ART-O-MATIC LOOMS....

Just so you know, the eleventh floor is the rockin' place to be...Not only will you get to see your's truly's space...but I am right next to the rock star of last years Art-o-Matic: Greg Ferrand! Oh, and he's right next to Alan Defibaugh, Emily Liddle, Candy Keegan, and Peter Harper, just to name a few...AND, I hear the eleventh floor has a bar!

Art-o-Matic this year has kinda taken me by surprise. I haven't really had much time to work on ole' fashioned paintings lately, since I have been swamped with Yuri's Night. And, I am looking around to change up my game a bit, when it comes to painting. I want to examine the role that some of my working methods have developed. I am struggling to get away from, or around, my need to make cut paper paintings. I also want to explore the suggestive nature of black and the silhouette, just to name a few things I have been exploring lately. But all of this takes time to actually realize, so I am afraid that there will not be much that is "new" at this Art-o-Matic from me. But it will be a great opportunity to purchase some artwork that others have foolishly passed on!

To give you an idea of what I am talking about, when it comes to my "examination" pieces, I have a really crappy camera phone shot of one of the more encouraging pieces in the process:

Experimental painting
5"x7" Acrylic on board

I have been trying to get my paint to be more sculptural, and also looser...while keeping the hard edge...so, it is really hard to see here, but I think I have found the beginnings of the way to achieve that without resorting to some sort of mechanical reproduction process...Stay tuned!

The other development this week was Lil Dutch's Dutch Oven at the Palace of Wonders. I used this opportunity to repaint some Halloween scenery to help her celebrate Uno De Mayo!

Uno De Mayo set piece for the Dutch Oven
Acrylic on Luan, roughly 5'x5'

So lastly, I am usually pretty hard on Photography, anyone who has asked me about photography whilst I am drunk can attest to that. However, I have always been a fan of Chris Chen, of My Life As A Contact Sheet fame. I was looking through his Flickr account recently, looking for documentation of one of my previous gigs (a widely underestimated service he preforms, I may add) and I noticed that I had gotten my own "tag" in his photostream. That's where I found this very poetic and moving photo taken at the end of the 2007 Halloween party...somehow it really captured the feeling at the end of that party in a way that no painting could...great job Chris!

SEE YOU ALL NEXT FRIDAY (5/9) AT THE ART-O-MATIC OPENING!!!!