Ayako's Flamenco Painting

Ayako is a young woman in JoDe's Flamenco class at the Y. She recently had to return to Japan and I made her this little painting to remember us by....

Divine Intervention

This was the other entry in the BWAC Black and White show. "Divine Intervention is a Bitch" is the caption at the top. Meaning....leave well enough alone.
Oh, by the way, neither piece got into the show. Boo Hoo.

Moment of Truth

The final version of Moment of Truth. It's at the BWAC Spring 2011 Pier Show. And it's part of a fun 'group' display which includes works by my sister Andrea Fagin and my brother in law, Warren Alexander.
The Bull and the figures were inspired by my trip to Soria last year.

Fishing..the beginning

YES,YES, I know, I'm a very bad blogger. But I've actually been doing work for money and getting ready for the BWAC summer show at the same time.
This is a little piece I've started. I'm going to try smaller pieces, due to the economy being in the pits.

1Against3, Finished

OK, I've inked in the dark lines and now the painting comes alive. Here's the version. It's 8X10 inches.

1Against3, almost done

I've been extremely lax about posting. I apologize to my thousands, perhaps millions, of readers.
I've decided to try some smaller pieces and here I've used a detail from one of my biggest pieces, 3against1, and done a tiny 8"X10" version in different colors.
Today I'll add the black line, always one of my favorite steps.
Why am I working tiny you ask? Well, someone bought by auction piece at the BWAC pier show...as in bought it out right for a hundred bucks. It inspired me with the idea of a wall of little jewel colors paintings. I hate to admit it..but money CAN be inspiring.

Harpy- almost done

Thanks to some bleak days, I worked on Harpy this week and now it's almost finished. I tried to harmonize the colors and in order to do that, I had to change the colors of different objects several times. Now for the fun, and yes, tedious, time of making the borders.

Slowly but Surely

In the between time of starting that long painting and now, I actually had a paying job!!! Well, that seems to have dried up for the present, so I'm back in the saddle. I hate returning to something after the original energy has cooled, but I'm trying to fill in the little bits. It's rather complex and slow going so to give myself a break, I also started a smaller painting of a harpy. This is the first version. More later.

Beastly improvements

I've been working on this little painting SO slowly. But here it is almost complete...at least stage one of complete. Now I'll think about what to add to make it more lively. What? You think it is lively? No, it seems to need something, or someone else.

My "Little" Painting

I'm trying to work smaller, so here we have an 18 X 36 painting. But I'm sort of stuck on the imagery of it. Maybe you can see some light pencil work I put in, but I'm not committed to anything yet, except the inked in lines. It's hard for me to think small and to draw small.
Beast in the City is the working title.

Edgy Painting

Simon, from the ArtAnon group, brought up the issue of the edges of paintings. Hey, I hardly even measure my paintings, much less remember to include medium, and such. But in the case of my recent work, I have so been working on the sides of the paintings. In fact, this is both tedious and fun at the same time....not sure how that works. This canvas has a rather deep side to it, 1 1/2 inches, so I had to do quite a bit of work on it.
And by the way, the whole shebang is 30 X 40 inches.

Catching up

I haven't written in many days. I've been in a sort of suspended state of animation. LaLa land, also known as Paris. No, not the real Paris....I've just been intensely day dreaming. I'm reining myself in and trying to return to this earth. I've been working on Cruelty to animals. I made a lot of changes in it but I'm not sure about the colors. I'm going to do the border and then decide.

Besides my fantasy Paris trip, I went to the real Metropolitan Museum of art to see the new Greek and Roman rooms. It was incredible...I only got thru maybe one half of the Greek. I especially enjoyed the paintings on the plates and vases. Here's a snake challenged image.

Tired Angel: Finito

I feel very happy with Tired Angel. It took so long to complete and yet it's not a drag at all in the end. So I wasn't holding it up because of a vague dissatisfaction, like sometimes happens. I really do have to take better pictures.

Here's my sketch for a new piece, Animal Abuse. I haven't decided on the size. Usually I like to jam a lot of stuff into as small a space as I can paint, but this is kind of minimalist...for ME, and I might just go for it: do it as a 30X40. I have to add that I have a LOT of 30X40 canvases.

Armadillo wearing a hat

More photos from the Museum of Natural History. Here we have a prehistoric armadillo, or relative of armadillo, wearing a little bone hat. Why did it evolve this little bone hat you ask? Maybe it lived in a place where rocks fell on it's head a lot.

And my inked in drawing for Tired Angel. I made the mistake of using a red watercolor pencil to draw the image. This red color is very intense and smears a lot so I'll have to cover over the red with white gesso or it will smear into every damn color I try to paint over it. Live and learn.

Woman with Frogs

This is a very small painting that I did for the BWAC auction. It's just 6X12 inches. The subject is based on sculptures and frescos I saw in Romanesque and early Renaissance churches. I painted the same subject in a painting called "Retribution" which a man bought to put in his office. I wondered about that: did he really look at the imagery in the painting. Besides the woman with frogs hanging off her breasts, there was Salome with the head of John the Baptist, a centaur shooting an arrow at a mermaid (another favorite of mine) and some devils hanging a man from a tree. You can see it on my website.

Special Delivery: final version

Here's the final version of Special Delivery. It's my favorite painting in this style...so far.
I spent one evening taking pictures of all the apocalypse paintings but I must say I'm a bit frustrated with the results. Is it my camera or me? Sections were out of focus and my placement of the lights was definately off: there were spots in the dark and spots with glare. YUK. Another thing to learn.

Franks and other deliveries

I wish I had taken a picture of the ugly phase. I guess I was painting too fast and I missed it. That manganese blue is hard to handle. It was so over powering. So I toned it down with some acra crimson to create a more purple color. I did use the managanese for the green. It's definately a blue-ish green but I'm working with it. The painting is all laid in except for the fun detailing and inking.

Here's another NY picture. The classic frankfurter vendor outside of MOMA. I wonder if the taxi's will really go on strike today. The whole thing mystifies me. Perhaps it has something to do with the Apocalypse?

More of everything

Here's a close up of some of the Serra wall that I saw last week at MOMA. Need I say that the texture and color are beautiful?



Here I've added the dark, or one of the darks. I'm using Manganese blue for the first time. I've mixed it with Napthol Red light to get this color. It will be interesting to see how it looks when I lighten it up in it's pure form

Start of Special Delivery

Here's the start of my new painting, Special Delivery. I may or may not leave the plane. Time will tell.

And here's where I've been in all this time. My sister Carmen visited and we went all over NYC. This is the Richard Serra sculpture at MOMA. It looks so much better here than it did when it was in front of a building many years ago. Then, in our pre-terrorist days, it was obstructive and just ugly metal. Now, it's beautiful, lyrical and almost delicate. An urban labyrinth. Contex is everything, as they say.

Gelling

I changed the background to a darker yellow with a little orange in it and the whole thing has brightened up considerably. I don't hate it anymore. Also, I finished the basic colors of the building. There are still detail colors and I still might add some animals to the right side. By the way, the blue river is really much darker.

Ok, on another note, here's a giant locust, dead thank god, that I saw in prospect park recently. The Apocalypse may really be coming!