It's funny where painting will take you. My artwork got me into the film industry. The film industry made a house painter out of me. This house painter learned installation and fabrication and then somehow I stumbled into the theater. It was like stumbling back into
art. Actually that's literal... I was invited to work at the ART in
Cambridge. 
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| Duchamp's Christmas |
My roommate and I moved within a month. I hoped to make a getaway during the holidays. A wonderful man offered to take me to Fla. to meet his family. Two stops from our destination, he was pulled from the train and deported back to Argentina. 
My first introduction to modern art happened in the kitchen at a very young age. A kitchen towel with the Picasso's "Bouquet" print always held my attention. I wanted to like the towel, who doesn't like flowers-right? But I found the image strange. At the age of 6 or 7, Picasso bothered the Hell out of me.
Sketches come from bold, reactive play with simple carved form into the oils with charcoal fast and dirty. The palette is less complex than the painting. But don't kid yourself, I can fuss for days on the sketches too. I never know when my next studio time will be. Some of the sketches are precious to me and wait for years before a more substantial object is made.
sketch and "Hummingbird Halo" have many of the same elements. The palette and lighting are deeper. The hummingbirds achieve a different spatial tension and movement. The painting also introduces a woman with smudged lipstick. It's a small detail. The little details are gifts to the viewer who keeps looking. It broadens the story.
ndler" portrays a very plain girl with an enormous, rather well behaved, eagle on her ungloved hand. The sketch does not have the visual tension of the actual scenario.Eagles are big raptors that should not perch on anyone's hand unaided.
he woman is more refined, the eagle, more raptorous. Adding the titmouse in her right hand would be trite if I kept the eagle's original stance from the sketch. It would have been titled "food chain". Eye contact is skewed between the main players, so motives remain veiled.
f the relationship between woman and eagle. In the sketch, it is also the 
weakest point...It's a mush of charcoal and pretend. The painting shows less mush and more pretend.
key--It must show tension and strength without being over-defined or "muscly". The back must portray the emotion, give as strong a visual cue as the face...so the hair is short. In combination with the passive hand, the message is mixed. I'm still working the nuances. Then, back to the herons... 
Here's a painting that's been lurking in the studio for a while. The image shows a group of herons surrounding a nude woman in the soft light of dawn. It is part of the "Exiting Eden" series.
So I visited the other extreme with harsh lines, muted color, and high contrast...that's the disaster on the right side.
Going from one extreme to another leads to a beautiful in between. Scrubbing out layers, re introducing line, and reshaping form, all bring movement into the composition and reveal the character of the medium... The paint has probably set enough for me to dive back in now...
lamed the government for a landscape of fear, war, misused religion and unchecked business. Working in the airport didn't help matters. (At the airport, there were a lot o people in my "boat".)
. I like this aspect quite abit.
ries like this. Retail says, if you sell one thing, have similar stuff for people. People like familiar. 
ricane Katrina-(you see?)
sitter or a car problem puts a job in jeopardy. The job is everything, no matter how horrible it is.
re art brings. They attest that pleasure is what drives the production of art. Where can my send a letter of dispute?
I'm a crummy blogger because I actually have great adventures all the time and I have a really wacky job too. I just don't follow up with the writing part...no tiny laptop, no i-phone, no attention span for computer glowing screens. In between adventures I clean my apartment (because adventures inevitably lead to giant messes) and try to paint or at least organize the next adventure...
a living wage to mess with paint. I won't go into any job details as I am forever signing contracts with threatening verbiage in them about the consequences of leaking important confidential information about their top secret projects... like the next "great" re-make or the latest chick flick...very important stuff.
I have more interesting things to write about than openings, but my beloved day-job as a scenic painter is keeping me very busy.
vocation is this, an artist? No structure, save the restrictions of the medium and the voice in your head that says “Stop, before you ruin it!” There is certainly no financial security. Making art is scary. The artist creates in pursuit of the perfect translation of information, from the intellect to the physical. There is only the drive to reinterpret life. There are the life basics: food, shelter, reproduction. This is survival. For most animals, motion deals strictly with acts of survival. For the human animal the drive to create products outside of a given natural environment seems both unnatural and human at the same time. This strange use of energy defines the quality of life, how one survives and grows. The artist observes the existing structure with a critical mind, internalizes the experience, personalizes the idea with an individual voice. The input transforms into the idea. The idea evolves into a plan. The plan sets the cue for motion. The motion results in the creation of a product.
The product is a visual constant with an emotional trigger. Art introduces emotions, ideas, and experiences that open up new paths in ways of thinking. Visual experiences create a space for emotional and intellectual research and reevaluation of hypothetical experiences.
As an artist, I am not a natural. With each painting comes more experience with the medium and new visual possibilities. The new possibilities make a beginner of me all over again. A successful image needs balance between message and medium, familiarity and ambiguity. This balance allows my voice and the viewer’s own interpretation to be equally valid. The figurative nature of my work makes it accessible. Subjects such as birds
Part researcher, part storyteller, I offer my personal vision to the community. The work does not demand a one-sided spotlight, but invites the viewer into an intimate exchange of ideas. The work invokes participation and interpretation. It is a dynamic visual dialog. This is a special type of social interaction, one that looks for immediate emotional and intellectual response.
Emotion controls attention. Attention controls sight. Sight controls movement and action. Every action is proceeded by motivation, a plan. Every action brings one into a new environment. Every environment induces a flurry of thought, recall, mapping, and adjustment. Art provides a stimulus different from those in the natural environment of survival. Art invokes social interaction different from the interactions of basic survival. If emotion drives our thought process, art brings it full circle. Art is not a decoration. Art is the equipment that aids our evolution and provides a higher quality of life.
It is a gray and foggy night in Boston's Ballpark. The city skyline is barely visible from the third base line. The Red Sox are happy to be on an away game. Inside the old 500 Club is another story... music, fancy dresses, art and memorabilia from wall to wall and martinis in plastic cups...It is the auction for the Arts&Business Council. 
