Quote by Bill Jensen

Yes, it’s a sound, it’s not music, it’s a singular sound. When I was first aware of this, I thought, I’m losing my mind, I’m hearing paintings make sounds.

Richard Pousette-Dart - Luhring Augustine

Nan Goldin - Mathew Marks

Joan Mitchell - Cheim & Read

David Brody Paintings

DAVID BRODY AT PIEROGI GALLERY

It has been a while since I last posted and I'm glad. I have used this time to relax. Move into a new apartment and find a new job. Now it's time to get back to business. Well folks, painting is not dead, not at all. In fact I think this might be the most exciting painting time has ever seen. There's so much going on right now that it can be overwhelming. Luckily, I live in New York where there is literally so much going on that I can pick and choose what's important to me and share it all with ya'll. I'm so not southern. These David Brody paintings are the best paintings I've seen in person since seeing Bill Jensen's 2007 show at Cheim and Read. So it's been about 5 years since we've seen paintings as colorful, dynamic, and imaginative as these. If I had 9000 dollars I would buy one. But since I don't, I can only comment that this guy is a rare talent. He paints these amazing abstractions on raw linen with oil paint. The paint builds up to create these beautifully layered textures. The push pull of the painters brush can be seen as more of a discovery than a struggle. Painting is not dead, it has only begun to find it's voice in a contemporary world absorbed by technology and computers. The tradition of painting is still important and still vital to the human soul.

A Walk In The Park

Unfinished Drawing

Slip Into The Groove

Coyote Skulls

I want to paint Coyote Skulls and other animal bones.

Monster Icon 1

MONSTER ICONS

Yesterday, I bought a new sketchbook from one of my favorite bookstores in Williamsburg on Bedford Avenue. The idea of the new sketchbook is for it to be a depository of all the crap in my mind and scribbles and quotes that interest me. Well I started working in this book and realize that I am making a new series of drawings in this book called Monster Icons. I think this book will be the gateway into the paintings and the sculptures, which I've been craving to make.

The Gate

Demon Inside Me

Michael Williams

Alfred Jensen

Rembrandt

Has there ever been a painter on this planet who can touch this?

Michael Williams @ Canada

Michael Williams new paintings are energetic, and bold. On display are paintings that do not take painting too seriously, which is a relief. Painting is freed from it's cultural restraints, and the artist explores a world of fantasy doodles and beautiful colored washes made with an airbrush. Canada gallery comes off showing the art world that art can be kind of fun when it stops taking itself too seriously.

The paintings have a certain surfer board patina, which adds to the fun aspect. The effect of the airbrush is striking at first, seeing something unexpected and then wondering how it was done. The fact that these are painted as well makes it all the more fun. They look like they could easily be drawn, but since they are painted it displays the skill of the artist. To make a painting look like a drawing is a rare gift.

Collapse Of The Mayan Empire

Colin from Radiohead's music suggestions

Daphni- Mapfumo
South Street Player - Who Keeps Changing Your Mind
Sibylle Baier - Forget About
The Jones Girls - Nights Over Egypt
Nick Straker - A Little Bit of Jazz
Donald Byrd - Places and Spaces
Daphni - Ye Ye
John Luther Adams - 4000 holes
John Maus - Do Your Best
Four Tet - Angels Echoes (Caribou Remix)
Jay Dee - Nothing Like This
Rufus Wainwright - Tiergarten (Supermayer Lost in the Tiergarten mix)
Ween - Your Party
Dominatrix - Sleeps Tonight
Moodymann - I Can't Kick This Feeling When it Hits
Sheila and B. Devotion - Spacer
Four Tet - Pockets

Michael Williams

Mephistopheles

New Currency

The world is made the way it is so that we have no freedom to create and explore our creativity and individuality. The concept of money has made us slaves to having to do things in life that our contrary to our own desires. We need to be able to create a new form of currency in order to allow our creativity to thrive. The next revolution will be fought with our minds embracing this new currency. We need a creative revolution. Instead of focusing our minds and bodies on the way the world is and fighting against that, allow that world to exist. Freedom is contagious and If we fight the power of the world today by just being ourselves, we can lead our future back on track.

I don't know how to accomplish this task, but I know that it's needed, now more than ever.

Remedios Varo

The Sculptures of Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington

New Inspirations: Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo

Leonora Carrington

The Art of Stanley Donwood

Recap of MAY: New Approaches, New Insight, New Resolve.

I have had another wonderful month of creative expression. And I have reached more conclusions. Art should be from somewhere emotional and personal. Although part of me agrees with making art for peoples enjoyment, another part of me views art as something therapeutic and personal to the artist. I am going to make these pathways very clearly different. But, they will both take their expression through drawing. Painting will remain something I do as a hobby, something for personal enjoyment, and I will avoid thinking critically about my painting.

Two methods of Drawing. One will be to continue the kind of drawing that I feel streams from my imagination, and creates an illusory worlds of creatures, melting together within an abstract atmosphere. The other form of drawing will focus a lot more on the emotional aspect of my individuality. I will dig into the paper, with ordinary office pens, and they will be guided by geometry and curvilinear shapes. These will be works that when you feel them, you have a visceral experience because they will mold the paper into a type of skin.

I have come to the realization that drawing is the most important way, and perhaps always has been, the most efficient way for me to express myself. This is because I can draw directly and precisely. I look forward to posting these two separate directions on this blog, and I look forward to hearing any criticism that people would like to offer.

no- just a pen- what made those drawings at the museum great was there lack of structure- they became something else- a record of time passing

they were repeated again and again like a mantra

so much noise morphed and became quiet

do not over aestheticize them

no "high lights"

think, "what would steve do?" and then, do the opposite

Eccelesiastes

DADA

The Last Flamethrower

Free Delivery Open 7 Days

Tears Of A Clown

Self-portraits

I need to make some more of these!

Mayan Vessel

Forest Bess

Bess turned his attention to "that source," which he identified as the real author of his now regularly recurring visions. They were not elaborate visions, like the Dutch village or the grotesque animals he had seen at the time of his mental breakdown, but crude abstract shapes that seemed to appear on the inside of his eyelids just after he awoke in the middle of the night or in the early-morning hours. Bess found that he could not summon the visions and that they could frequently elude his attempts to record them on the sketch pad he kept by his bed. "I have no control over the duration of the vision (I'm lucky if I have time enough to make a sketch in bed). The only thing I do have is a choice as to which one I will sketch. One night they were all in black and white and happened (changed) so quickly that I sketched and painted only one." Bess also discovered that any of the visions that he didn't copy would be lost forever, his conscious mind was simply unable to retain them.

The Fall of Rome II

President Jimmy Carter

Hand

Mr. G. Hardy

Abacus

Leon Golub

Darkness On The Edge Of Town

The King Of Limbs

Sugar Mountain

The Darkness of Mere Being

Mucalinda

Two Riders Approaching

The Future Is the Present

The future in the present tense

Last night I did not get much sleep. But in the little sleep I did get I managed to have a pretty vivid dream. I was in the city, most likely Brooklyn because of the ruggedness of the streets and the way the streets looked. I was in and out of a house. The house had a glass exterior, like a half dome at the top of a building with nothing blocking its view from the sky that resembled the front of a spaceship. The interior of the house had all these cool gadgets to look out upon the universe. Every now and then I have refresher dreams about the cosmos. There is so much going on in the sky, and on earth we tend to never think much outside of our terrestrial boundries. Life has so much mystery yet to be discovered. Yet, we are caught up in our earthly disorder. We only live one life, and I chose to not let that life go to waste without at least acknowledging the immense presence of the universe that surrounds us, and the enormous potential it may have for life on other planets, and galaxies, and the potential it has to bring us into contact with things that we have yet to know. The latter part of the dream, which occurred in between the time of 5:20, and 5:50 am, was me at a slide lecture where I was about to make a presentation on my artwork, A look into one of my sketchbooks. I was coming up with a thesis statement for the presentation. The thesis statement was almost very clear. I was on the verge of tackeling the subject as I was awakened by my alarm, of course! I was going to say something about how I am very interested in artifacts from the past, like sculptures, and monuments of the ancient world because it gives me a perspective on the potential of mankind on the future. I was giong to open the statement by saying The past is< and the future is the present tense (this statement seemed a lot clearer as I was suddenly awakened by my alarm.) I was about to make a presentation where I was going to present drawings that I have made relating to history such as drawings of artifacts of the past, in conjuction with some of my futuristic abstracts. I am going to try and make sense of all of this by looking up quotes. I've been reading the Watchman and there's a character that is able to trancend time and space. The possibility of that, and the power of our memory make it entirely plausible that our existence is an immortal experience, if we are able to detach ourselves from the materialness and focus more on the spirituality and mental capacity of our experience. Overall, the fact is that we have only begun to understand the power of our brain, and the cosmos as a whole. We are venturing on the tip of the iceberg as far as our species capacity to understand the power beyond materiality. This is something to be pursued, questioned, and examined, all while keeping a close eye on the cosmos.

Jasper Johns

Book of Imaginary Beings