The Renaissance

"Self Portrait" Last Elemental

Day 2 (12/30/2018)

The New Art started out as simple sketches in pastels and watercolors. Forty years later, most have been lost and only a few remain. It was in no means a quick development. For years I would go back to my roots and work on other things. I had graduated from college and for a couple of years worked on more traditional art but the idea was always there waiting for release with the flow of the swamp as a renaissance always in the back of my mind. Every once in a while I would go back and explore the possibilities more. The earliest sketches used both primary and secondary colors to represent the elements and forces of life. Yellow and orange represented the suns energy while blue and violet represented air and water.  Green and red represented the current of life. They were little more than abstracts of the flow of energy. Slowly they developed more and more imagery. With the imagery came more structure and the fragments started to take forms. In the end the last pieces were done with Prang oval pan watercolors using only the primary colors. I liked the glossy surface that was produced by the gum Arabic in the semi moist paints.  It eventually, like much of my early stuff, became tighter and tighter. The final piece was a self-portrait. At that point I realized how much time it would take to continue painting in that style. Later I would continue with the idea of directional flow but by then I was re-exploring my earlier attraction to airbrush.

"Rolling Landscape" A very early pondering

Early Elemental

Another Early Elemental

First Watercolor Elemental

Early Tree Elemental

Later Watercolor

In The Beginning

Metamorphosis 

Day 1 (12/21/2018)

I was just looking and realized that I had not posted one blog on here in 2018. I really don’t know where this year has gone. I have decided that I am going to do better in 2019.

The Dark Years

Lately, I have found myself pondering the origins of my art. It has been a long journey from a vague idea of what I wanted to do, in the beginning, to where it is today. Artists often speak of some loss, guilt or other profound insight as being the impetus for their art. I was never able to really claim anything like that. I like to think of my art as a celebration of life and everything involved. In the beginning, college years, I was fascinated with Intaglio printmaking. I have always been a good draftsman and found intaglio as a worthy outlet for those skills. At that time in my life, I found myself in an almost constant funk. The deeper I sunk the darker my art became and the darker my art became the more depressed I became in a constant downward spiral. One night I had an epiphany, if I could I could draw myself into melancholy, perhaps I could draw/paint myself out. I started searching for a new direction. Possibly because of my background I had always had a love of bright colors but the seventies were a time where everyone was preaching the gospel of earth tones. I had grown up in a swamp and my earth tones were different from theirs. Mine were the colors of flowers, birds and the new growth of spring. I came to realize the importance of the swamp to my overall being. The swamp was a renaissance. It was where all life flowed to be born again. This awareness became an important part of my new art. I started experimenting with color as representations of these elements and started weaving them into images.  

Cellular Awareness

House in the Tree Farm

Life

Relations in Nature

Social Parasite