How it's happening right now.

My process is always evolving.  Art as exploration, right? For this most recent series, a new process is developing. 

To the left here is where this particular painting began.  I'd been building up layers, playing with textures and so forth like I always do.  Normally, I want to find that breaking point in the piece at which a focal point begins to emerge and then essentially attack that point with attention.  If it survives, the painting is finished.  If not, it gets recycled and continues to grow.  For this series though, I instead allow only the suggestion of a focal point to develop and then I work in my sketchbook for a while to figure out how best to incorporate myself, as a cartoon, into the piece at that point.

This is the first of a series of sketches I did to prepare for the next stage.

This is a detail of the painting after I got myself in there.  I had originally planned to add a bunch of other bits and pieces- props I suppose- like bombs falling and barbed wire, but ultimately decided I preferred the starkness and solitude this little guy invokes on his own.

This is the piece in its entirety.  For the moment, for reference purposes, I'm calling it "Alone on the Battlefield," but frankly, I don't like this as a title and will likely change it.

I think I've successfully shown that frenetic feeling I often get when I'm alone and overwhelmed.   There's too much to do; everything depends on your ability to keep a level head and get shit done, but instead all you can do is shut down and feel guilty while the battle rages around you.

The Show is Hung

I now have a dozen paintings hanging at Brookline Lunch and there they shall remain until Saturday, October 1st.

They're open from 8:30am to 4pm everyday except Tuesdays, when they're closed, so if you're primarily nocturnal, come in for breakfast (served all day).

They're located at 9 Brookline Street in Cambridge, MA, half a block off of Mass Ave., so they're pretty easy to find. 

All in all, I think the show looks good.  Come check it out!

You know what's weird though?  Now I have all these empty walls at home and it's unsettling.  It makes me wonder if perhaps a primary reason I paint is simply that I have a fear of empty spaces and need to fill them.  How's that for Freudian?

I'm a Slave to My Desires

It's interesting though because so many of them seem either mutually exclusive or at the very least at odds with one another. My friend Alex helps me put these internal relationships under a stark light and examine them more closely. Meghan was telling me yesterday about a thing she was reading about how the natural state of a person is extremely narcissistic and so we must all accept responsibility for that and choose constantly to instead do what's right and good.

Father; artist; lover; employee (in order of importance)- how shall I balance these things? I'm not certain of the way, but I am certain of the means. This is going to come down to some serious introspection coupled with enough meaningful socialization to keep me from getting too depressed to address these issues.

So yes, I'm a slave to desire, but I have an escape plan, vague though it may be.