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.

Body As Bridge

From One World To The Next - 2012 - acrylic on illustration board - 15 x 20 inches

I am in a time of great transition right now as I am moving my studio of 21 years in downtown Winnipeg, to a new location in my just-moved-to new residence. A lot of change. Perhaps too much. It took me 6 weeks to paint this 17 hour painting. To me it's a long time, though some of these paintings have taken me years to finish because I just did not know how to resolve them at their various stages, or they just seemed to want to have more detail in them. But for this painting, I just did not have the time. From packing up the house for months and moving at Easter, and then right after starting to pack up the studio, all I've been doing is packing, sorting and reflecting. The only other art time is a bit of doodling.

There has been a lot of reflection, memories, realization of a loss. I came across a new piece of old music that I have not heard before by one of my early favorite musicians , Jean Michel Jarre. The piece is called En Attendant Cousteau in the Cd of the same name. This music came to me at a time that seems to reflect in a great deal this inner sadness and loss(?) and cosmic memory.

Change is good they say. I don't see it yet. I'm not sure where I am headed. There are parts of me that even wonder If I will paint anymore. Do I even want to?  I don't even have room to paint in the new place! This painting was a struggle as it seemed that I was forgetting how to paint. Like a dream that is there when you first realize that you were dreaming, then when you are fully awake there are only fragments left.

This painting is a rendition of a painting I did in a few hours, a couple years ago at a painting jam at the Keycon sci-fi convention. I liked the painting a lot, but there was something that needed to be explored more, and I had wanted to create another version of it since. When I started the painting in March of this year I did not know for a fact that I was moving the studio.  It seems appropriate now.

I will let my higher self lead me to higher ground.        

Entrance

Entrance 2080 - Feb 2012 - acrylic on board - 40.5 x 71 cm - 16 x 28 in

I like how this painting looks in b&w and in sepia  and I love this painting in different sections and orientations. It really changes the dynamics. Is this a spaceship painting or a figurative painting? 

This painting is from one of my Breath doodles of May 2006. The background was painted in August 2011. I liked it as is so I lived with it for awhile as a landscape painting. I knew sooner or later I would have to put the figures in. I see these figures as waiting at an entrance, and if I want to get more specific, you'll have to get a hold of me to tell you where it is.

Remembering

I Always Think I'll Remember - Jan 2012 - 14 x 18 in. - acrylic on canvas panel

 

     I always think I'll remember is a phrase I always believe to be true at the moment in time that I think it, but proves to be never the case. I think it to be true because if I remember something a few seconds after the thought or action I think it will be obvious that I'll remember later on. Why wouldn't I, I think. If for example I filed a certain sketch under 'G', the reasoning is obvious at that time. But really it is ONLY obvious and related to that moment in time where certain pathways are made by the neurons in my brain.  Time then juggles those pathways in life and creates constantly differing views of an instant. So then when it comes time to find the sketch I realize I could have filed it under various letters or it's tucked in a book because of some other connection I had made to it.  Or when I've had a dream in the middle of the night and have awaken from it, I think about about writing it down but I convince myself "that of course I'm going to remember this wacky dream. How on earth could I forget it?". But then, when your halfway between awake and dreams, your simply not on this earth anymore. I don't know what any of this has to do with this painting.

     I Always Think I'll Remember was painted from some sketches I did in 1995 for a series of works to be called Presence. I am slowing working on them, plus there are always newer ideas to paint which is why it took so long to get back to this one.  There is another sketch on the same sheet  that turned into a painting in 2001 and there is another sketch on the same sheet that I would like to do soon. I seem to be getting back into my cosmic surreal stuff - phase 2. 

     It's interesting that this is only the second time that I have painted on a canvas board.  The first time was exactly 30 years ago! The general notion back then was that these boards seemed kinda cheepy or used by amateurs. Now, I don't know what the general take is on them. I actually don't mind'em. Wish I had some more. Check out my 30 years ago blog to see the other canvas panel painting.

     

So Smooth. So Clean. So Optimistic.

Breath Of Life - Nov2011 - acrylic on canvas - 12 x 16 in

     It's been awhile since I did a painting like this. So smooth, so clean looking. Takes me back to the eighties. It's not how I was expecting to paint it. But this is how it turned out and it was really quite out of my control. Maybe the other way I wanted to paint it is not really me, and this way is? One should not have to think about how one should paint a picture (in terms of style), but as an illustrator I've always exercised that option of having various ones at my disposal, so,  I do find it interesting when the painting, and this is from that first moment the paint touches canvas, that the future of the painting is already dictated sometimes irregardless of ones thoughtful projection and what one ends up with is an illustration of the heart.