Eyebrows Series

For the last several years I have looked at works by Takashi Murakami and wondered what I might do in that spirit. I was trying to think of image. Well, I decided to work with an eyebrow motif in symbolic form. Some years ago I was at a Supercuts and the hair stylist was all set to do trim my eyebrows. I got a little ticked that he was just about to cut them.

I’m not sure what I’ll do to finish them. Maybe they are finished. Anyway, I’ve been on the fence with these for three years now. Hopefully something will move me. They are now in a place where I am forced to see them.


acrylic on canvas, 4 canvses, 8" x 8"

Strata Series

Just before I turned forty, I went to Denver, Colorado for an art educators’ national convention. On one of the days there, I went on a city tour in the morning and then a mountain tour in the evening. It was on the mountain tour I had a chance to see where giant red rocks pushed through the ground. I also saw petrified dinosaur bones embedded in another area. Also, there was an area that used to be the sea floor - including fossils of sea creatures. When I came back from the trip, I became interested in a strata motif.


watercolor on paper, 8 pieces, 7 1/2" x 11"

Here I was turning forty. It seemed like a good symbolic way of representing the milestone. Anyway I did strata painting for our Contemporary Art Center. It was having a fundraiser in which each artist was given a postcard size piece of paper and asked to make it into an art postcard. I wish I had taken a picture of it. Anyway, that was the first one I made.

I did these larger strata paintings after that and got stuck. One of my students said they looked like wallpaper. That’s what put me into a rut. How do I get them away from them just being a dull repeating pattern. Anyway it’s been a good three years since I began these. I just have to finish them. Then the nest trick will be framing them.

Super Flat Stool

After reading The Inevitable Japanese Experience and Super Flat, I painted a stool based on characteristics from animé and manga.





acrylic on wood

Three New Paintings

Well I finished these three paintings this afternoon. I took forever to decide on what I wanted to do in the very beginning. Then it took forever for me to work through them. Originally they were going to be like some Japanese paintings I have seen, but they just were not working out. Midstream I had to do something else. Maybe these will lead to some other paintings. I just know I had to do something other than dots.

Fountain

acrylic on canvas, 20" x 20"