R73 A la Recherche...

R73 A la Recherche...

6 x 8" oil on panel

R72 Creature Mythology

R72 Creature Mythology

24 x 24" oil on panel

private collection (sold)

R71 Ravens

 R71 Ravens

12 x 16" graphite on panel

private collection (sold)

R70 Creature with Sun Mask, Raven and Dog

R70 Creature with Sun Mask, Raven and Dog

18 x 18" oil on panel

private collection (sold)

R69 Creature, Raven and Dog

R69 Raven, Creature and Dog

24 x 24" oil on panel

corporate collection (sold)

The figures are taken mostly from my sketchbook: the little person with only head and hands, the raven and the dog arguing with each other.  The little person here is caught between two strong and loud parties!  I added one of my orange begonias, in the role of oversized plant, and some of the green leaves growing outside in the yard.

In this painting, the veins on the plants and the petals on the flower stand out, alive with growth and pattern, but the creatures are flat like cutouts, trapped in their two-dimensional view of the universe, and their loud debate, while around them everything grows in and out of invisible dimensions, endlessly.  The little person seems to say, "If only they would be quiet and look around at these wonderful things."

R67 Creature, Sun, Raven

R67 Creature, Sun, Raven

18 x 18" oil on panel

private collection (sold)

R66 Nuclear Family

 R66 Nuclear Family

16 x 16" designer's opaque and graphite on panel

Another experiment.  I drew and painted this while listening to the audio book, Margaret Atwood's 'Handmaid's Tale', which might explain how a fanciful idea turned into a rather forbidding-looking surreality.  Why are pictures like this so much fun to do?  It is choosing whatever colour comes to hand, and doodling in whatever comes to mind, thinking about other things.

But it is always these pictures that bring out the philosophical in critics, who try to find all kinds of hidden meanings and personal revelations in the objects and creatures of what is supposed to be a whimsical rendition of a real little world.

R60 The Dactylology of Raven

R60 The Dactylology of Raven
24 x 36" oil on panel
corporate collection (sold)

My daughter Abigail posed very patiently for all five of the 'angels'.  I was fascinated by the icon-like gestures of sign language when seen one letter at a time.  The V shape, one of my favourites, and a recurring shape in my work, here appears centrally and recalls the somewhat defiant universal gesture.  V, the meeting of two parallels, the inverse of perspective.

I wanted to try a work with one colour for the faces and hands of the creatures, and the rest 'etched' in black oil, the flatness of the black areas contrasting with the more dimensional flesh.  Instead of the usual feather-shaped or wedge-shaped scribble I use for shading, I wrote the word 'raven' repeatedly.  I had already tried this a little in R24, 'Nuclear Creature'.

R59 Figures with Tokens on their Fingers

R59 Figures with Tokens on their Fingers

12 x 16" graphite on panel

private collection (sold)

R58 Raven, Woman, Jar of Snails

R58 Raven, Woman, Jar of Snails

12 x 12" oil on panel

private collection (sold)

A test sketch to try brown oil paint in place of the Payne's gray I have used up to now for the 'etched' oils.  This picture is done in burnt umber.  As often happens, the 'sketch' turned out to be a rather interesting picture, especially I think, in the rather stark treatment of the face.

The burnt umber is a smoother, wetter colour to work with compared to other earth colours.  It is easier to draw lines in with the stylus, and draws well off a fine brush, without thinning.  This workable texture is important for detailed pictures, where many of the outlines are worked negatively, that is, the paint is worked up to a white (or coloured underground) edge, which is left to represent a line.  This method of working takes much more time, but is more effective in painting in white lines or areas later, or using a larger blunt instrument for broader lines which never appear as stark and clean as the 'left' areas.  And interestingly enough, even the commonly-used masking fluids do not leave the same line, the line that I am after.

R57 'V' II

R57 'V' II

30 x 30" ink on panel

private collection (sold)

This large version of the V is more abstract.  Like the spiral, the V is recalled in many natural shapes and events.  I remember a few years ago, doing a couple of dozen ink and brush drawings based on the V shape.

The V also suggests an action accomplished, something that has passed and left its mark, or disturbance.

R56 'V'

R56 'V'

7 x 9" graphite on masonite

$40.00

I became interested in the 'V' shape again, after receiving a commission from Dr. V.  While working on the large black and white piece, I did this pencil sketch.

This V shape became wing shapes in my later drawings of that period, and I have begun to use it again in the oils and drawings.

R55 Originator

R55 Originator

36 x 48" oil on panel

private collection (sold)

Each section of the big spiral contains a growth fractal of some sort, all freely drawn.  There are snails reverting to binary code, and eggs breaking down into bytes, and plants growing into snail shapes, and worms that always turn.  It is much more amusing than ominous, and more whimsical than instructive.

It is so big...yet my work seems to devour the space.  I could do a much bigger one.  The painting that never ends.

Painting in this way, a little piece at a time, a little design or creature composed on the spot each day, is like writing in a journal.  It reminds me of the musing remembrances of the Proust novels, the same feeling of endless reflection, of turning the same motifs over and over, viewing them each time in a slightly different light.  Every motif becomes familiar, a friend, a coded language, a tapestry that begins in the middle and keeps expanding, and is never meant to be finished. 

If only the work need not be in 'convenient' pieces.  If only there were some endless wall to hang it on, no need to break it up and scatter it all over.  It is like losing pieces of your life, sending painted panels here and there, never seeing them again.  How can you be a complete artist, when you are always beginning over again?  Real art, surely, must be built up, one idea on another, like a coral reef, so that the artist at the end of his life, at the end of his work, can look at a whole and see his progression.  Then perhaps something could be said of it, or some greater pattern emerge.