Stocking up

I picked up a fairly substantial order of stretcher bars yesterday from Mike and his great team at Rochester Art Supply. I've got about 10 canvases ready now, and there are enough bars there for 36 more, from 24 x 34 to 66 x 96 inches.

I guess I better get busy.

Studio artifact...

It's been cold, brutally cold, but things are getting done!

Inertia

Inertia- as defined by Websters- "physics : a property of matter by which something that is not moving remains still and something that is moving goes at the same speed and in the same direction until another thing or force affects it."

I've always had it, or felt like I did. Certainly not first thing in the morning, but once I was up and running, I could always just keep going. When I was younger it wasn't unusual for me to work 12 or 14 hours a day. 16. I didn't need to. I wanted to. 

The last 14 months have been a lesson in the other side of it. An object at rest stays at rest. In December of 2012 I was diagnosed with cancer in my vocal chord. What? Me? C'mon, obviously a mistake. Never a smoker, moderate drinker, damn near vegetarian, lots of exercise…… c'mon!

Nope. Doctor Haben was right. Two surgeries later…. and what? It appears that the good doctor got it, auguring my throat with his trusty laser. Turns out my system does NOT like morphine. Or much of any drug. And my head…. well my head spent a lot of time thinking about life and where I was. I don't think it's possible to have cancer associated with yourself and not spend time contemplating your mortality. My momentum came to a halt.

When Darby told a friend of hers, the friend responded, I thought he was unstoppable.

I did too.

After a couple months of that it was enough- enough of the depression, the mortal questions. I knew where I was, where I was trying to go. But still, I couldn't shake off the inertia. I felt like I plodded through last year. 

Muddle-headed and stuck in first gear, I ground through the year. I read very little, one of my favorite pastimes and the driver of much of my thinking. About the end of November, Darby read an article about the side affects of Prilosec (I'd been taking it as a potential preventative for acid reflux for the cancer in my throat). It can interfere with the body's ability to process B12 and protein, which interferes with short term memory. Muddle. I talked to Dr Haben about it, and he suggested after getting past my next adventure we try dropping it.

So, that next adventure? A year later, almost to the day of the first cancer surgery, I went in to have my knee replaced. Something I've been putting off for a long time- I destroyed it in highschool. While on the blood thinners and pain killers for the knee surgery, I forgot to take my Prilosec. A couple weeks after the surgery I'd had enough of the side effects of the painkillers and dropped them. And a few days later, it felt like a fog lifted. 

I've been sidelined by the need for rehab of my knee, but it's coming along really well. I'm back in the studio for two sessions every day, held up as much by the brutally cold winter and poorly insulated studio as my swelling joint. But the inertia is changing, from a body at rest to a body in motion. I have a dozen or so pieces underway, and several big canvases waiting for paint. I'm part of a three person show that opens in a couple weeks at The Oxford Gallery here in Rochester.

The muddle is gone. I'm healthy. I'm rolling again. 2014 is looking pretty damn good.

Headed to Denver....

for the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. I've been working like a madman, trying to finish up some new work I'm pretty excited about.

Stop and say hello at booth # 79.

64th Rochester-Fingerlakes Exhibition

Hot Summer Sky, 48 x 66 inches, oil on canvas.

Later this week I'll drop off the painting above at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York, for its 64th Rochester-Fingerlakes exhibit. Hot Summer Sky was accepted into the show, and I was asked to provide a statement to go along with it.

An artist's statement is one of the biggest pains in the ass you can imagine having to write. Always concerns over being honest, and at the same time hoping you hit the mark in what those making judgments are hoping and expecting to read, to have the right artistic gravitas. Yet not be sounding like a pompous ass.

Or, comfortably plopped into middle-age, you can hopefully leave those concerns behind, all but the honesty.

So, here's what I wrote:


Hot Summer Sky

15 years ago I stood in the beautiful, vaulted space of a massive hay barn in eastern Oregon. I was there with my wife, Darby Knox, to introduce her to my extended family, my mother's aunts and uncles. I stood next to her, in this place I'd visited frequently while growing up in the Pacific Northwest. I'd played there as a child, and was left misty eyed over the life I'd missed, in this gorgeous country, amongst people I loved and admired so much. Darby said quietly, Why don't you paint any barns? They are spectacular.

I kind of scoffed at the idea. They're kitschy, I replied, maybe the most over-exposed subject in American painting.

She gave me a bump and a smile, and said, They don't have to be.

And that's where it started for me, a new body of work. Trying to take a common subject and make it something new. To turn a subject of sweet nostalgia and American pie into something contemporary and iconic, representational to an extent, but imbued with the energy and surface of expressionism. 

For me they are monuments to people like my aunts and uncles, men and women who greeted the day the same way they did their nephew, with smothering hugs, bone crushing handshakes, and enthusiasm for the life at hand.

As for kitsch, as a good friend of mine says of his prodigious storytelling, The facts are just the jumping off point.

Life's been crazy!?!?!

Can't believe it's been a month and a half since I posted, but then I think about the month and a half, and I realize, Well, yeah.

Silver Creek II, 32 x 40 inches, oil on linen, and now living in Texas.

First a trip to Texas for a show, where 8 paintings found new homes. I couldn't have been happier, and the temperature was a beautiful, balmy 70 degrees all weekend, making it a comfortable visit as well.

Once I was home, we raced down to NYC to meet miss Madeleine Grace Rogers, who made me forget all about how terrific Texas had been.

Then home again, and to the opening of the 6 x 6 show at RoCo (Rochester Contemporary) in Rochester. It it their annual fund raising event, and artists from all over the world donate pieces that are sold for $20.00 each to benefit the gallery. I participated this year to support the gallery, but I had my own more important reason- my son Todd donated a piece and it would be our first chance to exhibit in the same show. His piece sold at the chaotic opening night frenzy, as did one of mine. The other is still available at  http://www.roco6x6.org/6x6x2013.php, # 3220, a mono type of a horse. It can be purchased online, and the money goes to a great cause- supporting the arts in a very difficult market.

And finally we headed to North Carolina for a family celebration of my mother's 80th birthday, and an early Father's Day with my dad. A quick but wonderful trip to see my family who means so much to me, and maybe most fun of all, to watch the next generation cousins all get a long and laugh so easily.

In between all that, about 28 paintings have been slowly, (in some cases with much blood, sweat and tears), coming together. I'll try and tell you about that a little sooner, rather than my more typical later.

Spring is near ending, and I feel like it's passed me by. But the coyotes were out and singing last night, as loud and close as I've ever heard. Life goes on.

In August of 2011, I was fortunate to be invited to participate in the Artist in Residency program at Bristol Bay Lodge in Alaska, thanks to artist extraordinaire, guide and all round great guy Bob White, and Steve Laurent, the manager of BBL, a spectacular photographer and badass bush pilot. This fall, when I get a chance to dive into some larger work resulting from the experience, I'll tell you more about the trip. But I'd like to share a bit of the preliminary work I've done, and ask for your help.

Bristol Bay, Alaska, is home to the most productive salmon fishery on earth. Nearly 40 million sockeye salmon return to its rivers every year, and there is a good chance that if you eat wild caught salmon, it has come from a Bristol Bay fishery.

Foreign mining companies want to develop North America's largest open pit gold, copper and molybdenum mine near the headwaters of these rivers. Open pit mining is the most destructive form of mining, and the toxic waste from the operation will be stored indefinitely behind earthen damns in an area of extremely high seismic activity-ie earthquakes. No one believes there won't be accidents and failures.

If you eat wild salmon, and recognize it for the precious resource that it is, please go to http://www.savebristolbay.org/takeaction and sign in support of protecting the Bristol Bay region.