With-Draw

So much has changed with me as well as in the world, but, some things remain constant. My appreciation for culture, adventure, and voice are a few of those. and I do believe I have a lot of cerebral spilling to do. It’s probably been close to a decade since my last blog post and that’s waaay too long. Things have slowed down a little for me as far as my work/life balance. I am currently living in Washington and enjoy the vast outdoor options for play in both winter as well as summer. In a world that has no shortage of negativity I am still staying positive, strong, and moving forward everyday. It really is amazing how much society has changed since I was a child, and instead of conforming and assimilating, I prefer to with-draw. With-draw is my idea of taking oneself out of the rigorous daily grind of life and immersing yourself in your art. Of course any positive creative outlet will allow this form of meditation. As with art however, you get to see the mood, energy, inspiration, and technique of the piece. Art is its own adrenaline moment and when you look at a sculpture or a painting you are looking at time. Past, future, current it’s all there along with the pure emotion the artist has injected into the piece. So let’s start there, how is my art doing? It’s progressing, at least I like to feel like it is. I am doing more painting than I have ever done, turning out about 2 pieces a month. I really should be sketching more but the painting forces me to at least sketch them out before I work on canvas. My content still seems to gravitate towards masks, of which there seems to be no shortage of. Now that the 80’s have become a pop-culture, it’s pretty easy to find content people relate to. It was the same with disco when I was in high school back in the early 90’s. There was this revival of disco music based on ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ A movie starring John Travolta released in 77’. I guess my point is; history does in fact repeat itself. Now, people are gravitating towards the 80’s, and have been for quite some time now. ‘Stranger Things’ had a VERY successful run, and the reboot of ‘IT’ was one big adrenaline moment for those of us raised in the 80’s and the highest grossing horror film for a few years. I guess a couple things that have changed in my art is, my use of color and composition, I am trying to do more with both. I’ve always been a little scared to push either keeping the palette simple and the comp tight and full. But I’m trying to thin things out a bit and create art with more detail. Likeness is also tough for me, which is probably one reason why I enjoy masks. They’re not a real likeness and when I sketch or paint them I feel like I have more room to breathe in creating the piece (if that makes sense). I’m also trying to bring more movement to my pieces. Of course a wider perspective can do that, but so can textures and gestures. So there you have it. I am still here, still drawing and painting, still doing character voices for a very limited market, still skiing, still dreaming, and still loving. I’m not quite sure I know how to do anything else at this point. With the first blog post in many, many,.....many moons I will now post some pics of my more current pieces. The first couple paintings are an homage to 80's comics. With Daredevil I kept it flat and very much like the comics of the day, with Hulk I stepped out more and tried to work some shading and dimension to it. The next two Cobra Commander and Michael (which is not quite done.) Have more depth. After finishing Cobra Commander I wanted to really make the fabric sing so that's what I tried to do on Meyers. All pieces are acrylic and ink.