Blue goals painting with a fish - the camera-shy wimp!

Well, we have ourselves a painting! I finished this up tonight after devastatingly realizing last night that I was out of black paint. Who runs out of black paint?! WHO!? Anywhoodle, paint replenished, painting finished.

I even managed to squeeze a fish in there.

I think this painting has a fairly simple narrative with the tiny fish and the enormous leap it seems to be taking. And the atmospheric feel still lends itself to some form of landscape. Can't help but root for it.

This image comes across as a bit flat, and I hope to get a decent photo of it before putting it up for show at Lady Marmelade! I will be showing some work with my new artist friend, Kat Cearns, and we are both super excited. However, I don't intend to have any daylight hours free until the weekend, and we set up on Friday, so... this might be the best one I can get for a little while. Make sure you check out Kat's blog too: www.katcearns.blogspot.com

Just to give a little range though, here is an image taken with flash, so you can see the irridescent paint; it has more depth than the photo above would have us believe:

... and a detail photo for good measure!

As blue as my blue paintings get?

I seriously started this painting tonight, and I'm excited to get to work on it this weekend. It will have more fishes, and a somewhat more graphic flare, but what excites me most is that it's a bigger surface! I really miss working bigger than 3' in a direction, and it feels great to have my body interacting with the plane. Not just fingers and wrists. It was delightfully distracting to feel my spine and neck moving around, and I've missed it!

These newer paintings seem to be about goals and pursuit. Which is interesting, because it seems rather detached from the bio-psycho flare my work typically has. I think I need to work some of those ideas back into the work, because I think there is a strength in the biological approach as those viewing the art have something meaningful to relate to. We can all take part in the discussion of the body. Nevertheless, it's freeing to explore different concepts, and being the control freak I am, I am excited to link whatever I find in these works to... well, rather lamely stated, past and future pieces. I am happy this painting is succeeding in confronting some of my technological weaknesses as well, and I can tell I will be learning quite a bit from the process regardless of the results.

I guess maybe the goals are coming from personal psychological goals to overcome oneself. Which is to let the body free itself from biologically induced torment? Do I know what I'm talking about? (That means no.)

Note: Please excuse my poor photo. I paint at night because I work in the day, and I'm just so excited to look at it the next day on my lunch break that I have to post it! Also - the real painting really isn't all the blue - the iridescence is just reflecting a schwack.

Don't Call me Dolly

Completed! I am actually super pumped about this painting - it's a lot different than most of my recent work, and it's fun to try a new vein with some success. I'm still working on what exactly I'm trying to get at conceptually, but it seems to still be sticking to the biologically psychological thread I seem to tread. I'll paint it out.

PS: don't forget to actually click on the image if you want a better view of the detail.

Don't Call Me Dolly - a slop of a fish painting

Hahahhhaaaaaaaaaaa...

I was having some fun and getting a little messy and exploring how to paint a fish. I think it's pretty interesting actually, although maybe a little immaturely rendered. It's been a while since I have tried to paint something figurative, which reminds me that I need more fish photos. My bros have sent me some good ones, but it's hard to get pictures of them live in action! Especially up close enough to get some decent detail. Nevertheless, alls well that ends well, and I had enough fun to justify painting this, if only for that reason. It's also a nice kick in the pants telling me to make sure I have a figure to reference! Tsk tsk.

It also reminded me that figurative painting is not that hard (albeit not exactly second nature for the goop-loving me). I think it's a nice vein to be exploring for a little while.