Just in case you missed the show at Harris Stanton Gallery.  I've included some of my painting here.  Also, I'm in a group show at Summit ArtSpace in Akron which runs through Novermber 22 called "Full Circle". 

This painting was hard to photograph because of the metallic paints in it.  Also, it has a mechanical flaw.  When I built the panel, the brads I used were not flush with the surface of the board.  They sunk lower than the surface and the gold paint puddled into the recesses and created polka dots across the surface of the sky.  The problem is not hard to fix.  Issues always seem to pop up.

 

Come see the show: Cleveland Neighborhoods

Harris Stanton Gallery, 1370 West 9th Street

The opening is Friday, August 28th 6-8:30.

 

Documenting my work is very important to me.  Also, documenting it well is just as important. A few years ago, one piece, I never took a photo of and I mailed it away to a gallery and it sold and I forgot to take a picture of it accidentally because I was rushing.  Documenting a piece well is just as important because it's the only piece of history I have of the work.  

"House on Liberty Street" was painted for the New Arts Program in Kutztown PA salon show.  The major stipulation for this show is that the work cannot exceed 200 square inches.  I usually paint a
specific painting for this show because of the size restriction.  The cropping of this image was my main inspiration  for this piece.

Some ideas are loud and obvious inclinations and some are quiet and soft inpulses and some are spin-offs from other paintings.  This is a spin-off of "Channel 8 News".  I took me awhile to collect my thoughts to create this one and ones in the working.   I don't always have answers to all my ideas immediately all the time.

I signed up for Spaces Monster Drawing Rally again for a second time.  I had even more fun this year than I did last year. The whole event is a great idea. We got there early this year and we couldn't even find a parking spot.  The whole gallery was buzzing with excitement.  If you participate you only have one hour to complete your drawing.  Last year I came in really prepared with an idea of how I wanted to approach my drawing.  This year I didn't plan too much for it and I struggled with it.  This was the finished piece. Its working of it reminds me of old art school days which I think I should take into consideration for new work.

If these houses were real, they would definitly not be stucturally sound.  It's a good thing that they are only paintings because it's only here that they can exist.  Some of the quirky perspective has caused alot of problems in finishing this painting and I think it still needs more work.  However, for right now it is at Harris Stanton Gallery in Cleveland for their Art-tini Auction fundraiser.

The collages continue.  As in alot of my work, I get stuck.  Sometimes any mark will get the wheels turning.  I got stuck on this one and I didn't work on it for a few months atleast.  I lose track of time and maybe it's been a year.  Well anyway with this one I finally got over the hurdle by picking an area that needed to be finished.  Another way, not with this one, but with other work is by thinking about it for awhile and picturing it in my head or photographing the unfinished piece and  viewing it from a distance.

 

These, I guess, as is all my work, is a search for what has meaning for me as well as what the viewer sees.  When I create work I do not isolate my thinking as if I am in a vacuum but I am also thinking of the viewer as well as myself.  It's not a nonsensical thinking such as what will anybody think, but a calm, contemplaive, meditative thinking, of a culmination of all my thoughts working together in order to create a meaningful piece.  The original inclination comes from me and the desire to make art.  It is a sensation that I experience, however I live in a society that I can not be separted from.  My ideas come from both inside me and from the world around me.