All The New Pretty Paintings

I’ve been busy. No, really.  I’ve decided to quit reviewing Work of Art. Why? Well, I just want to enjoy the show! I couldn’t just watch for the fun of it, because I was taking notes! Anyway, there’s plenty of reviews online, and if you’re really hooked, go to Bravo on Wednesday nights, and get your fix. Same as me.

I’ve also been churning out the art. Yay! So settle in, this is going to be a nice little post with lots of pictures.

First up, we have this guy: “Violent Green.” I’ve been jokingly telling people that this is what happens if you don’t color in the lines. (I’ve also been encouraging random kindergarten teachers to hang this in their classrooms. No luck so far. But it would drive up coloring grades).  He’s acrylic all the way, with a nice splatter background. He’s also a take on similar crayon I drew back in the day. Much like the sunglass-sporting Easter Island Dudes, I wanted to revisit the Violent Green crayon and see if I could do one better. And who knows? Maybe there will be other disturbed crayons down the road.

“Moo Too” is also a redux. I painted these cows, now, three times. The first time was in the same original piece with the Easter Island Dudes (they were hanging out in the background). Then I painted them as a watercolor-and-ink that is now hanging in little Noah Gallinger’s room (what can I say? Kid loves him some cows). But both of those were really small, so I wanted to do an acrylic version, much larger.

Keeping in line with my recent love affair with spray paint, I submit “Verde” and “I, Cloud.”  Both were acrylic on the background, with an aerosol stencil overlay.  “Verde” is named as such, because it is a Spanish-style sacred heart. I mean, that’s pretty much it. I saw some on teevee and wanted to paint one for kicks. I liked the colors, I wanted to be all brush-strokey and have fun with it. I even painted a practice piece on some foamcore that is now the inlay on my (non-functioning) fireplace. Instead of logs, I have that. The name came from the BF; I wanted something non-obvious, he’s a fan of Kerouac and said that Kerouac said that love was green. So Verde—Spanish for Green.

“I, Cloud” is an interpretation of a photo I took with my IPhone, sitting at a stop light, after a large rainstorm. I looked out the window, saw this awesome cloud (we were setting up for an awesome sunset) and all of these telephone poles and such, and shot the picture. OF COURSE I wanted to paint it. Initially, I thought I would just paint the black parts with acrylic and be all by-the-book, but I got bored of that idea. So why not stencil something semi-realistic? Sure! So there it is.

And then there are these guys: “Mee-bas 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, and 10.0.”  I had a request to paint some more Mee-bas, especially for a show at a local Chik-Fil-A, and they’re fun to do, so I did it. I’m not sure how many more of these I’m going to do; so far, painting these TEN have been the most of any one thing I’ve ever painted.  They’ll be up at the Southport Chik-Fil-A in Indianapolis through the first week of December, so get them now! While they last!

Make It Pop!

Episode 3 of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist was a little closer to art I'm used to: Pop Art. Whoo hoo!

The contestants started out by following a line of label-less cans through De Pury's auction house until they discovered...Simon and host China Chow standing under Andy Warhol's Cambell's Soup Can!  Each artist was charged with making their own piece of pop art. To quote Simon: "Pop is bold; pop is brave; pop is sex; pop is life; pop is fun, pop is brash, pop is political...so Make it Pop!"

Young For The Win!

We finally get to see the artists rummaging through an actual art supply store and get a glimpse into their plans. Sucklord is going after Charlie Sheen. He plans to make bottles of Tigers Blood and a line of Wizard Dust products, packaging them like they're at a shop. Tewes is going to build the back end of a FedEx truck, changing the name to "FadEx" and tagging it with his own art.  Sara J. is going after online dating with a series of 'webcam' photos, Sarah K. is going after the foreclosure crisis with some see through "Sorry, We're Closed" signs. Young is making a big billboard regarding Prop 8 (Sara J rolls her eyes: That's sooo overdone in California...) and people are encouraged to grafitti the back of it.

We do find out some interesting things about our contestants: Lola and Suck seem to be attracted to each other, although Sucklord fears that when his actual girlfriend sees this episode, she'll "cut his balls off."  Kymia suffers from social anxiety disorder, after she discovered her father dead from a jet ski accident.  Jazz Minh has "Bite Me" tattooed on the inside of her bottom lip (OUCH!). And Michelle's confidence is shaken after her early success, and she's showing it through her Coke can painting...uh oh...too derivative...

Leon's piece is cold. Ads don't make pop art.

We end up with Young, and Kymia (nude water bottle ad) in the top two, and Young takes it home! The judges loved the interactiveness of the piece, and its presence and spark of conversation.

Jazz Minh tries to defend her splatter.

In the bottom, we have Leon (glass collection of ads), Dusty (trash bin that says "How could you?" on the flap), Jazz Minh (two portraits of herself, one that Suck spilled paint on--but she likes it) and Michelle.  But remember! Tonight is a double elimination! Michelle is instantly declared safe, she can leave. Her work was too pop, to Andy, not enough Michelle, but she'll live and learn. Dusty is declared safe, but told that he should have painted his bin a bright color (Side note: I told the BF when I first saw it that he should have painted it red. He rolled his eyes at me and asked why he should do that? Beige is the color of trash bins.  I said that red would make it more...poppy.--no pun intended--and I was right!)


That means that Leon and Jazz Minh (the BF's favorite) are out.  Jazz Minh's piece didn't SAY anything, and Leon needed to make his more personal, or as the judges put it: It was not a bad story to tell, just bad storytelling.

Next week: We get to see the artists interact with small children...which also means that Sucklord: Toy Artist will be interacting with small children...