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!