In Sequence, B Side

Rarely do I paint on the back of another painting, on advice of my mother who realized that you may want to sell a painting one day and couldn't separate the back from the front. This painting was done on the B side of 'Perpetual Load Theory (The 2012 Question)'. I really didn't think Perpetual Load Theory was going to work out, and in fact abandoned the work by taking it off the stretching rack. At the same time I found a missing note-book in a drawer which had doodles done between 2011-2012. These doodles were earlier than the ones I had been using, and I wanted to keep things in chronological order, hence the name of the painting. The title also refers to the DNA strands that are saving (or drowning?) the character in the middle foreground- all DNA has a series of molecules, the 'sequence' of which determines life. After some time I realized that Perpetual Load Theory was actually ok, and finished it too (previous post).

Another first for this painting was the underwater scene in the front. I made the effect by copying the doodles from my notebooks using a squiggly line technique... just shake your hand a little as you draw. Then I filled in base colours using pale washes, and after drying, I overlaid the blue green water. Finally I put on the darker blue smears to create the light/shadow of waves. It seemed to work out pretty good- click on the painting to see an enlarged view.

There is also a very experimental technique in this work... you see the pillar of yellow fire in the top middle background emanating from what looks like a flower vase? That was done using a triple backwash technique. A backwash is when a wet layer of paint bleeds into a medium-dry layer of paint, creating a fuzzy jagged edge. Typically backwashes happen by accident in watercolour where you least want them, but over the years I learned to control them. To make the pillar of fire, I laid down the neutral blue sky, and when it was about half dry I dropped down a moist layer of yellow... when that was half dry, I dropped down a moist layer of yellow-orange on the yellow layer...when that was half dry I dropped down a moist layer of red-orange.The element is fairly unimportant in the overall scheme, but maybe I'll use this technique in the future.

22x30" cold press (B side) June 2013

Perpetual Load Theory (The 2012 Question)

The 2010 solution finally has a question. Let me explain... in 2010 I painted "The 2010 Solution" ... a pivotal work that established a fusion between the Dali-like landscape style and Doodleism. That painting featured a funny looking monster sitting in desert smoking. In this work, a woman sits cross legged in a desert, though her health habits are much better since she doesn't smoke. In fact she doesn't even have arms to smoke if she wanted to. On the top left, a funny object on the horizon echo's Dali. I really like the camouflage sky creature at the top. Perpetual Load theory refers to the time in my life (2012) when these doodles were made... I was just over my first year being a professor and the work never seemed to end!

 Recently I have been thinking about how to make the pictures a little more 'classic' in their look. The old academic paintings, impressionism, and post impressionism all have a similar 'museum quality' to them. It seems to be based on plenty of value contrast- in other words light lights and dark darks... and saturated (bright) colours. Shaped are simple and compositions are unified. The sense of space is also clear, even in Dali, you can tell where the ground is, where the sky is etc. My work typically does not have the bright colours and value contrast,  namely because I use the old english method in watercolour, which does not use white or black paint. Watercolour also dries a little duller than oils. I also create a fragmented space... horizons don't align, there are multiple landscape perspectives, even different times of day are depicted in the same work. Anyways, I don't want to change my style just to look like the impressionists or whatever, but as an artist you should always be stretching yourself into non-comfort zones. I'll keep tweaking a little and see what happens.

22x30" cold press. June 2013

The Few

This is a painting I did a few years ago based on a doodle. The inspiration was based on the field of science...and in particular scientific funding... basically it says that only a few scientists (The Few) get financial support from the government. The support as it were is no more than an eaten apple. The scientists are worms and only a few get the apple scraps. The rest of the scientists -without funding- are writhing in a big pit of despair. Usually an artist is not supposed to tell their secrets, but to my (small but faithful) blog audience the rules don't have to apply!

The most time consuming part of this work was the worms. For a mere 5x7" painting it took inordinate amounts of time. I tried to put more detail in the worms near the foreground, and then do more abstract realization towards the background. You will also see that the colour of the worms is brighter and more red in the front, and fades to a more lilac towards the back to create the illusion of depth.

5x7" cold press, 2009?

Where We Were

"Where We Were" was drawn from doodles that I did over the course of 2011-2012. In fact, I managed to use all of the doodles from an entire notebook. It was almost an attempt to 'catch up' to the doodles that I have been doing at work (I'm always paying attention). One reason I am generating so many doodles these days (aside from numerous meetings) is that I am actually doodling with the mind that they will become a painting one day. In some ways then, this style of doodleism has gone from something of a convenience to more of an established and thoughtful process. Initially the style was a convenience because well, I did not always have a good idea for a painting when sitting in my studio, whereas when sitting in the middle of a (often dull) meeting my creative juices start to flow. Part of it has to do with claustrophobia that I feel when in a small room full of people, jammed behind a table... by making drawings I can ease the feeling by 'imagining' open spaces. Most of my doodles depict vast horizons and free flowing organic forms... visual escape I guess. You can see a lot of stressful elements in this painting like the angry house in the middle of a fire. 2011-2012 was a personally hard time for me, and while this painting was not intended to convey that emotion, the doodles themselves were produced as a result of that mindset. Knowing this I named the painting "Where We Were" because it shows a state of feeling from the past.
There is also a chicken-shaped apartment building, a motif I have used before (E.g. Chicken #5). I got into painting chicken-shaped buildings at the advice of a man I met at an art gallery who tried to convince me that artists in New York got famous for painting motifs, he mentioned cows as I remember. To be fair though, Monet painted turkeys a few times.

22x30" cold press, May 2013

Lac Delage, Quebec

This was a quick painting I made in the morning of a conference I attended at Lac Delage near Quebec city. It is very reminiscent of a scene from Algonquin park. Done just after dawn, there was a thick layer of mist on the water that I tried to capture.

Green is never green. In this painting the trees and grass are depicted with an array of blues, browns, yellows, oranges and even pinks. All of these colours are tinted with green. A common mistake beginners make is to reach for the green tube of paint as a starting point, resulting in an unnatural feel. Of course impressionist painters such as Mastisse and Van Gogh used pure greens to great effect, but they did it on purpose!

11x7.5" cold press. June 2013