Hawaii #7 “I Had To Buy Shoes”

I finished the painting at the last hour.  This was a challenge to complete by the year, and as I was working on it I got two walk-in tattoos that each wanted something slightly complex.  I put my brushes down, did a couple of tattoos and then completed the painting.  I signed it 2020 as I finished it today.

I become a character who’s construct reflects the thing in its entirety.  Every aspect of my daily life is that character, that idea.  My paintings are titled directly what I want you the audience to see.  Simply understand the words and look at the painting.  No exegesis whatsoever is needed.

This is my preferred orientation of the piece.  All of my paintings can be hung with any side as the top, however I always have my favorite view.  

Hawaii #7 “I Had To Buy Shoes”

Oil on Linen 24”x12”

Aloha.

Divinity School

I have been working on this painting for a long time.  I started it sometime around February of this year, and for a long time it sat on the easel unattended.  I was too busy tattooing to spend time painting, and I had to think about the work for a while.  As soon as I could see what was going to be I started working in every spare second I had.  It is 12”x24” oil on linen and all brush work.  This study  got our of hand for a while and I had to reestablish the balance.  My work is a constant rebalancing of harmony toward disharmony and then back again.  I like to create compositional problems that need to be solved.

I have enjoyed the difficulty this composition presented me with.  The base sigil was created during a particularly cold season where I was so chilly that I found it necessary to purchase two pairs of shoes.  I have not owned a pair of shoes for at least 4 years.  I had a pair, but then they were so old and I never wore them so I threw them away and reserved myself to wearing slippers daily.  Slippers are flip flops, and living on Maui normally is too hot for shoes.  The base sigil was complicated, and from the beginning disharmonious with itself, however purposefully so.

I would like to have this completed before the new year, albeit, I may not be able to as there is so much work to do before it is resolved and considered a composition worth hanging.  Realistically I need 4 days of real work on this painting for it to be finished and I only have two.  

Aloha.

Hawaii #6 “Spanish Dancer”

A year ago I was free-diving in Kapalua Bay and I came across a Spanish Dancer.  They are a crazy nudibranch that looks like a dancer's dress when they swim.  I spent an hour following it, just watching and enjoying my time.  It was pretty damn magical.

I spend a great deal of time in the ocean. Snorkeling, diving, fishing, surfing and simply floating around enjoying the peace of being tiny in this massive impartial force.  I continue to work towards my formal composition painting as this was a good experiment with that, I can not see where it may influence the formal work.

I did not plan this idea, I simply let the painting tell me what it was.  That is normally how this expressionistic work pans out.

It was really fun to paint, and it just became as I worked on it.  I had no plan, and I didn’t realize that it was the moments I spent with the Spanish Dancer until it was nearly complete. 

Mahalo for checking me out...

...more to come soon. 

Hawaii #5 “Valley of the Ghost Hand Puppet”

I was finally able to finish a painting.  The last seven months have been very busy tattooing.  I am still working toward my formal composition painting with each of these minor works.  I like the direction this is headed, however I am not prepared to take on the character yet.  I have the construct built, I do not have the liberty to become it yet.  Soon I will be set up where I can remove myself from the daily grind and get to work on the formal composition.

Hawaii #5 “Valley of the Ghost Hand Puppet”

I had a really good time painting this.  It reminds me of snorkeling, floating in the water, peering down beneath rocks and reef, and periodically looking at the mountains reaching deeply into the valley.  There’s more to it than that, but this painting was simply fun.  At one point I felt like the painting itself had failed and I had to rescue it from itself. 

I have been so crazy busy doing tattoos at the shop that I’ve just had no time to really finish this piece.  Which I believe was good because it gave me time to contemplate how I was going to rescue this painting.  It desperately needed to be rescued from the poor compositional choices I made early.

Below are a couple photos of the stages. 

This was really fun and I’m glad to have completed my fifth painting in the series. I am not sure how many of these I have inside me until the series is complete, but I will make the attempt to just keep going.  Everything is heading towards my formal composition “The Peloponnesian War” oil painting.  

2018 was the best year of my life, and I am looking forward to producing more work in 2019 as time allows. 

 Mahalo

New work Hawaii #1 "Between Interruptions"

I have been living in Maui Hawaii for 5 years now.  The majority of my time has been spent tattooing, spearfishing, surfing, and enjoying my life with Athena and our dogs. I have been clearing my mind in preparation for a major compositional oil painting.  This is the first study for the work.

This winter I started a new oil paining.  Nothing too serious, I simply had an idea to work out.  I worked on the painting when I was not tattooing; which is mostly never being that I have been almost booked solid for a few years now.

My life here on Maui is so very different than what it was in Minneapolis.  I have found that the ocean is everything to me.  All I want to do is play in it as often as I can.  With this new painting I decided not put too much academic thought into painting it, and simply paint. I work on it as I have time and at my leasure.  Everything is improvisational as I am only reacting to the work as I do it.

"Between interruptions" 2017

More to come as I finish them. 

Aloha...

Artwork of the month: "The Death of Germanicus"

There are parts of human history that I obsess with simply because they reveal a portion of truth about the nature of mankind, as to what we are capable of.  I like to paint these important events in history, to repurpose them, and link them compositionally to a historical work of art about the same event.  Nicolas Poussin did the same thing here.  

Poussin took the history of Germanicus's murder and used it as a compositional model: a sarcophagus from Rome.  Brilliant conceptual, compositional oil painting; albeit there are so few that can and will connect the dots to read this painting as it was intended to be read by Poussin.  

This oil painting is a Masterwork example of compositional oil painting.  Go spend some time reading its imagery at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Nicolas Poussin

French, 1594-1655

"The Death of Germanicus"

1627, oil on canvas

Germanicus was murdered out of envy and fear...

...fear always has and always will destroy mankind's future.