hmm... I should write more.

I've been missing for a while. Somehow months slipped by. But they were busy months, full of art, as well as annoying stuff like 15 yr old cars with dying transmissions, subways, working weekends, logistics of organizing a show, preparing for the show, having the show, and now recovering from the show (recovery means watching re-runs of shows on cable wearing pajamas at 5pm.)

I think I'm now into a new period of creative things. I'm going to paint more, photograph more, write more. I have to stop going in so many directions, and not rush. Deadlines are good though, but I've had too many lately. I just hope I don't get lazy without them for the next little bit.

Above is a commission I did recently in the middle of all the craziness. It came out great-- and I think I need to do more like it. It's mixed media (acrylic, gesso, gel medium, pages torn out of Franny & Zooey) & covered by a couple layers of UV gloss, on panel.

It of my friend Julie who was in a Franny & Zooey inspired movie I made a couple years back. For this piece I worked from video, which is unique. Actually I recently saw a show where the artist supposedly painted from video-- I don't know if he painted from video as it played or from a video still (I'm curious...). But for my piece, I captured a couple stills from a scene and superimposed them, and fiddled with them a little in photoshop-- and then painted from the photoshop image as well as a series of 3 still frames. I'm thinking video might be a cool way to work now, even from moving video. I have to play with it more. But I like having a digital step to my art-- even if there is no digital element literally in my work. I do all my preparatory "sketches" in photoshop now. Sometimes I sketch stuff and composite it in the computer (so I can move it around.) Other times it's photos. I can play with color and composition-- and it is much faster than painting a series of miniature painting studies. My teachers in school would have a heart attack about this though. And perhaps a miniature painting could serve a purpose too. But I have limited time, and I never allowed myself anything digital before... and I always had such purist art teachers who never planted the possibilities of technology in my head. But I'm sure had the Renaissance or Impressionists, etc. had photoshop-- they would have used it like crazy.