ALTARS, GMO´s, !!!´s

Altars, GMO´s, !!!´s

After deciding to go freelance as a scenic artist I finally had more time to get back to my own personal work which had been set aside for years. Painting sets for theater and various stage productions involved long hours and was physically exhausting... the last thing I wanted do was go to my small studio and work on something that reminded me of my job. Also, I found myself not wanting to think about art or reasons for making art. I just wanted to sit in my small studio and relax, escape, listen to music and just paint. I had to try to disconnect from work and reconnect with my love of painting, no pressure to make art, no deep, hidden meaning, just paint and make stuff without any judgement of the final product. I spent a lot of time looking at street art, Japanese tattoos, outsider art, Chinese costumes, aboriginal art...anything I found interesting...trying really hard to stay away from art books past or present. At the time I found myself looking a lot at The Throne of the Third Heaven by James Hampton as well as the Healing Machines of Emery Blagdon. I thought these were perfect examples of spiritually driven passionate work by outsider artist who offered unpretentious work made from found objects or other unorthodox materials. In both cases the inspiring scale also suggested the work was a small piece of a much larger plan.

The altars were the beginning of my much delayed new work. Sometimes I would spend days just painting small pieces of cut wood and listening to music...some days I would stack them all on top of each other...some days turn them upside down...cut them up and reassemble...put them together then take them apart...every day was different...sometimes not knowing what was going to happen next...I just let things happen.

Dots ablaze acrylic on wood approx 24 x 10 x 8 inches

Altars, armor, battleships, floats, repetition acrylic on wood 32 x 16 x 11 inches

Altars,armor, battleships, floats, repetition #3
acrylic on wood 34 x 20 x 8 inches

Swimming to salvation, continued acrylic on wood
37 x 17 x 11 inches

Fault line acrylic on wood approx 9 x 22 inches

Fire! Over there! acrylic on wood approx 14 x 20 inches

Swimming to salvation acrylic on wood 13 x 28 inches

Altars, armor, battleships, floats, repetition #2
acrylic on wood & Sintra 29 x 22 x 7 inches front

Altars, armor, battleships, floats, repetition #2
acrylic on wood & Sintra 29 x 22 x 7 inches back

The neighborhood, house #1 acrylic on wood & Sintra 45 x 21 x 11.5 inches front/back

The neighborhood, house # 2 acrylic on wood & Sintra 42 x 21 x 11.5 inches front/back

Sleeping through the fire acrylic on wood & Sintra
26 x 10 inches

Sleeping through the fire #2 acrylic on wood & Sintra
34 x 15 inches

Grass fire! acrylic on wood & Sintra 26 x 12.5 inches

Grass fire near the Barnett Shale acrylic on wood & Sintra
26 x 12.5 inches

Trees #1 & 2 acrylic on wood & cedar 52 x22 x 11.5 inches

Trees #3 & 4 acrylic on wood, cedar & Sintra 49 x 31 x 11.5 inches

Around 2012-13 the controversy of GMO´s - genetically modified organisms was constantly in the news. Even though it was primarily discussed in regards to food there were also plenty of discussions brought up about questionable medical research or just laboratory experiments in general. There was a picture painted of the white coat mad scientist in the lab creating all kinds of horrific out of control monsters, mutations, diseases etc. Anyway, with this in mind I began to think about the imaginary creatures I would refer to as my GMO´s. The first one was not really consciously an attempt to create some sort of hybrid but half way through the piece I realized what I had. When I hung it on the wall it almost appeared to be moving, crawling, twisting...as if it was alive. It was titled Selective memory: souvenir #1 but in fact was the first GMO. Shortly after this piece the cross between Betta fish or Siamese fighting fish and exotic crawling, flying beetles began to take place.