The subject matter of this drawing is intrinsically cool.

Smear Study In rag.

Old 3" Brush Stroke In Phthalo Blue and Burnt Sienna

I got a new camera! Its wonderful. Here are some new paintings. Also featured are some of my recent drawing. The drawing is very random and kinda of surreal.

one new painting.

Dry Brushing In Atmospheric Perspective

One new painting.

Three New Paintings

One Inch Angular Brush Stroke In Indian Yellow

Splatter Study in Sap Green on Thick Primer for Texture

Splatter Study In Burnt Sienna

Very modern, Very formal, very exciting. These new works have been a great journey back to the basics. There will be A LOT more of these. Hope you enjoy them. I really find myself connecting with the "subject matter." If anything these are a way of better understanding the elements I have worked so comfortably over the years.

We are deconstructing paint. Where are you?

Currently Working.

So I'm beginning a new series. It is a desconstructive type of painting. Taking an element/technique out of painting and giving it its own rite of visual passage. For example, the first painting I have done began as four big splatters of paint placed within the composition in a manner that creates a pleasant visual tension/melody (however you look at it). Then and attacked the painting by outlining and toning the values of the splatters. This enables these splatters to really become something more than they are. They become forms expressing a variety of aesthetics that are intrinsic to the splatter. Spending a lot of time with a small brush working heavily with subtle and small details on such an expressive quick form allows me time to really take in everything that the splash represents in a painting. The painting turned out much lighter than anything I've ever done. And the sense of dramatism the splatter envokes rings thoroughly.

This is easily the best painting I hope I've ever done. Pictures soon. We will wait til I have plenty to share.

Just a little newness

Right of Way

Sevenerth

Well it has been a little while. But here is some new pictures for your appetite.

I think I heard once somewhere that the essence of lyricism in hip hop is surrealistically painting the street eye view to the listener's brain. Those who render and compose this painting best come out on top.

just to put it out there

Most all of the works seen here on this blog are for sale. Buying one of these means supporting the arts. And I hear supporting the arts makes people feel good.
These abstract paintings are becoming troublesome. I just can't feel them anymore. I feel successful in creating "the horizon ...". It is a painting with a lot of depth using mostly if not all neutral colors that crawl like a caterpillar on its back from one side of a square to the other seemingly stretching the symmetrical square into a less symmetrical rectangle. Put easier, a square panoramic? "Bullets.." does feel like a shield. "Hurry..." was a stoic piece that ended up screwy. The bowling pin was an exercise to take my mind away from itself for a while. Painting realistically is zenful.

Oh the colors,
Jonathan.

Some recent works

The Horizon was Derelict with Hubris, acrylic on wood.

Taken By Verbs, acrylic on wood.

Hurry Up and Wait.

Be Sure to Make a Funny Face when you Face it.

Brand new painting. No title yet.

Bullets Don't Take Bribes.

uhpdaits.

Sorry for the lack of everything. Tough times. I have a few new paintings that I am very happy with. Including a representational piece featuring a bowling pin. Then there are two more abstract pieces. I'll get pictures soon for show and tell.

In other news, the studio has undergone a few minor renovations. White walls. No carpet. Work will be for sale there all first fridays and sometimes on saturday afternoon. My studio mate Jeff Martin also sells work then. He is a full time artist working in ceramics and oils.

I guess that is all for now.

Leftover lettuce

I have hung some paintings from the drums show at the Dragonfly Theater and Pub. There are six of them down there and as soon as they start moving I can get six more in there.
The studio mate and I are revamping our studio. This includes, throwing away a lot of junk and making one of the walls into a faux gallery wall so people can see what we are working on. So on First Friday at the Nth, check out whats going on in the studio.

New Paintings?! Yea, New Paintings.

Well here we have a few new paintings. Check out these blobs.









I love it when you call me... acrylic on panel. excuse the wood paneling.

This one doesn't have a name yet. It is the iffy painting from a few days ago.

I finally named this "All Begs Are Off."

This one also does not have a name yet. I finished it today.


I finally named this "The Sound Alone."

This painting has two names, I am giving you the one I think is funnier.
Albino Rhino.

yesterday's work

So yesterday I completed a painting. Technically in terms of application it is acceptable. The colors are another story. I feel like I'm stuck on yellows. This happened before. I feel like this is a side affect of atmospheric perspective, that is using warm colors in the foreground neutral colors in the middle ground and cooler colors in the background. Because I'm shooting for a lot of depth in my compostions, the combination of those schemes works best. Using color combinations that do not fit into that scheme causes the composition to read flat. This is unacceptable. One solution that could solve this problem is monochromes. But I only know a few colors well enough to get maybe 4 paintings out of it.
Well we'll see.

Leftover parts

these are three pictures from the bottom of the pile. Seems to be the only pictures i have of not sold paintings. Soon enough I will be hanging a selection of leftover lettuce at the dragonfly. more details soon.

AGH.

Working a lot. For the Bills. No art time. Soon leftover lettuce. Only a few.

as i said.

Here are two of the newest paintings I've been working on.

For short, I dubbed them Blobs.

Soon, I will have new pictures of new works I have newly created. There is a new direction in these. They are a sort of realistic rendering of imaginary abstract forms. These forms seem cloudy. They also seem to grow into or form atmospherically upon the composition. For short, I have dubbed them "blobs".

Due to recent disputes and occurrences around the gallery, I have been pushing my color palette and application techniques with acrylic paint to whatever limits I am possible. Oil painters are dead set. Way back when folks. Acrylic paints can perform just as well as oils, as long as you know how to use them. And the best part, they do it faster, giving you the opportunity to keep working and producing more and more work, gaining more and more practice, becoming better and better. I ain't got a day to wait for that shit to dry.

In other news, to keep you busy until these new photos arrive, I am providing a link to Flying Rooster.net. A friend, James Fay, is one of the photographers there. He has quite the eye. we are working on a t-shirt design for the company. It's looking nice.

the drums artist statement.

This body of work addresses various techniques in paint application, color combination, and scale of displayed work to cohesively depict a very public and very intimate mode.


From Still Life with Woodpecker. By tom robbins. Page 238.

… The Dean of Inanimate Objects at Outlaw College would attribute the pyramid’s detachment, as compared to the Camel pack’s intimacy, to relative scale. Objects smaller than the human body, says the dean, possess the quality of privateness. Objects larger than the human body possess the quality of publicness. The larger the object, the less private and more public its mode. We might question the dean, provided we could get his nose out of a tequila bottle or his girlfriend’s panties, about the moon. The moon is a hell of a lot bigger than the biggest pyramid and can be seen by far more people at any one time. The moon is about as public as a thing can be. Yet the moon seldom fails to invoke a sense of intimacy. We might logically assume that since two of the moon’s primary characteristics—light and gravitational pull—directly, personally affect us, that that is the source of its intimate nature. Unfortunately, logic doesn’t cut the mustard at Outlaw College. The dean would snort, puff his cheap cigar, and contend that the moon is as intimate as it is public because of its markings. As with many ornaments of tiny size, its sense of intimacy is exploited through surface detail. Surface incident sets up internal relationships, and internal relationships break down the external gestalt, the publicness.


The intimate scale of these paintings serves to further the development of the definition of nonportrait. Portraiture, developed to shed light on a noteworthy individual, is typically reserved for literal translations of the subject’s visual presence. To abstractly embrace the spirit of an individual through a very meticulous technical way of painting is the primary characteristic of a nonportrait.
The subjects of these abstract nonportraits range from people and places I know to memories and ideas, all of which my life probably wouldn’t be the same. They all almost serve as a list of 101 ‘nouns’ that define me. Inevitably, as much as I’d love to deny it, creating a larger sort of self portrait; presumably, a nonportrait.
I set the goal of completing over a hundred paintings back in December, shortly after graduating from the ASU Art Department.

Con't

June 5th 2009. The Drums are Like the Lettuce: the Non-
Portrait Show.








From the artist statement:

This body of work addresses various techniques in paint application, color combination, and scale of displayed work to cohesively depict a very public and very intimate mode.

In other words, my paintings were small to draw the viewer in rather than make then step back.

The Drums are Like the Lettuce.