"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
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