Improvisation studies

I was going through my portfolio and I found these old oil pastel studies from 1998 and 1999.  They were fun.  I have chosen a direction with my current work that is completely abstract from concept to composition.  These remind me of how fun a bit of allegory can be.

Enjoy them...

...I may work this direction again someday.

Artwork of the month: "The Temptation of St. Anthony"

I have always enjoyed the nightmare imagination of hellish monsters from the perspective of Christians.  Regardless of what time period its from, hell monsters are funny, like Jim Henson puppets funny.

David Teniers, the younger

Flemish, 1610-1694/96

"The Temptation of St. Anthony"

17th century, oil on panel.

This scary tactic is hanging on display in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts...
...go check it out and scare your sins away.

"666" series of paintings

To continue catching this blog up to the present, let us take a look at my past again...

When I was working on this, things were not going my way.  Just before this painting, I was selling my work on a regular bases.  I was also spending money like there was no tomorrow, thinking that the sales wave would never end.  It did, and as sales of paintings had stopped for several months, I was less than broke and fast going into serious debt to characters that I should have just stayed away from.  I started throwing parties where I sold paintings for next to nothing, just to get some cash together for food, which sucked as I was only eating rice because I could buy a 50 pound bag for twenty dollars.  If I was lucky, I had canned tuna to go with my rice.  Things sucked.

This six-panel work is a self-portrait from a previous studio.

It was painted to simply reflect the moment in a clever way. 

Adam M. Considine  1998

666 a

oil on canvas

666 b

oil on canvas

666 c

oil on canvas

666 d

oil on canvas

666 e

oil on canvas

666 f

oil on canvas

We all go through the self imposed lessons of being broke...

...It sucks, we find a way to survive and do better next time.