12/5/2008 :: Barbara Fugate gave me a great opportunity to sit for a portrait in her Family of Faces project, and I saw the whole collection of 40 portraits she made in 40 days at the Youngstown Open House. I love Barbara's markmaking and textures. The dance party was great too - gosh I had a lot of stiffness to work out! Then the Gage Academy Drawing Jam was more inspiring than ever. Sarah Murat is an artist of a model - she does her research and this time pulled off a whole Batman theme for gestures. With Alan as the Joker, Sarah as Poison Ivy, and masked models as Catwoman and Batman, the afternoon was hilarious and challenging. I am so not a draftsperson, so I'm glad to have found Barbara Fugate to release the painterly draw-er in me. Not to mention the lead event Friday night - Artist Trust's Film EDGE final presentations. After hearing from all those film artists, painting and drawing seem so 2-d! That is not just a bad joke either.

10/11/2008 :: New Works Show at Forum Center went great and I even sold a painting, and got an order for a reproduction of it - The Player. In the throes of creating a new web site for webdzine. You'll see the painting soon. Every time I am profoundly doubtful of presenting a particular work to the public, it gets good response - first Young Dad, now The Player.

9/20/2008 :: Lots of dream studies lately and finding an inter-twining of sleep-dream perceptions and waking life actions to bolster my intentions of making art tout simplement. The making does go with the showing to clear the air. The showing makes the work public, moving old ideas to new and my ideas to what do people take them for which can surprise. It is a natural progression. It is healthy. To put the work out there. It doesn't mean I'll have any fewer of my own collection in my garage, but psychically, I will then move on ... and the pieces will be out there in the world for at least a while... and I already have new ideas. I might paint over some more canvases.. It is not about the objects, really... see new works at Seattle Ballard Art Walk 2^nd October 2008.

5/24/2008 :: ATTENDED MIGUEL GUILLEN'S WORKSHOP FOR ARTIST TRUST @ PRATT (MOVING FORWARD: RESOURCES FOR ARTISTS) AND GOT SOME ACTION PLANS FOR MYSELF

"Learning to express a personal aesthetic is a project worth spending a lifetime on." Jon Rader Jarvis

This declaration was the garnish on a plate of hearty art classes I took in Jan-Mar 2008. One, on drawing with Patrick Holderfield and one on painting with Charles Emerson on Sunday afternoons at the Good Shepard Center. A delicious sidedish was finding the Alliance Francaise -- j'ai retrouve l'Alliance Francaise de Seattle toute en train de se renouveller. Alors j'ai commence un cours de conversation avancee. Cela me fait du bien. Il etait evident que la vocabulaire me manquait. TV5 Monde est bon pour trouver une perspective mondiale. Mais alors je suis ici pour l'art...

Avec Patrick, j'ai appris une idee de collectionner des images que j'ai fait et aussi ceux du journal new york times. Aussi la, on a utilize plusieurs media: encre, graphite, encre couleur, quoi qu'on veut.

Avec Charles, j'ai trouve qq'un auquel mes "profs" ont souvent cite. (pardon la manque d'accents) Tous les dimanches, il a apporte une vigntaine de reproductions de peintures de qualite pour en discuter. Charles montre que la realite alternative est le but d'une peinture. Charles enseigne les 2D et les 3D par rapport a la peinture.

"Non, la peinture n'est pas faite pour d?orer les appartements." - Picasso.

Journal August 2007: Bo Bartlett's week end painting class in April, his intense energy and obvious state of being present on many levels made a big difference for me and my way of life. As a result of his first rule of good painting: live right, I've been making mental space for painting through mindfulness practice. These words of Bo's guide my painting/drawing practice:

"If you are not asking questions and trying to get the answers through trial and error and experimentation, then you are not fully alive." - Bo Bartlett

May 2007: Trip to Kobe, Shizuoka, Yui Town (to see the Tokaido Hiroshige Art Museum), and Osaka, Japan was a great feast for the eyes and tremendous fun with new digital camera. Having more fun making art than making web sites these days though. See some fave photos of my Japan trip

Journal November 2006: Revisited studies with Suzanne Brooker and Barbara Fugate, and found I have made a lot of progress, finding I am in a better state of "knowing what I don't know", especially about the paint. It is the gesture and the inquiry, not so much subjects, that interest me. I have noted that I like leftovers (of paint) and circumstance (of the pose) compared to engineering it all. Tend toward abstract but stick with representation. I paint figurative a lot, and continue to study, and am endeavoring to transcend to the painterly mind which is about the paint and not as much about what you paint.

How to move from illustration to metaphor and painting as a language? Painting as a language: what an odd but real idea, especially if you subtract illustration as a means to communicate. Eric Fischl's talk at EMP stays with me. He had a lot to say about body and figurative art, and the politics of the body. We all need to get naked and go to a Turkish bath. Bo Bartlett's show at Winston Wachter is great, but his Starbucks cup was silly/disappointing. Personally, I thought it should have been a venti, at least, or an espresso midget if he had to make it at all. But I think that painting sold, and now Bo's claim to fame could be to have profited the most from a single cup of coffee. A painter has accomplished what so many others here dream of without ever dreaming in paint.

Around Seattle Journal Entry: 9 spaces Nine trees has broken ground next to the Henry Art Gallery 7 July 2006

After a sundae of workshops this summer 2005: study with Michael Howard and our whole painting class, figure and portrait with Barbara Fugate all summer, a photographic trip to Georgia, Color and Light with Suzanne Brooker, a commission and sale of two paintings brought all these ideas into my studio.
ABOUT Expansion 36"x36" and Contraction 36" x 36"
These twin paintings explore the idea of objects or space itself contracting and expanding within space. Painting these was quite a wonderful experience involving invention using objects like paint chips, carpet scraps, granite fragments and rubbings from a metal grate, as well as notes and conversation with my patron while exploring the building. These works are acrylic on canvas.

Interpreting environments is engaging. I like to do decorative paintings, Picasso. If you want to commission a decorative painting, please contact me.
September 2005

Harstine Island paintings at Local Color at Pike Place Market through October 2005.

Why Paint? It's a question that reasserts itself frequently, and the answer is periodically new. Lately, I am exploring ideas more than I try to represent scenes. There is an incredible sense of freedom for me to paint while considering tangential ideas associated with the images developing on the canvas. There are always surprises, even when a number of studies precede the big work. At the same time, in parallel efforts, I am thoroughly confronted by my inexpert ability to see and mix colors in figure painting. The figure painting always brings me back to the discipline of realism. I am confident that improvement can come with some systematic experimentation and practice with the pigments. Which brings me back to the freedom of working in ideas and their perfectly fine limited palettes. But really, I'm not giving up on the figure at all. June 2005

Wine and Vine on Exhibit!
Four new paintings exploring shape, balance, color and free association.
Third Thursday Art Walk in Edmonds May 19
Arista Wine Cellars
new location! 320 5th Avenue

Harstine Island on Exhibit!
May 2005
Second Saturday Art Walk in Ballard at the Forum Center 1718 56th Street hosted by Andrew L. Parker.

Out the Window on Exhibit!
April 2005
Local Color Seattle
PIKE PLACE MARKET

Studio Show: Out the Window The more I paint the more I am confronted by the workings of my own mind: its preconceptions, its fabrications and its capacities to appreciate and create.

What is fascinating about painting out the window is how interested I become in otherwise predictable transformations: the sun or fog of every day, the dawn to dusk of each hour, and the breeze or bluster of the minute. Everything is changeable and not predictable at all. The 2004 summer season was a good model.

Picking up a paintbrush and starting to paint is extremely satisfying. Before starting a painting, I do a number of studies in ink. I can tell that the years I took pictures without film are part of my apparently haphazard composition. December 2004

Robert Irwin opened my eyes to phenomenological perception, and I was lucky enough to see him and hear him speak recently at the Seattle Art Museum. October 2004

Why Paint? Lately, it's about looking and noticing. Throughout the life of a painting, it's about something coming together to become itself. A painting is as much about what I want it to be as what it turns out to be. The more I paint, the more I catch myself in the act of erroneous ways of seeing. I only recently started drawing in ink which forces two things: intentional good markmaking and creative recovery. June 2004