Deep thoughts......or incoherent ramblings

Well, since nothing of any importance happened this weekend, other than the fact that I haven't touched a drink in a full week, I figured I'd prattle on endlessly about my current work. This was actually a suggestion by a fellow blogger (thanks!). I figure that it'll be a good thing, especially if I am to be going back to school. I'll be having to explain and defend my work on a daily basis.

Anyway........................

I'll start with the big work. When I say big I'm talking about paintings that are only around 4' x 5' and others that are between 1 1/2' to 3' x 8'. Nothing monumental, but decent sized works.

--- A little background. My last series of paintings were about relationships, or more specifically the relationships that our minds create between two or more objects, when we see them together. For example, in one work I painted a pair of white cotton panties normal-sized on a panel that was roughly 3 x 4 feet. The background was a soft textured pink. I paired that painting up with a painting of the Denny's grand slam breakfast. The breakfast was painted slightly larger than life-sized on a background of a light greyish blue. In another work I reproduced a 50 year-old photograph of my Father smiling, when he was in his 20's (my favorite picture of him). I paired that with a painting of my (deceased) Mother's false teeth, the teeth she had in her mouth when I was a kid, thus painting her smile. Hopefully you get the idea. When I was working on the last painting in that series, a painting called breastpumps and crazy straws ( I don't think that needs a description) I started thinking about the work that I am now doing.

One day after my show, with the new work that I just described, opened I was kinda depressed and was moping around the studio like a big dopey sap. I ended up by the sink in the kitchen. I leaned up against it and rested my chin on my hands and just stared at the sink.....completely zoned out is more honest. After about fifteen minutes (that's right fifteen minutes!) of just staring and having my mind wander I realized that I was staring at what could become my new work. After that I became interested in the things that I stare at when I'm thinking about something else.........more interested, in fact, than the shit that I'm thinking about. So that's what I'm painting. They're almost non-images, kinda the thoughts between thoughts, or images that you only see on the periphery of your vision.

The first painting that I started was of rain on my front door window (it's 3' x 8'). The background is completely blurred and the focus is on the raindrops that perfectly focus my front lawn, the street, and the house across the street, only upside-down. C'mon everyone's done it, stared out a window during a rain storm. You look out into the distance and then focus tightly on the raindrops on the window. You go back and forth, alternating between foreground and background focus. The raindrops become perfect convex lenses. The next two paintings are going to be the sink that I first mentioned and a seascape (really a lakescape). The inspiration behind the sea/lakescape was a ride with my father to my sister's house on a particularly grey and windy Thanksgiving. The ride took us by Lake Erie and I stared out the window at the horizon, watching as the wind churned the water. The sky and the water took on the same feeling, and for a few fleeting seconds the clouds and the waves became interchangeable. The painting will be 16" x 8'. The horizon will be dead center. 8 feet of just horizon! I forgot to mention that all of the "big" paintings are going to be grey......well grey scale......different kinds of grey (warm and cool) but just grey. I always thought that it was funny that my paintings were always so colorful even though I'm red-green colorblind. This will make that a non-issue and it will also help to homogenize the imagery.

Okay, now on to the small paintings. These are all going to be 2' x 2'. I was thinking about rituals and ritual vessels/containers, religious and secular, past and present. I noticed that much of what once was a ritual is now considered common place.....eating, drinking, washing etc. I also noticed that we still have rituals though we don't realize it or think of them as such...........Stopping at the same place every morning for coffee or the process of going out to dinner and taking leftovers home. The work is going to be about the vessels with which we carry out these modern rituals. The first painting is of a small styrofoam to-go container, the next is going to be of a green two liter soda bottle, another is going to be of those classic yellow and red mustard and ketchup bottles with the white caps. I have plans for between 10 and 20 of them. Am I full of shit or what?!?

So that's it. That's the shit that I'm working on. Believe it or not that was the condensed version. I know what you're thinking..................Sweet fuck I hope he starts drinking again soon!!!!!