Maybe Not a Good Idea

05-31-12
mixed media (pastel, watercolor, colored pencil, ink)

Here's a weird doodle from this morning's studio minutes - from my subconscious (take it away you armchair psychoanalysts): What's this primate doing? Is he just following his nature? Why does he persist in picking at scabs or messing with pimples? Is this an allegory about Temptation? Or is it about essentially curious human nature? Or is it all and only, always, about Sex? And why such an ornate and intricate machine? It's sole purpose seems to be for picking at sensitive and already irritated points of flesh!

Oy! Back to paying work!

Unfinished Business

When is a painting finished?

When all the lines are colored in?

When all your colors are used up?

At 5 o'clock?

It's finished when it's ready to be finished!

Some are like restless, pesky zombies: they wander about and are just never settled. I guess a picture is finished when it has said something and added a bit of punctuation at the end of it all. It's never left hanging. There may be questions (the good kind that tell us something about ourselves). But never is the question: Is it finished?

Meet a few of my zombies:

Just playing around with paint… like playing with your food as a kid

This one actually did get finished but I had to turn the paper upside down to get some traction.

Where once there was a white expanse, now there is a sand dune and the sea. Then what happened? Indeed!

It's an illustration because there's text and an image on the page (not that they are in any way related!

The curse of decoration! Maybe things can exist just so the world can have a little more beauty and intrigue in it. 

the collage area at the bottom is nice but other than that…?

still working on this one. Always searching!

I think this picture wants something more or something else… all the birds wandering around without purpose. Sometimes, just that simple realization is all it takes and it's "finished." Doesn't Art drive you mad!

Crystal City

These are cardboard "Crystal Cities" that I make.

One of them is inside of a box.

Spiders have visited but not stayed… shall I be sad?

The sunlight pours through the studio window and is held

by the bright orange buildings.

Who's home might that be?