With painting interiors, I’m always having to juggle color relationships and color schemes. And even thinking of how they might look together on a wall (as in an exhibition). By taking away the color component with drawing, it becomes more about the structure. I also have been having fun with different ways of applying the charcoal. Brushed on, dusted, rolled or stamped. This group of small charcoal drawings uses a cutout chair to mask the paper and create the ‘ghost chair’.
Studio
Paint application mashup
Creating interior scenes from imagination, the spatial representation is my primary interest. In creating the space, I like to mix and match and confound the various approaches to perspective. That is mostly a drawing pursuit. In painting, I’m choosing color schemes, while leaving out an element for the viewer to finish. In the painting process, I find it interesting to switch up the method of paint application. The ‘how of painting’. Some areas are brushed in with syrupy thick paint, while others are scraped or scumbled or glazed or simply painted in.
Interiors with missing furniture
After some time of inventing an interior space, I chose to use some external references to switch up the feel. Usually I would look through interior design catalogs and then invent from there. I came upon the idea of painting everything except for the chair (or sofa or bed) as a sense of emptiness, and also a play on the interior decorator choosing their art based off of the colors of the furniture. As these are already inventions of interior design, I hope to force the viewer to choose the fabric of the chair to match the painting.
Wall configurations
After exploring some ‘hallway scenes’, or interiors seen from an oblique angle, I found myself engaging in the painting of a floor or wall surface. How to handle a shift in space that happens in 2 dimensions while trying to represent 3 dimensional space. I also find myself playing off of isometric perspective (parallel lines) and 1-2 point perspective. Perspective rules are made to be broken.
Accidental Content: 2009 Mortgage Crash
In the ‘Hallway Interiors’, the spatial aspects are my primary interest and the ‘content’ or subject is the pictures within the painting. While not consciously trying to document the terrifying crash of the mortgage crisis of 2009, I discovered after the fact that this group of paintings perfectly captured it.
Someone racing to bring some news, while a character digests in an unsure posture. Fight or flight?
Herald, 2009
oil on canvas
28 x 22 inches
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The bankers in charge of the shell game that is modern finance
Shell Game, 2009
oil on canvas
28 x 22 inches
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So many people getting caught in a bad situation.
The Hammering, 2009
oil on canvas
28 x 22 inches
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The party is over and everyone is gone, including the light in ones eyes.
Emptied, 2009
oil on canvas
28 x 22 inches
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The notion of retirement in comfort is further away.
Comfy Chair, 2009
oil on canvas
28 x 22 inches
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This could be titled ‘the new haircut’
Happy Couple, 2009
oil on canvas, 1 of 3
14 x 11 inches
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Metaphors
From right to left:
Consummation: Adulterated, 2011
oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches
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Lure: Distraction, 2011
oil on canvas
36 x 48 inches
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Comparison of Maladies, 2011
oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches
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Fishbowl: Bluebloods, 2011-12
oil on canvas
48 x 36 inches
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Indecision: Lurching Wall, 2014-15
oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches
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I don’t usually have a plan for the meaning or the content when I begin a painting, and am pleasantly surprised when I think I know what it represents as it nears completion. This selection seems to poke fun at ideas of success and failure.
Wandering Table interiors
Cupcake: Haggle, 2010
oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches
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Reaction: Indeterminate, 2010
oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches
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Dominatrices, 2011
oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches
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Contract: Variations of Red, 2009
oil on canvas
36 x 24 inches
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Pass, 2008-09
oil on canvas
24 x 36 inches
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Bread and Circus, 2011
oil on canvas
36 x 24 inches
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This group is also from the wandering table series. The table with its symbolic elements wandered from an abstract spatial field to a landscape space, to outside of some architectural structures and finally to an interior space. Along the way, the symbols and elements gathered to a picture or mirror or window on a wall, oblique and confounded perspective, and a mystery of the table elements.
Blue Bar: Critical Mass, 2013
Blue Bar: Critical Mass, 2013
oil on canvas
36 x 48 inches
Where to start a story of ones painting life when it has been a continuum is a challenge. I choose this somewhat arbitrarily as it is from a good time in my life. I had been living in the ‘upper’ Tenderloin in San Francisco, working several jobs downtown and teaching in Santa Rosa.
I walked everywhere (except driving to Santa Rosa). My sketchbook drawings were mostly filled with bar drawings, while my studio paintings were of a ‘wandering table’ series. This painting captures both the bar and the table, along the spatial concepts I have been exploring over the years.
Flat and brushy fields of color (blue!) with elements suggesting architectural space.