Inflatable Update - Not so Good Right Now!

The gamble that didn't pay off. Design issues.

Inflatable Design

Video of my work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HrFtGztU7k

Criticism

I want to combine the awkward with the elegant. While this might appear a stumbling block to some, without it I'd feel like I was painting prettiness without tension. It's an ongoing process to paint space through gesture and hints of form--moving in washes, landing then taking off again. I need both movement and form but not in a way that I can easily identify but rather meshing them in unforeseen ways. Form to halt the lushness, sour the glide and throw in unexpected elements. I don't want to have seen it before, but I want to have felt it. When it becomes too much a fight I have to scrap the painting; sometimes the combination won't work. But the tension between the washes and the forms (that may not be fully realized but are shreds or hints of things) braces me.

Karl once said the surfaces of paintings by Matisse and Picasso in the Art Institute shocked him, for how sloppy they were. It's just their trying to get to that thing driving the painting, so appearance becomes secondary to the right combination of elements. For me that involves awkwardness as much as elegance.

A Few of My Favorite Things...

Let Me Take You Through It

Lesley Heller Gallery,
16 E 77th St., New York
June 12 - July 11, 2008
http://www.lesleyheller.com

Ming Fay's sculptures are a perfect complement to my paintings! At the artist talk last night, many said his colorful poured works could easily exist within the world of my paintings.

Immersion and Convergence

Manhattan, Tampa, Saratoga Springs, Hilary Harkness at Mary Boone

Paintings for the show

Cloud Painting

I've been in the studio non-stop preparing for a two-person exhibition with Ming Fay at Lesley Heller, 16 E 77th St., which opens June 12.
I've been working on two large paintings and six small paintings, heading deeper into a realm where forms coalesce then break apart. Pure abstraction is tempting but in some ways I am more challenged by the way paint can create a form without actually representing one.

Screenprint is done!

In February 2008, Ben, Wendy, Daniel and Brandi of the USF printmaking department, under the guidance of Bradlee Shanks, produced a small edition of screenprints for me. Called Birdwatch, it is printed on Fabriano Artistico and measures 22 x 27 inches. I am interested in the possibilities it brings to surface and ways of breaking up form into mark and gesture. The "before" image below is my (frosted) mylar layout, created in layers with inks and Sharpie. The complete image shows the transparent reds and deeply worked tonalities throughout.

Seuss Dynasty Reviewed in Today's Miami Sun Post!

Review by Michelle Weinberg

Dorsch Gallery, Miami

Dorsch Gallery, April 12, 2008

With Victoria Cueto and Carolina Calandaria, curatorial team for FIU's Aesthetics & Values 2008 exhibition...

From Basho, Edo Japan poet and wanderer

In this mortal frame of mine which is made of a hundred bones and nine orfices there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind.

This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business. It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop its pursuit, or again times when it was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain victories over the others. Indeed, ever since it began to write poetry, it has never found peace with itself, always wavering between doubts of one kind and another. At one time it wanted to gain security by entering the service of a court, and at another it wished to measure the depth of its ignorance by trying to be a scholar, but it was prevented from either because of its unquenchable love of poetry.

The fact is, it knows no other art than the art of writing poetry, and therefore, it hangs on to it more or less blindly.

I Love Construction Sheds

I love construction sheds. Here is one en route to the Met several weeks ago. They're so provisional--I love the skirt--and the way they alter space. There is something very exciting to me about structures on top of structures.

Institutional Architecture

Institutional architecture is both beautiful and energy draining. Sometimes I relish its neutrality, but often, feel violated by its anonymity. I do like this courtyard.

Matte and Dense

Quest for an Ideal Surface

Brooklyn State of Mind (spring 2008)

Meditation while painting