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