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On the Subject of Painting
Sunday, Apr. 06, 2008 @ 4:44 p.m.

Sunday, January 13, 2008, 12:06:51 PM

I have a friend who wants to write my artists biography. She asked me to write to her about painting and to bore her to death with the details. This is my attempt.
If I'm really honest with myself and think back to the first thing I latched onto as a child, it was art. I idolized my older brothers ability to reproduce what he saw in graphite or paints. But even before school started I doubted myself and it always seemed like there was some peer who could draw better then me. It wasn't till high school that I felt any validation for my art, even though I had a self portrait selected in grade school for a city wide art show at the Deming Council for the Arts student show and in junior high a drawing of the Florida Mountains was selected for display in Santa Fe at the state capital. It wasn't until my freshmen year of high school, my friend Travis Bailey had convinced me to take a silver smithing class with Mr. Smith. I was sketching a abstract design for a pendent for my mom, an organic assemblage of shapes that ended up resembling a classic Madonna and child. Mr. Smith was coming around to see how we were all progressing and literally dragged me from class with my sketch pad to show the advanced placement art teacher, Ms. Sherry Loraine Witt. It wasn't till that very moment that I truly felt that I was/am an artist, and believed it. I was invited to join the A.P. Program my sophomore year and didn't look back. In the course of 3 years I produced a portfolio of nearly 50 pieces under the instruction of Ms. Witt and many others that were not selected for the portfolio. I wanted to be an artist, but I was also burned out from the work load . . . carrying as many as three art classes a semester including a full load of college prep academic courses. To this day I consider Sherry to be my most important and cherished mentor, but I wish she would have pushed me to major in the arts. Her tact was more cautious, �always BE an artist, but major in something that can support you.� Well, after such a heavy work load I was burnt out on art, and truth was I was lost, I didn't know what I wanted to be, and I believed that an artist couldn't support himself, well the average artist, and I lacked the self confidence then to realize I can be so much more then an 'average' artist. It wasn't till my last year of college that I took another metal smithing class. The professor wanted me to switch majors and the temptation was GREAT but I didn't do it. For the next couple of years after that the extent of my artistic expression consisted of designs in my sketch pads for various jewelry items. Then I think it was in the summer, my family was visiting me in Houston, TX, and we went to see a show at the museum of fine arts. �Monet, Renoir, and the Impressionist Landscape� This show would prove to be the elixir that awakened my inner artist once again. Specifically it was a Monet Grain stack painting that so enchanted me. I don't know how many times I returned to the museum to view just that painting. I was hooked, I bought some cheap acrylics and over the next three weeks or so painted a very bad copy of that painting from memory. I was hooked! I spent more and more time at the museums. I discovered Rothko at the Manill collection. It was the first time that modern non-representational art spoke to me. I got Rothko. His paintings spiritual nature, his amazing colors. (even though he would criticize you for appreciating his works because of the colors) I decided I needed a large Rothko style painting to go above my bed as a kind of mock head board. So initially this idea for a painting was purely decorative and utilitarian. What I didn't count on was what a emotional release painting �Stifled Creation� would be. For that 8 hours or so I was lost in the painting, the way the colors embraced each other pulsated, advanced, or receded. I was hooked. I started taking night classes at the Glassell School of Fine arts in the museum district of Houston. School opened magical doors for me. I'm convinced some of the very best teachers to be had are at that school. Soon I was getting tuition scholarships upon review of my portfolio. I took the classes I thought I needed, from the instructors I was most impressed with. They planted seeds of inspiration and honed the necessary skills.
But, when I moved back to New Mexico I started painting what I wanted to paint, and that liberty was immediately cherished, and yet some part of me did miss the steadying hands of my instructors.
I'm a serial painter. It's rare that I paint a single image of a subject, ever. This applies to my atmospheric abstractions as well as my more impressionistic representational art. Even years later I'll come back to images and themes that have lodged themselves in my brain. I've been painting versions of The Creation, Genesis, The echoes of the Big Bang for the last 15 years.
Oftentimes, although less as of late, a painting comes to me as a title. The title will get stuck in my head, steeping there sometimes for months, until it has brewed to the strength come forth out of me and be expressed on panel or canvas. Early on the paintings were more the direct result of emotional loss or strife in my life. �Stifled Creation� the emotional response to a relationship that I desperately wanted to develop and which the other party obviously had no intentions of furthering. Other early paintings resulted from the same process. �Fear is the mind killer.� a tribute to Frank Herbert's masterpiece, Dune, as well as me getting through another muddled relationship. �Lament for Nigella� my emotional response and memorial to my dearly beloved parrot, Nigella, upon her death.
As i progressed the paintings became less of an avenue for emotional release and more the planned representations of ideas. I found myself recaptivated by earlier themes like Genesis, but because of my course work i spent my time developing my skills and learning as much as I could from my very talented teachers so I could later take what I had learned and synthesize it into my persuit of making images of the beginning.
In the spring of 2005, right before I moved back to New Mexico, I had a religious experience. I can't really say that I talked to God. The closest I can come to explaining it is that God downloaded his intent to me directly to my brain. I was/am to paint a alter sized genesis triptych entitled Oort Cloud: The Creation. These paintings are to be a bridge between science and religion. A visual explanation that both sides are telling the same story. I've completed the two flanking panels at this time. They measure 4' by 6' I've not painted the large central panel because of studio size restraints. I'd like it to measure 5' by 8' or even 6' by 8' the painting �birth of stars� is my latest study for this larger central panel. During this experience it was also made clear to me that a home for these paintings would become evident. I could see them there on an altar. I still regard them as my finest paintings. I'm holding out for their rightful home to appear. I did display them at my Downtown Library show in February of 2007.
The cosmos fascinates me. I find painting atmospheric abstractions exciting and exhilarating. Early on I was almost purely and solely concerned with color. Now my works are richer and display a more expanded interest still focused around color but also including texture, both real and implied, value shifts and surface effects. Subtle metallics and interference pigments are also becoming increasingly important to my vision of the cosmos. (interference pigments are metallics that possess the unique ability to flash one color from one viewpoint and it's compliment from another view point, so a green interference pigment, for example, will flash a subtle metallic green from one viewpoint and it's compliment a dull red from anther view point.) As far as surface my cosmos paintings seem to be increasingly very heavily encrusted with thick passages of impasto paint sometimes as deep as an inch and a half or more. Real metallics such as 23K gold leaf and aluminum leaf will also occasionally find their way into my works.
Hears is a description of what a typical cosmos themed piece might be like from start to finish. First I'd have panels of hardboard cut at the local hardware store to the sizes I'm interested in working in. Once home I'd prep the surfaces, sanding, vacuuming and washing them, sealing them with GAC 100 or 700 to block support induced discoloration, an archival problem that turns acrylics tobacco colored if they absorb impurities from the surface you are painting on, then 2-3 layers of gesso are rolled or brushed on. I favor a orange peel like surface to my gesso as this causes interesting bleed patterns when the pigments are later applied. Once these are thoroughly dry I begin work. I don't look directly at the Hubble or Spytzer Space Teliscope images, in fact it's been a few months now since I've looked at them at all, but they are there in the recessed parts of my brain. I go back to color.... and decide on a overall theme. I'll begin with overly watered down pigment applied unevenly to the panel as a whole. I'll let this dry in it's swirling watery design or sometimes I'll wait for it to partially dry and then wipe the panel clean so that only the bits that have dried remain, other times I'll wait for the surface to get tacky and splash water on it then wipe. Where the water lands it keeps the paint film moist and the greatest amount of lifting of the paint occurs to reveal the previous layers of paint. I also use rubbing alcohol to push holes or dimples into paint films. Isopropyl alcohol has a greater density then water and so is able to of 'push' holes in layers of paint causing previous layers to be more visible. Between most layers I brush a layer of clear medium, this increases refraction and is ultimately what gives my pieces a glass like depth and surface quality. I'll also usually concoct a few transparent metallic mixtures perhaps in 3-5 shades from gold to rosy or coral tones, I'll drip these from bottles onto the painting, sometimes allowing to dry completely , but more often only partially drying then wiping to leave behind circular structures. These become buried in subsequent layers of pigment and polymer to reveal a subtle sparkle under the glassy surface. Sometimes I know immediately when a piece is finished but more often they have to hang on my wall for a couple of months, sometimes they end up being deemed truly finished and other times they go back on the studio table for more layers, perhaps to increase the modulation between warm and cool colors or to increase value shifts by darkening certain areas or to simply increase the physical depth of the paint layers by adding more nearly colorless pours of glaze onto the panels.
To get the finished surface texture I often brush on a rather thickish layer of gloss polymer and set the fan on it to speed drying. After a certain amount of time has passed and the surface and sheen has reached a certain point I'll splash water on this layer. This causes the area of polymer in contact with the water droplets to swell and dry more slowly then the surrounding areas that are not incontact with the water droplets. I then set the fan back on the painting. The areas that are still dry contract more rapidly and this causes a crazed surface to form over the surface of the painting. These layers are repeated over and over again until the desired affect is achieved.
Materials: I use only Golden and Liquitex brand pigments and mediums. I do still have a couple of tubes of Utrecht brand pigments. I've tried using cheaper versions of gesso but the result is not acceptable. The professional name brands offer superior adhesion and biocide properties. (Acrylics can be susceptible to molding) All pieces are finished with clear layers so that conservators at a later date don't lift pigment layers when cleaning, and varnished pieces are varnished with Golden brand removable varnishes that allow conservators to easily remove only the varnish layer for cleaning and leaving the pigment layers safely intact so as to not alter the image. For most of my paintings I prefer simple natural poplar wood frames. The simple shadow box design accents the piece adequately and the natural wood echoes the organic feel many of the pieces have. It's rare that I use opaque pigments I much prefer the synthetic organic group of pigments that usually have very high staining abilities as well as exceptional brilliance, permanence, and most importantly for my works very high transparency. The Mediums I most typically use are Golden High Solid Gel Gloss, Golden Polymer Medium Gloss or Liquitex Gloss Medium and Varnish, Golden Crackle Paste, and Golden Acrylic Glaze gloss.

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birth of stars
Birth of Stars, Acrylic on Panel, 36" by 48" Collection of the artist

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