This painting is postcard  size made for "Postcards from the Edge" an annual auction in New York City that supports and raises money for aides awareness and art.  I had this idea in my sketchbook and I planned the composition for a large painting, but when I was deciding for an image for the postcard this one seemed to work.  This painting is 4"x 6" acrylic on paper.  

Rooftops.  The idea was to do most of the drawing at the bottom of the page and let the negative space at the top work as the sky.

This is a lithograph that was inked up with the ink as the ground and scratched into.  The church was lit up at night and was very dramatic.  Night scenes with some light in them are usually pretty cool.

"House with Black Eyed Susans"

 

 

This painting is small, it's only 6x6 inches. I don't know if it comes across this way in the image or not.  This size difference reminds me of Salvador Dali's painting "The Persistence of Memory" (The melting clocks).  I had seen many reproductions of his painting in books and I thought the painting was large, at least 3 or 4 feet, but when I saw it in person I was shocked that it was really small, less than a acouple of feet, if that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am still working with the idea of a blurry house.  I  donated this collage to Spaces Gallery for "Polkapocalypse" their annual theme auction for the gallery.

 

This set of house paintings were the foundation for the house paintings that I am doing now. 

 

Green tends to become a binder for me in many paintings.  Something to tie the whole thing together.  What interested me in this particular view was the bushes creating a line across the horizon. Also, the house behind the bushes was simple and also the lack of trees in the background creating a surreal effect.  It reminds me of the land dipping behind the house to suggest a body of water or a big drop such as a valley in back.  The painting is still in progress-it needs a little more work.

 

"Flamingo with Blurry House"

 

 

This is a collage.  The house in the background is  a photo and so is the flamingo.  I can't call it a photo because cutting and pasting was involved.  I thought it would be cool to have something in focus in the forground a and a suggestion of a house in the back.  The use of the blurry house intrigued me for a while now and I'm finally getting a solution to the problem.  Constantly searching.

 

Monotype

This is a monotype of a figure. It has a few layers of acrylic. First layer was a light wash and each additional layer got darker.  I have always had a an interest in portraying the figure.  I have a bunch of drawings of the figure. Some successful, some not.

Untitled

 

I used to use collage with oil paintings.  The dilemma was that oil disintegrates paper. So my solution to the problem was to coat the paper with polyurethane and glue it to the painiting when the oil was dry. 

Untitled

 

 

Jasper Johns "Target with Plaster Casts" was the inspiration for this painting. I used mixed materials for this painting including tar.

Untitled

"Bungalow with Red Bushes"

 I started this painting 2 years ago and kept changing the sky.  I couldn't make up my mind with it. It was originally black and entered into a Kutztown show.  When I got it back I changed it to silver.  It sat around for a while and I didn't like it so I changed it to blue.  Now it's at Harris Stanton Gallery and I've been looking at the photos of it when it was black and I like the black better.   Don't know why this painting is so fickle?

"Untitled"

This is a lithograph I did second year in undergrad (Cleveland Institute of Art).

I made an edition of ten but I only have 2 left, I might have more but I don't know of them if they are in storage.  I remember I gave some away, one to my high school art teacher and one to my litho teacher.  I might have given more away  I can't recall.

"Winter Beacon"

This painting I just finished for Lake Erie Nature and Science Center for the "2012 Bake near the Lake" fundraiser. It will be auctioned off  on Saturday Sep. 8th.

"Marblehead"

This painting I made last year (2011) specifically for the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center Annual benefit.  I wanted the painting to represent something from Lake Erie and since I like lighthouses I picked Marblehead.  The painting was inspired by my house I did in 3 colors with the fractured rings in the sky.

"Yellow and Purple Cow"

I love barnyard animals especially cows.  This was one attempt to put  them into artwork.  This is oil on paper done way back in undergrad.  I'm inspired again to put cows in my paintings.

"Untitled"

This was a collage I did over a collagraph. The original collagraph is the textured part that shows through at the bottom of the picture.  This collage was born out of the circles I was concentrating on in grad school.

"News Channel with Flamingos"

I saw this image without the flamingos on the news.  It flashed for a moment on TV and I jotted down the sketch before I forgot it back in 2007.  So I painted it and I didn't like the finished painting so I put it away in storage.  I brought it out of storage a few weeks ago and I had some torn newspaper on it that made it look more interesting, but I still didn't like it. I've been messing around with pink flamingos lately and collage and I threw my cut-out flamingos on the table and they happened to land on this painting, which is on paper, and magic happened- it was a match.  It worked and I finally found a solution to this painting 

"Colonial with Reeds"

The main idea for this painting was to divide the painting with the diagonal of the reeds and reveal only a part of the house.  The monochromatic green helped me tie all the parts of the painting together.

 

I did these two studies to simplify the subject.  I reduced the colors and the shapes.  I think I do it for more dramatic images.

Study

"Untitled"

"Untitled"

"Untitled"

"Red Tower"

"Brooklyn Colonials"

"Colonial with Grey Sky"

"House with Echinacea"

"Pink Circles"

"Vine"

Colonial and Flamingo with Green Sky

Bungalow with Orange Sky

Mike's House