I Heart My Sailor

Wright Angles

“The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.”

- Frank Lloyd Wright

Photo: Self-portrait in a window of the Robie House, Chicago.

Very Democratic Primaries

I only use three primaries, so the nice thing is I can't have favorite colors.

- Chuck Close

The Explorer

This painting was produced in one day, although I did prepare the faces ahead of time. The faces are made of mashed paper and glue, blended together in a blender and then hand formed to make the two faces. They are very lightweight, but quite deep in dimension. The green-blue face stands out from the surface of the painting to about 1 1/2 inches (4 cm.) The black and gold face is somewhat more shallow.

It depicts a nude woman, toward which a ship sails as if she is a new continent. Chances are taken and die are cast, on board and off.

Acrylic on paper, 6 1/2 x 10" (16 x 30 cm.)

Silver Lake

This is my latest outdoor painting. It will hang on the opposite side of my garage door from the Native American family.

This painting is a memory of an actual evening on a northern lake which was painted by Nature entirely in pink and silver. I was alone in a canoe in the middle of the lake and a Canada goose traced a long-reaching, but delicate V ahead of my boat. It was a completely peaceful evening. It made me think more about Finnish myth than Native American, but the land is actually quite similar and was settled by Finns. However, this was definitely a goose and not a swan.

The painted spirit figure at the head of the canoe is called a manboard. Some Native people who built (or still build) birchbark canoes install a manboard, although far from all canoe builders practice this. Sometimes they are painted to resemble a spirit figure - the spirit of the canoe and a guide on open waters.

There is a great deal of metallic silver and gold paint in this piece, which makes it quite difficult to photograph due to the highly reflective surface. But it will look good in changing outdoor light.

Acrylic on marine plywood, 48 x 80" (121 x 203 cm.)

The Garden

I can finally answer Mark's request for more pictures of artworks in place in my garden. The rain has stopped. It is hellish hot, but I have the pictures...

Here is a closer look at the Allen Miles sculptures in my front garden. I think they work quite well with the house, which needed the tall pieces on either side of the front walkway. I have all that industrial anthracite coal and railroad ties as the background. The Miles sculptures incorporate old farm plow blades, steel reinforcements normally used in concrete and any interesting piece of discarded metal he can find. So they go well in such a landscape. In the case of my two sculptures, he has used a horseshoe as a base for a spike upon which one can skewer a treat for neighborhood animals (in this case, a piece of dried feed corn.)

Here is another of the two pieces. I love the sunburst shape of the plow and always try to incorporate some echo of it in any painting I place up front. With the possible exception of the new "Sweetie" painting. But later this summer I have another painting which does have lots of sunflowers.

I did find this old rocking chair in the alley (actually, I find a lot of stuff in the alley - like most artists, I am a scavenger.) I painted it phthalo blue and sculpted a face on the back, then gold-leafed it. It works well as an accent piece on the front porch and I can wait for the mail in perfect comfort.

Next we move into the back garden. The first thing you see is this 4 x 8 foot painting of a Native American family in a birchbark canoe. This is a depiction of a family which might have lived locally about 100 years ago, in period clothing. The Allen Miles sculptures I have here are made of an exhaust manifold from a motorcycle and blacksmith's tongs. This forms the body and beak of the heron. The reeds and cattails on the right are made of cedar and twisted metal and they have turned a lovely weathered gray and rust. I found the pieces of polished green-black granite in the alley - a remnant from one of my neighbor's home improvement projects.

The Mexican family you may have seen in last year's Lac de Vie site is situated currently in my back garden, along the fence, which bars an alley from view, but not from socializing. When I get a chance I will stain this fence dark brown, like I have already done on my deck.

On the deck I currently have this African man who has a woman on his mind. You can see her right in the middle of his forehead. The reason she is there is because I began another painting of a completely different subject, and then decided against it. As I was painting it out the only thing left was the woman's face and I decided to keep it. We sit here a lot in the summer with friends and neighbors, under a nice tent and striped cushions. It's quite the oasis.

That's the garden tour for now. Later things will change as it is always in evolution. Come over any time. Share a cool drink. Talk to your heart's content, deep into the night.

On Your Mark...

This post is for Mark, who wanted to see more outdoor art. It is pouring with heavy, soaking rain this afternoon so I can't take any pictures of the outdoors paintings and how they work with the metal sculptures.

So I thought I would sort of do some film commentary. Evidently, there is a movie out there called "Sex and the City" and it is based on a television program of the same name. I've never seen the program, because I don't watch tv and I won't go to the movie, Apparently it involves a lot of women with fancy shoes and a lot of problems, and it sounds pretty boring. And in the art world, shoes serve an entirely different purpose than the shoes in that film.

Here is a picture of my shoes. I've had them for about 15 or 16 years. The shoes have held up unbelievably well, probably in part because they were made in Italy and not in China. Considering that I have worn them in the studio and during all my gardening and landscaping projects for all that length of time, they are remarkably clean. They fit very well and they are very fit. They are exercised daily along with the dog, in all kinds of weather. I have given them the very rare shoe blackening, which covers up some of the paint splatches, and when they've been very, very good, they receive a new pair of laces.

Really, I find them very beautiful as shoes. Much more beautiful and far more useful than any of my high-heeled shoes and they are never so mean as to pinch. They have lived a life that most shoes would envy, if only they would admit it. They are an artist's studio shoes and I love them. They've got character.

Artistic License

Painters and poets alike have always had license to dare anything! We know that, and we both claim and allow to others in their turn this indulgence.

- Horace

Sweetie Comes Home

I brought Sweetie home today from the studio and installed her in the front garden. There she will be my tiny warrior, chin raised, cluthing her flower and leading her proud white steed.

She rests on a bed of anthracite coal, surrounded by railroad ties, which I put in a few years back. This coal bed has been the bed on which I have installed a small variety of paintings of various sizes over the years. I love anthracite coal as a landscaping stone because it is so black and I am very fond of industrial materials. I brought them all home myself in several trips, my pick-up truck groaning under the weight.

My front garden display changes throughout the year. I add or subtract different artworks as the mood strikes me.

Here is a view of most of the front yard:

The welded metal sculptures are by Wisconsin artist, Allen Miles. The flower forms which resemble sunflowers are actually plow blades. They also serve very well as bird and small animal feeders, because Allen provided a perch and a spike for corn or apples, or perhaps a nice piece of stale bread. I have several of his pieces and usually they end up next to my own paintings, having a nice conversation. I'll show you more later.

Small But Mighty

This is my new outdoor painting for my front garden. The old painting of an African-American woman leading a white horse (à la Alice Walker's "Am I Blue") was painted on rather fragile hollow core doors and could not take another summer of rain.

This new work is painted on much more durable marine plywood with cedar supports and will be coated with three layers of Aquathane ultraviolet absorber and weatherproofing clear gloss.

You're never too young to be a rebel. Isn't that right... Sweetie?


Acrylic paint on marine plywood, approximately 56 x 36" (142 x 91 cm.)

Rauschenberg, 1925 - 2008

You begin with the possibilities of the material.
- Robert Rauschenberg

We'll just see about that

Diego Rivera works on a mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1932 (photo courtesy of the Detroit News)

I Paint What I See
-- by E.B. White

"'What do you paint, when you paint on a wall?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Do you paint just anything there at all?
'Will there be any doves, or a tree in fall?
'Or a hunting scene, like an English hall?'

'I paint what I see,' said Rivera.

'What are the colors you use when you paint?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Do you use any red in the beard of a saint?
'If you do, is it terribly red, or faint?
'Do you use any blue? Is it Prussian?'

'I paint what I paint,' said Rivera.

'Whose is that head that I see on the wall?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Is it anyone's head whom we know, at all?
'A Rensselaer, or a Saltonstall?
'Is it Franklin D.? Is it Mordaunt Hall?
Or is it the head of a Russian?

'I paint what I think,' said Rivera.

'I paint what I paint, I paint what I see,
'I paint what I think,' said Rivera,
'And the thing that is dearest in life to me
'In a bourgeois hall is Integrity;
'However . . .
'I'll take out a couple of people drinkin'
'And put in a picture of Abraham Lincoln;
'I could even give you McCormick's reaper
'And still not make my art much cheaper.
'But the head of Lenin has got to stay
'Or my friends will give the bird today,
'The bird, the bird, forever.'

'It's not good taste in a man like me,'
Said John D.'s grandson Neslon,
'To question an artist's integrity
'Or mention a practical thing like a fee,
'But I know what I like to a large degree,
'Though art I hate to hamper;
'For twenty-one thousand conservative bucks
'You painted a radical. I say shucks,
'I never could rent the offices-----
'The capitalistic offices.
'For this, as you know, is a public hall
'And people want doves, or a tree in fall
'And though your art I dislike to hamper,
'I owe a little to God and Gramper,
'And after all,
'It's my wall . . .'

'We'll see if it is,' said Rivera.

The Heavy Hand

Acrylic paint, silk and leather on paper. 7.5 x 10" (19.5 x 25 cm.)

Horse Latitudes

The Horse Latitudes are the subtropic latitudes between 30 and 36 degrees both north and south. There are few winds in the Horse Latitudes and little current . In colonial days ships could be slowed or even stalled to no movement at all for days or even weeks in confused seas and heat. To conserve water and food, and to lighten the loads of the ships in hopes of maximizing the effect of the light winds, sailors sometimes threw horses overboard. It is said that the horses would swim for miles after the ships until they drowned and that the sailors were haunted by dreams of the horses' panicked screams for the rest of the voyage.

In this painting a ship is caught in the Horse Latitudes. It carries a load of coins and tobacco. Four horses ride the waves above, but they are more cloud than corporeal. Are they real or are they only a pipedream of the Smoker who will enjoy the tobacco?

As I am in the midst of preparing boards for large outdoor paintings, I have engaged in this very small painting. Tomorrow I will produce another in between coats of gesso. This painting took about an hour and a half from start to finish.

Acrylic paint, silk and Virginia Pride* tobacco on paper 6.5 x 8” (16 x 20 cm.)

*Virginia Pride blend of tobacco is one third Cavendish. "Cavendish tobacco originated in the late 16th century, when Sir Thomas Cavendish, commanded a ship in Sir Richard Grenville's expedition to Virginia in 1585, and discovered that by dipping tobacco leaves in sugar it produced a milder and more mellow smoke." (source: Wikipedia)

Navy League Sunday

From Eyes to Aye-Ayes, and Sea to shining Sea...

Music by which to gaze at sepia-colored pictures:
Anchors Aweigh
God Bless America/KateSmith
In the Mood

Black Queen Takes White...Knight Approaches, Curious.

I know I am best known for my erotic artworks. And it's been a long while since I have done anything erotic. People have been complaining.

So here is a brand new erotic painting, finished today. I used some of my casting experiments. I took a mold of a hundred-year-old bronze I picked up in Paris of a pair of women making love. It was a very deep mold and when flattening out the relatively thin casting to collage onto the painting it became wonderfully distorted, like one of those azimuthal equidistant maps of the world. I mounted it onto a background of chess squares and added some of the female torsos as other chess pieces, one or two already taken. No Pawn intended.

The Black Tower with the female torso enclosed within made me think of the passage in Song of Solomon: We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?
If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.
I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favour.

There are lots of Towers in the Song of Songs and they mean different things. In this case She is a Woman, hidden and mysterious.

Acrylic paint, silk and 22k gold leaf on paper. 10 x 13" (25 x 35 cm.)

It Don't Come Easy

The end of a hard workday today. Pour the Wine and heal the Artist. Eyes and hands can hurt.

Weathermen

"The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress."

-Hendrik Willem Van Loon, The Arts

Journey's End

This is, I believe, the last painting in the series for my woman friend (see below). In her dream she walks across a sandy plain to an ancient scroll. It is a vision, of course, so the scroll is just suggested against the mountainscape.

Acrylic paint on paper, 11 x 15" (27 x 38 cm.)

Contradictions? Very well, contradictions...

My new welcome mat.

Waterfall Woman

I finished this painting today. It is another in the series for the woman with the dream story (see below). She wanted a fantasy landscape in which she is dressed in costume reminiscent of the 14th century. We consulted with my book of period costume and I gathered that what she wanted was a bit more fantasy than strict reality. In any case, I think she looks quite beautiful (which she is, actually).

I include a detail of the face. As the painting is about 11 x 15 inches, this detail is less than two inches tall (5 cm.). I used my big, illuminated magnifying glass, which I keep bolted to my desk to do it. It's work like this that has driven me to reading glasses...

Acrylic paint on paper. 11 x 15 inches (27 x 38 cm.)

How Much?

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'

-Henry Miller

Lady Luck

A companion piece to "Her Law". I did both paintings yesterday, finished this one this afternoon. Casual, one-day paintings using my perennially favorite motif: "Woman as Law Unto Herself, Force of Nature, Goddess, Creatress and Ruler of the Universe, Etc."

Works for me.

Acrylic paint, cotton and silk on paper. The fabric under the woman is printed with playing cards. I found several yards at a flea market.

Listen to the incomparable Sinatra! Luck Be A Lady

Her Law

It is written all over Her.

“The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature /were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.”

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Acrylic paint, silk and 22k gold leaf on paper.

Dream Woman Child

The woman with the sad story and I met recently. We agreed that I should do a second version of the painting in which she is lying in bad with a small child. This painting does not have a Native American influence, but I think it might be better. What do you think?

Free

“A free spirit takes liberties even with liberty itself.”
- Francis Picabia

The Prison Ship

A wretched prison ship plies deep blue waters under full sail. The sails themselves are the laws and words under which the men, who are transported in the Ship, are held.

Mermaids cavort among sunken treasure, compasses, ropes and rigging. The prisoners can neither see, nor can they take pleasure in their presence around the Ship.

During the American Revolution, prisoners were held in ships by the British. In fact, more American prisoners of war during the American Revolutionary War died on British prison ships than died in every battle of the war combined – approximately 11,500 men and women in New York Harbor alone, it is estimated. They died of overcrowding, contaminated water, starvation and disease. So numerous were the deaths that each morning the British jailers would greet the prisoners with, “Rebels, turn out your dead!”

Given those early sacrifices, we should continue to be mindful of this country’s laws with regards to those being held prisoner today, no matter what the circumstances.

In addition, a prison is a metaphor for many states of mind and emotion, not only physical prisons.

This painting incorporates many elements which I molded from objects around my studio, including the female torsos on the three mermaids and the thick rope along the water’s edge. They are made of gel medium, using the technique I described earlier in this blog. I enjoyed the poor casting of the women, because I thought they looked like weathered figureheads and fraying rope.



Acrylic paint, silk, 22k gold leaf and leather on paper.

Footnote: After the war, the British Commander in charge of the Prison Ships was brought up on war crimes charges and was subsequently hanged.

E Pele E Pele

I must have inadvertently painted a portrait of Kamapua'a when I painted my Tiki God. Because life has suddenly become interesting on the far side of the world.

It seems Madame Pele has awakened at Halemaumau Crater – the very crater where we made our perfume offering to the goddess. There is a new gas vent, which has formed and is glowing red and incandescent at night. This is why we were warned to keep our distance (and why we obeyed.) It is the first significant activity at the summit since the early 1980’s.

Lava is flowing once more into the ocean. If only She could have done this while we were there! All we could do was offer Her perfume. (She did give us back a rainbow.)

A savage (and very respectful) chant for Madame Pele!

Chant Text (Hawaiian):

E Pele e Pele ka`uka`ulï ana
E Pele e Pele hua`ina hua`ina
E Pele e Pele `oni luna `oni luna
E Pele e Pele `oni lalo `oni lalo
E Pele e Pele a`o kuli pe`e nui

Ha`ina ka inoa no Pele la ea
Eala eala ea, a i e a

He inoa no Pele

Chant Text (English):

O Pele o Pele, moving along
O Pele o Pele, bursting forth
O Pele o Pele, moving upward
O Pele o Pele, moving downward
O Pele o Pele, creeping, hiding your big knees
In the name of Pele
Tra la la

In the name of Pele

From A to Zola

"I am an artist… I am here to live out loud." ~ Emile Zola

Your Daily Tiki God

This painting is really just for fun.

I spent the day molding bits and pieces of interesting stuff around the studio, in preparation for future collage works. I even took two molds of my hands in two very different poses. That was tough, given the fact that the only other person in my studio was my dog, and he can't help me in these projects.

By the end of the afternoon I had tiny female torsos, horse heads, bits of rope and shells and more coins. And the two hands. I'll have to see how they come together later.

Then I had some time before having to return home, so I did this little painting. It reminds me of the shark gods one sees in Hawaii.

Acrylic paint, velvet and abalone shell on paper. 5 x 10" (13 x 25cm.)