"x6" oil on raymar panel. I was going to paint the knife alone, the bullet alone, and the die alone, but I wanted to play a little with the light, so I slammed them all together. I may still paint them each alone, just not now. They just felt right together, especially with that dark (and I mean dark!) background.
Posted August 12, 2010sold • private collection hawthorne, ca
4"x6" oil on raymar panel. These are some of our homegrown lemon cucumbers on their way to the pickling jar. They make me wish I was a kid again. Not because of some romantic notion of growing your first vegetables. Oh no, no, no, I wish I was a kid again because of the baseballish shape and little painful spikes on the skin of these little babies, which make them prime "Bean Your Brother" projectiles. As an adult, all I do is cut them up and eat them - how boring is that? But they do taste good. Anyway, they also make good subjects for the lighting experiment you see above. After finishing, I took another look at it and, for some odd reason, was reminded of Rembrandt's "The Raising of Lazarus." I'd show you a picture of that wonderful painting, but all the shots on the web are far too light. The darks and lights employed in the painting are so dramatic. Rembrandt was a gutsy painter. Sorry for the wandering commentary – cucumber projectiles to Rembrandt is a painful stretch.
Posted August 11, 2010sold • private collection phoenix, az
10"x8" oil on canvas. I'm back and thought I would serve up Peggy again. Since I did a twofer with David's 2010 portrait and his 2005 cardboard one, I went looking for Peggy's cardboard portrait from back in 2005. Well, I completely destroyed many of those old cardboard portraits, but I cut some of them up, don't ask me why, preserving only the faces and tossing the rest. There must have been some reason for the rampage, but the gray cells that stored that particular data seem to be long dead. So, below is Peggy's 2005 portrait, maddeningly cropped with a box cutter by an insane artist covering his tracks.Posted August 10, 2010private collection woodland hills, ca
4"x6" oil on raymar panel. Yes, it is a grape the size of a bus. A while back I painted a planetary green grape and the experience was such a challenge that the Spousal Unit was dispatched on a global search for a dark purple grape, so that I may try the insanity yet again. Her months long, arduous search finally bore fruit and I was given this diminutive fellow with the Royal command of, "Here. Paint this. Etcetera." You do not want to know what the "Etcetera" is substituting for. Those of you lucky enough to have basked in Her radiance will know, that is a joke. Anyway, all Royal commands must be obeyed, so I present you with this planetary grape. Just as with his predecessor, this little guy is about 1/2" in person (well, not any longer – I ate him), making this painting roughly 650% scale.
