Just past the midpoint of the year, hard to believe that time flies! I completed a catalogue update and could tabulate the total number for 2025 to be at least 512 paintings with a few unaccounted for. Keeping up that rate, it would be over 1000 on the year but I usually paint more during the summer and typically slow down in the fall due to teaching and committees. However, those of you who know me, also know that I am on a one year sabbatical from July to July, so I will be travelling a bit more and concentrating on research exclusively. The main thing is to learn more about cancer immunology... that is empowering the immune system to eliminate cancer. With all the painting, I finally decided to give a second life to some of my old paintings... in other words, I selected about two dozen of the weaker paintings that had blank backs and cut them up mostly into 6 x 7.5" and 8 x 10" which are the most efficient sizes. Unfortunately, that meant loosing a few paintings, but I had to ask myself, would I hang these paintings on my wall? Would I want them hanging on my parent's wall? The problem was that I used a lot of alizarin crimson and aureolin yellow both of which fade, and my technique at the time resulted in very bland and greyish paintings that were overloaded with details. I am glad to have cut the paintings up, it freed up some space, and I examined each one to see what could be done better in future paintings. Most cut up paintings were in the doodleism style, which kept me busy and I had fun painting them. In recent years, I refined that style and got better results than the works from about 2005 - 2020. The abstract painting above was recently done on one of the cut-offs, I used the
'earth max palette' which has like 15 different earthy paints and a few synthetic colours.
Making the cuts, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2025
Here is what is on the back of the previous painting... a piece of
'Attempted Evolution'. There were things I really liked about the painting such as this character and the eyeball in the ground, but overall it would need a re-work, and a re-paint with better contrast and higher quality finish. When I was painting these large doodleism paintings, I knew the backs of the paintings could be used one day if I ever ran out of money. It wasn't money I ran out of, but space!
Attempted evolution crop cut, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2025
Here is another crop cut of a painting called 'Apple eye Shrimp in the sky' which was a remake of an earlier painting called 'Apple Eye Violet Sky'. It was my 'Magical Mystery Tour' phase of being an artist, like the Beatles Psychedelic period. If the time, opportunity, and mood presents itself I would pick through these paintings and see if I can make finished pieces. Before you go thinking I cut up all my paintings, I currently have nearly 6000 paintings in my collection, most of them postcard sized, so loosing a few dozen to gain a few hundred in return was great, and the work from the past few months seems to be top notch. There is still a good pile of cuts to paint on, and I have new Arches paper I bought last week. I notice a big difference, in the old days I soaked the paper to remove the sizing, that was based on the advice of a famous painter John Joy. However, the sizing is there to prevent the paint from diffusing into the paper pulp. Quite a few of the old cut pieces were pretty hard to paint on especially in humidity, and there were some strange textures not to mention staple holes. There was one painting where the texturing really helped, it was the elevated train in Griffintown, it was on the back of Tourist Destiny. When I painted tourist destiny I also noticed the weird texture and I believe it was a manufacturer defect. The texturing defect-effect is so cool I wish I knew how to reproduce it for certain paintings. Like in the gravel field yellow flowers I used the grainy cut offs from Tourist destiny and it was perfect for the subject matter.
Apple eye crop cut, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025
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