The Walk...

I found this image the other day as I was removing some old images from my computer. This was a piece I installed at the Kansas City Art Institute, along the ceiling of a hallway in one of the lecture buildings, probably somwhere in 2006. I started with one spider on Monday, and added another spider every day for the rest of the week. Several times, I watched students walking down the hallway, only to jump noticibly as they realized that there were several large spiders above them. I think all five of these spiders have been lost. Oh, well. There will be more...!

Another Month, Another Show...

This has been an absolutely crazy year, but I think the craziness may be coming to (a bit of) a close.

I really need a chance to rest!

Over the past few weeks, I've been busy with some "side" (freelance) projects. I was asked to build a 48x48-inch panel for an old painting by a friend of mine; the canvas had been rolled up in her garage for years. Mounting the canvas onto a panel will help keep in in better shape--and if she wants to do some restoration (re-painting some of the most-cracked areas) it'll be easier to do on a rigid support.

I'm also working on refinishing an old frame for another client, and two weeks ago I helped another client hang some paintings before a bridal shower she was hosting in her home that evening.

And I'm also doing some airbrushing on a painting that's being restored by a conservationist I've worked with on several projects, already.

All this has meant some (much-appreciated/much needed) extra money--but it has also meant that I won't have any "new" work at tomorrow night's opening of the April group show.

Oddly enough, I'm not terribly bothered with that; I think I probably made more money from the side projects, than I would have from any paintings I might have been able to complete, if I hadn't been working on the side projects instead. (In the short term, at least. Eventually, those paintings would have sold, and brought in more money, but there's no guargantee they would have sold at this particular time, this particular show...).



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I'm re-doing the preliminary drawings for The Presentation of Spiders, as I'm starting the painting over--from "scratch".

I'm doing this piece "right" this time; starting with a full (tonal, as well as compositional) drawing, which will be followed by a full (probably airbrushed, possibly in oils!) grisaille, then finished with an overpainting in transparent and opaque layers of oil paint.

Stip-by-step photos coming soon.

Lost in the Clouds

8 x 12 inches, oils and airbrushed acrylics on GessoBord, 2012.

This new painting made it into the March "openeing" (which turned out to be a "closing", actually!) at APEX. It's a bit of an "in-between" size--larger than 5x5 (most of my "smaller" spiders are 3x3, 4x4...up to 6x6) and not as large as most of the "major" spider pieces ("White Widow" is 24 x 36, for example) this didn't seem to attract as much attention as I'd hoped.

I think it's a good painting, and it will be in the next show, which opens April 6th, at the ArtScape group show, inside Performance Furniture, 222 W. 29th Street, in Kansas City, Missouri.

Honesty and Mixed Feelings

Liora and I took down the show at APEX a little over a week week ago. It is nice to have my paintings back home, but I wish we hadn't had to bring them all home! I did sell one small painting, but I am a little disappointed (all right, maybe a little more than a little!) that more of them didn't sell.

The February and March openings at APEX were well-attended; the March attendance was best. I figure 300 folks (my best guess) saw the show during the two openings, mostly people who (I think, anyway) hadn't seen my stuff before, which is always cool.

I always try to spend a little time listening to what people are saying when they don't know I'm the artist, and the comments I overheard about my work were good, very positive. People did seem to like the newer paintings better--which I take to mean that I'm "headed in the right direction" with my stuff!

So, I'm starting the "next bunch" of paintings. I have five panels prepared, with three more "in the works". Five of these panels are rather large--bigger than any of my (finished) pieces so far.

Of course, I'm still going to make more of the smaller paintings (since I always want to have work to sell across a range of price-points, and the small paintings are quick to make, and lots of fun to do!). But, in the new paintings, I want to focus on creating "more elaborate" paintings than I've made up to now; I really want to push myself, to see what I can really "do".

After the April group show, I have no other shows "planned", which has me thinking--seriously--of taking six months or more, and just work on new stuff, without any pressure (or expectations) of sales, exhibits, or publicity. Then, when I have fifteen to twenty new pieces that I feel really good about, then and only then should I start thinking about where to exhibit them.

For several years now, I've thought that I would prefer to have a show scheduled, then work to create stuff to put into that/those show(s).

But, coming off of three shows right in a row, and the pressure of trying to have new work at every show, I think (at least for the forseeable future) it would be best to simply produce a bunch of new stuff (whatever I want to make, however I want to make it, however long it takes me to be satisfied with it) then worry about what to do with it, only after it's done.

I've never been prolific, but...

...that may be changing!

This is the first layer of oil paints on a new painting, a continuation of the "theme" of the "lace-web spinning" spiders. (The first layer of paint applied was the blue of the sky, painted using airbrushed acrylics.)

The spider is going to be shown "ballooning", something spiders actually do (but mostly when they're newly hatched). To leave their nest (and get away from hundreds of hungry siblings) spiderlings let out a strand of silk that catches the wind, and they're off. Spiders have been carried thousdands of feet into the air, and may travel for hundreds of miles before landing...

I've actually completed three paintings so far in 2012, and this will be the fourth. I hope to have two more pieces done before the March 2nd opening of my (ongoing) show at APEX.

And it's only February.

Grey on Grey, detail...

And, the hits just keep on coming!

I have another new painting in the show at APEX, this one was started and finished over the past two weeks. I haven't completed an entire painting in such a short span of time in a while--

--and it definitely feels good!

This was done in two layers, with no preliminary drawing whatsoever.

Grey on Grey
Oils on wood panel
10x30 inches
2012

I exhibited this piece along with two others painted on panels of the same size (10 x 30 inches, displayed vertically). They looked great, and I plan to make at least three more panels this size, and try to create a "set" of paintings on theses, rather than three different paintings, which is what the current three are...