Cups

Cups. I drink too much coffee. And sometimes, I drink wine out of coffee cups. The combination means that I often have a tower of cups watching over me. I can't help but see the beauty, the story behind each vessel.

Two Bottles (Red and Yellow)

Two Bottles (Red and Yellow). One advantage of giving drawing lessons: You can steal from your students. In this case, I took a drawing (not mine) of two bottles and fast-forwarded several iterations toward a more refined sense of ideal form.

Pencils are People Too.

Pencils are People Too. I did not, in fact, neurotically sharpen seven pencils in a quick succession. I did however sharpen seven pencils in a quick succession. To prepare for some preparatory drawings of Gabriela, I had to explain the benefits of a full range of ready-access graphite.

She listened intently. Then said, "I didn't know that."

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paintings.drawings.arithmetic.

Two Blue Bottles and One Bottle with Tulips and Roses From Turkey

Two Blue Bottles and One Bottle with Tulips and Roses From Turkey. I leave for Istanbul on Friday. 45 hours from now. Part of me thinks that I'm not going to draw at all while I'm there, which is a constant danger when I travel. Another part of me thinks that I'm going to be drawing non-stop. I'm not sure which is better...


If I don't post for a while, it's because I''m lost in Istanbul. If I don't post for ages, it's because I didn't come back... and if so, come and look for me. It would be nice to see you smile.

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paintings.drawings.arithmetic.

A Wrench Beside A Bottle Perpendicular to the Ground

A Wrench Beside A Bottle Perpendicular to the Ground. Get it? The bottle is parallel to the floor, but perpendicular to the ground (the canvas).

The Long Dark sketchbook begins with drawings from the night of August 13th, 2006. The last drawings I made in Richmond, realised the day before my original departure (I later decided to move my ticket back a week).

Notice the connection? You may also notice the flipside of my self-portrait, drawn on the same night).

A Woman, A Bottle, And A Dinosaur

A Woman, A Bottle, And A Dinosaur. From the current scraps of an old sketchbook, we've been using the pages to communicate all week.

It was Saturday night, and we were out at a Dutch bar in the middle of Soho with Emel, Deniz's mother who was visiting London from Amsterdam. I drew a picture of Emel because she had drawn a rather nice picture of me the night before. Plus, she absolutely insisted. Luckily, I didn't feel put on the spot at all...

Meral, Deniz, and Emel all speak Turkish. I don't. So, the pad was a nice way to share thoughts. And, I honestly forget half the things I hear, so it's nice to have random bits of conversation strewn about in an unbound tome of juxtaposed thoughts.

The Speakers in the Corner with Yellow Vase

The Speakers in the Corner with Yellow Vase. Snowing. Then bright sunshine. With hail. Followed by bright sunshine. And wind. Don't forget the wind. I left my window open for two hours. And guess what? Little particles of ice and snow covered a lot. Including this shelf. And the associated speakers, books, and yellow vase. That was yesterday. Today is only white grey. With a little wind. And a little drizzle.

Ketchup and Hot Sauce on the South Bank

Ketchup and Hot Sauce on the South Bank. Lesson #3. We had to take another look at Man-made Objects, Meral and I, so we made our way to a rather bright pub on the South Bank of the Thames. We got to taste two guest ales, and decided to try one of each. We should have had a pint a bit earlier...

The lights were bright and direct, the bottles both filled with different hues of almost solid red. This lesson was the test. No questions, no directions, only drawing. I like talking to people at other tables when I'm drawing, it's nice to be able to focus on both.

Of course, I never use an eraser. So, neither should my drawing students. Which tends to frustrate people.... I think that I was teaching her to draw like me. Which is also a bit contentious...

Lesson #1: Flowers in St. Jame Park- Organic Forms
Lesson #2: Coffee on Regents Street- Man-made Objects
Lesson #3: Ketchup and Hot Sauce on the South Bank- Man-made Objects II

Happy Mother's Day, Here are Some Flowers

Happy Mothers Day, Here are Some Flowers. My junior year in college (1998) saw me with access to a painting studio. And what better way to say Happy Mothers Day than a beautiful painting of flowers that will never wilt? There was a shell yellow Asian vase, intended as a gift to my girlfriend, and a collection of yellow, green, and purple petals and leaves. I took this picture over the winter holidays at the tail end of 2007. Home for a few days, for the first time in 18 months, I was impressed with myself for leaving so many beautiful paintings. Many, I saw for the first time...

Murals for St. Christopher's Inn (video)

Murals for St. Christopher's Inn (video). A brief approximation of the experience of rotating slowly in the center of the room while standing with one leg planted solidly on the ground. The other leg? That's the one contorted in a dire need-to-maintain-balance position, in choreographed slow-motion tiptoe between bed, bedpost, and floor. "peaceful" was the word most often heard as a description to the room once I had finished. Funny, given that my use of aerosol varnish set off the fire alarm. The entire room was thick with haze and post aerosol fume, but I didn't get it until several dirty looks and one really loud alarm later. But, I digress... Eventually, I had to cut open two onions, leaving one piece in each corner of the room, to get rid of the tremendous smell...

Murals for St. Christopher's Inn (Part III)

Murals for St. Christopher's Inn (Part III). I kept this idea... In a hostel, who typically stays in a private double room? Couples. So, I went with something which alluded to the idea of a relationship, without being cliche. The biggest bottles I've ever painted... 130cm tall...

Still Life wth Pan

Still Life with Pan. Well, I was researching the grid. It was an independent study, during which I began to develop certain ideas which have served as the fundamental basis for much of my artwork. In this painting, the plane is divided into four quadrants. Fascinated as I am with geometry, it seems that each object begins to allude to certain basic shapes.

Still Life with Three Bottles

Still Life with Three Bottles. Aaron's favorite game to play for awhile was "Guess the Bottle," where everyone who happened to be hanging out in my studio would take turns guessing which brand of beer or soda lay hidden behind the opaque layer of paint which coated it... I later painted over the background of this picture...

Two Bottles, Particle View

Two bottles, so unassuming... light surrounding them... light revealing them.... light creating them... The depiction of light as an object was one of the major premises of my particle series. Here, light reveals it's duality by behaving as both particle and wave. The two empty bottles are chosen because they are indeed so nondescript...

Still Life with Bottles and Grid

The painting that followed the drawing... The wooden grid structure is an allusion to the synthetic grid overlay that I was using a few years earlier.

Still Life with Bottles and Grid (drawing)

A preliminary sketch, this drawing includes a physical manifestation of the synthetic grid that I had been fascinated with for so long... The wooden net of squares and open cubes came to me through a chance encounter at a dusty thrift shop; I painted it black. In 2004, I was taking a break from over analyzing things and was enjoying painting straight forward still life set-ups with Gwen on a weekly basis. It was a very prolific time...

Onion with Silver Goblet

The colors find their own shapes, their own relationships... Light cascades around the objects. Shadows form, but the edges are always blurry. Sequential color fields broadcast interference upon one another... no beginning, no ending, only transition...