Art-o-Matic sale updates and MORE MONKEYS!

Here are the paintings that have sold since Meet the Artist Night last Friday:

Moai in the Next Ice Age 2007
Cut Paper and Acrylic on Board, 5"x7"

Corazon II 2007
Cut Paper and Acrylic on Board 5"x7"

Periscope 2007
Pastel on Cut paper, 8"x10"

Suffering Bastard 2005
Cut Paper and Acrylic on Board 5"x7"

So, this week has seen some productivity on the whole Monkey issue. I have decided to start making some more monkey themed work for the Hot Rod Hula Hop IV in Columbus Ohio (August 8th) Which means that I have started a painting or two...

Progress photo of "Tiki for the Admiral" (working title)

This is a blurry photo of the first painting I started. I am trying to go a bit larger with the work, which is more possible now because I have largely avoided using the cut paper in these works. I am trying to paint a bunch of monkeys trying to move a tiki, with an "admiral" barking orders on top of the tiki...I guess its got something to do with abuse of power...perhaps a subtle critique of the Bush administration...(its probably not that, but that would be a good justification for putting the finished piece in an anti-war show...) I will be trying to finish this piece soon, but I don't know when I will really have the time because of the upcoming holiday...and the opening of Debbie Does Dallas the Musical.

The other piece that I actually finished is below (again sorry for the blurry photo)

Sub Commander 2008
Acrylic on Board 11"x14"

This was an attempt to take the submarine monkeys a step further than they had gone in the past. The result is a Manet-esque portrait of a surly monkey submariner. I wanted to see if adding more realism was going to help or hurt the monkey paintings. In the "distance" shots I have a sort of generic "every-monkey" that I use, but on this painting I referenced a photo of a monkey and created a monkey with more specific personality. I guess what I am trying to get at here is cartoony vs. realism. I think I can have it both ways, but I want to avoid the creepy realism of some of those old hyper-real Garfield posters...(whoa, I just tried to find one of those online, and I couldn't...just stuff from the movies...I wonder if they are being suppressed by Jim Davis, or if their creepiness was just a figment of my imagination...)