Portfolio > New Work 2017 2020 Large Works

Whistles (Aluminum Braces)
Oil on Canvas
4 x 5 ft
2019
Three Riddles (The languishing laugh)
Oil on Canvas
4 x 6 ft
2019
Handles (Space Jamming)
Oil on Canvas
4 x 4 ft.
2019
NO LONGER AVAILABLE. Scales (Made of me).
Oil on Canvas
72 x 30inches
2019
Shaking Out (Rebuilding)
Oil on Canvas
42" x 74"
2019
Blink (The stretch of toffee)
Oil on Canvas
59 x 59 inches
2018
Got to admit (Got to, got to)
Oil on Canvas
70 x 34 inches
2018
Keep the top dry (Pressed in)
Oil on Canvas
4 x 4 ft
2018
NO LONGER AVAILABLE. Hover (Swarmmmmmmm)
Oil on Canvas
54 x 60 inches
2018
Born under a yellow sun (Landed safely).
Oil on Canvas
48 x 80 Inches
2017
Booda bang bada boo (Bring the light)
Oil on Canvas
48 x 36 inches
2017
Who built that? (You know, like, really).
Oil on Canvas
60 x 84 inches
2017
Side of the World (Flap).
Oil on Canvas
Side of the World (Flap).
2017
King Paranoia (A good Long Life).
Oil on Canvas
4 x 6 ft
2017
Born a Hero (Died a Zero).
Oil on Canvas
4 x 6 ft
2017
Bad jokes quest (reemerging whimsy).
Oil on Canvas
35 x 65"
2017
Only The Hits! (A little Night Music).
Oil on Canvas
84" x 48".
2017
No Longer Available
Oil on Canvas
52 x 52 inches.
2017

This strange striped egg man with a silhouette of a…chicken (a chicken?) growing out of its head is bellowing “Hay-Ya!” It is covered in dangerous looking spikes with candy swirls in it and inside it are several 3-D cubes. It seems that my 7-year-old son is learning about perspective and integrating them into this monstrous and delightful drawing.

As I am bemused by his artwork it reminds me on my childhood self, sitting next to a cacophony of strewn comic books and drawn copies of Carl Bark’s Donald Duck and Don Martin cartoons for Mad Magazine. I, as I always did, take my stack of drawings to my Nana and Papa for their approval, because this is what I do well.
Liberation, possibility, enthusiasm. Endless transformation.

I entered 2017 creatively stagnated. News of the world was horrifying and bleak. This reality was contrasted daily with my constant playing with my children; pretending to be animals or truck drivers, building Lego and escaping into imagination. Drawing with them three circles become a face, an S on the chest and two red lines becomes Superman blasting his heat vision. In my art classes that I teach I hear myself repeating “The enemy of art if fear. The enemy of art is fear. The enemy of art is fear.

Observing how my children navigate themselves through life and how the stresses of childhood manifest themselves in an open and expressive way has been very important for my work. So much of their outlook may be based in naivety, but there is also an amazing process of letting go. Any darkness is nullified through manifesting into a more palatable act of imagination.

I stare again at the blank canvas in my studio. “It will never have this much potential again” I think. I stare at the whiteness and it may as well be Antarctica, so cold and desolate.

I take an old painting of mine. One that - sort of, kind of– works, but is good, not great. I start with the main subject of the painting (a gorilla) and obliterate it with some orange paint on a trowel. I move on, erasing here and scraping there until there is no subject. I make an unstructured mess. Liberation. New things happen. Characters appear. I turn the canvas and I see a figure appearing in the darkness, movement becomes structure. A William De Kooning stroke becomes a Studio Ghibli character.

I have been transforming almost 20 years of old paintings into new works. I erase anything that might be considered a subject until the painting has potential to become new. From this process these characters have emerged. They are informed from a lifetime of looking at cartoons and contemporary art. Blended them together and finding them and their stories that emerge. I find them to be terse strange little creatures. They resist darkness. They embrace their transitional nature. I think they might be the most successful self portraits I have ever made.