The Corner Store

 Winnipeg in the North End had a lot of corner grocery stores when I was growing up. A lot of these stores had large hand painted 7-UP advertising murals on them. Now a lot of these corner stores have disappeared and/or the murals have long ago been painted over. 

  I was really missing them lately and I’ve always loved that late 60’s early 70’s graphic art style popularized by Peter Max. Missing them so much so, that I painted one on the side of my garage.

Alternate Universe

 Alternate Universe - 2012 - pencil crayon - 9 x 12 inches

Here we go. Here is the other drawing I was mentioning in my previous post and below are a few images of the drawing in progress. The one immediately below is one that actually looks finished Well, it was, or at least I thought it was. But there were a few things bothering me I found out so I had to go back to the drawing board. See if you can spot the differences.

Lets Go For A Walk

 A Stroll Outside In - 2012 - 9 x 12 inches - pencil crayon on paper

I have not done many of these lately. By these, I mean this realm of SF / Fantasy NAK work I do in pencil crayon. ( yes I know this is not a painting, so why is it in my new paintings blog? ) They occupy a certain distinct style that is separate from my other work and even separate from my other SF work. I suppose it's a curvilinear form with their bold outlines, simple shapes and bright bold colors that are some of their features.  I have averaged creating three in about 2.5 years and it was years years ago since I added to this world which started around 1985. I have some others that are currently penciled out, so hopefully I will get them done sooner than later.

Nephelim Dimension

 Self Portrait - previous incarnation as a Nephelim - Sept 2012 - acrylic on canvas - 12 x 16 in.

Here are two new paintings that came out of nowhere. I did not plan these. I just wanted to paint without any preconceived notions of where the painting will take me. I start with a line down the center then I start to paint arced lines or spaces. I've done many paintings this way. They all turn out differently with most becoming part of a family or group of work called meta figures. These all seem to mirror the notion of our meta-selves through geometric and energistic patterns. When I finished the top painting shown, there was an aspect in it that I greatly identified with, but the thought was also coupled with the idea that this was a painting of the Nephelim who were a race of beings before mankind. Because I saw myself in the expression of the face, I wondered if it was also me. I do often think of the canvas as a mirror reflecting the artist. Is not every portrait also a self portrait? Is not every painting a self portrait?
  
A spaceship moves through space. A spaceship is a container of space moving through time. A spaceship is time moving through dimension. A spaceship is dimension moving through nothing.

 Spaceship - Sept 2012 - acrylic on canvas - 16 x 12 in.

Energy Sculpting

 Energy Sculpting No.1 - August 2012 - acrylic on cloth bound book cover - 14.5 x 10 in.

Here are two paintings done close together. The top one is very flowery and female in form but it is also a landscape if you turn it right (also female). I seem to do this a lot to my paintings(turning them). I was originally intending to do another more exact bilateral symmetry work like the one below, but as I really had no specific idea as to what I was going to paint, they just seem to take a life unto their own.

The painting below is both male and female and is a bit of a departure for me. It's a bit more physical.... well no it's not really..... maybe it's the juxtaposition of the real with the abstract.  It's also a departure because I stopped myself very early from making this a 3 year painting. I start these paintings with symmetrical shapes and they build from there. Some are simple and are done within a day and some take years with work done here and there over time. These longer ones are very difficult to know when they are done. But then again, often with the 'quick' ones, I will enjoy them for the moment, then six months down the road I will see it again and start working on it, only because I am in a different place and I am seeing differently and I want to see more In them.  I am learning to just start another painting already, because often when I start painting over a previous one, I will kick myself right away because at that moment I just realized that I just started a long road trip to finishing it and it was fine before and why did I mess it all up and create more work for myself. And it's always a struggle to get there, because you don't know where you are going with it. Then you are never quite sure if you have arrived. The questioning tells me that I haven't arrived. Sometimes I will have sat down for a 3 hour session to put into a painting, then after 5 minutes I realize that it's finished. And you know it is finished, beyond any real knowing because you can feel it. ........

Energy Sculpting No.1 - Aug 2012 - acrylic on masonite - 12.5 x 18.5 in.

Moving Landscape

Time Out The Window

acrylic on matt board 11.5 x 15 in.

Past Present Future

I like it when a painting presents new ideas for me and it is specially nice when one of my own paintings brings forth ideas or concepts that I was not necessarily thinking about at the time nor was intended at the start or conception.  Sometimes, after enjoying certain paintings of mine under a certain understanding, all of a sudden one day, even years later, I will realize an extended or even a totally different meaning for the painting. I like it when a painting can grow and move along with you.

Dissolve

This painting was originally intended to be a figurative work (it still is actually if you turn your head) but because I often see the figure in the landscape and vise versa, I feel they are so linked and at times so interchangable. This painting holds a shape I draw intuitively quite often I am finding in my unconscious doodles. It has become an important newer 'symbol' that I feel should be in our consciousness. This symbol which I call the trifinity symbol plays upon and extends the older world infinity symbol from its dual parts, to one where the midpoint of that symbol - that point between the past and future of which are the two spaces where we spend most of our time in - to one where that midpoint, that crossover point between past and future, the present, is made significantly larger and thereby increasing our time spent here in the now.

Loop de Loop  

Forgotten Prairie Landscape

Forgotten Prairie Flesh - 2012 - acrylic on matt board - 14.5 x 9.5 inches

This is the first painting in my new studio. A bit of a hybrid between my landscapes and meta figure paintings. This actually was intended as a meta figure work (which are generally vertical) but this was not going to go anywhere. A frozen moment in flesh. As soon as I turned it sideways (I always turn my work around on all sides to look at it) It gave me such a prairie landscape feeling and right away I envisioned a grain elevator in the spot I put it. Grain elevators of this era are disappearing on the prairies and so too are my memories as I meld into the flesh of the city on prairie soil.