Mansfield Holiday II Movie Camera

30" x 30"  oil on canvas ••• The difference between how I look at my work and how other people view my work is sometimes... amusing to me. More than once, somebody has expressed interest in eating one of my paintings and the piece you see above was—at least a couple of times—identified as a toaster. It is a rather old movie camera, so anybody would be excused not knowing what it is, but when somebody wants to fight with me to prove that it is, in all actuality, a toaster? Well, it leaves me puzzled and wondering if I should have painted a couple of pieces of toast popping out of the top (a nice sharp rye, I love rye bread). • When I view the painting above, I see a battlefield. To be more specific, I see the side of that dang camera (go ahead, call it a toaster) as a battlefield. If you think my only obsession is color, you haven't seen me obsess about how light travels across my work and my Herculean struggles with tonality and how my color work only makes it harder to achieve. I completely repainted the side of this camera no less than five times. And I mean completely. Every inch, just to minutely adjust the light traveling across it. • So, when somebody comes up and says they want to, "...just take a bite out of it!" or that it is a really, really cool looking vintage toaster, all that is going through my addled gray cells is the memory of the gooey battles that took place over and over again across the side of that camera. That is until they lean forward with their mouth open. That usually gets my attention.

•••••

May is shaping up to be a crazy month.
Why crazy? Well, I have been judged into the wonderful Beverly Hills Art Show happening on the weekend of May 20th & 21st. On top of that, I have been asked to be a part of a two person show at the Beyond the Lines Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. It is a spur-of-the-moment show, but it is a great opportunity and am gratified to be asked to be one of two artists in the show. • Two shows in May is enough—I think—to qualify it as a crazy month, but ladle on top of that the fact that I chose now as the time of year to rearrange my bomb scene of a studio and you get complete insanity. • As usual, over the next couple of weeks I will be punishing you with information about both shows, so keep an eye our for my emails.

Posted April 27, 2017