Canyons, deserts, and angels, oh my

Hi all,

Welcome back to the blog! Today, I’ve got updates on the angel painting, as well as recent shows.

As I mentioned in my last post, I got into the Wrightwood Wine and Arts Festival, which I showed at in May. I turned the show into a small road trip, and I got to see some really beautiful places along the way. I of course brought a sketch book with me to document them. Here’s a drawing from Moab, Utah:

and another from Snow Canyon (also in Utah):

Although that sketch was a fun one for the campsite I stayed in, it doesn’t really do the park justice, so here’s a quick video I took, too, just for good measure:

The festival in Wrightwood was a beautiful day — plenty of sun, art, and interesting people. I brought a few more pieces with me than I anticipated, too . . .

In addition to Wrightwood, I also recently showed at another Pancakes and Booze pop-up show here in Denver. I decided to change it up a little this time and bring some bigger pieces with me.

I also had a few more prints made for the show, so if you’re in the market for some giclée prints, stop by my Etsy account or shoot me an email!

Giclée prints — “Angel Torso,” 10’’ x 7.5’’ (left); “Shipwreck,” 9.5’’ x 8.25’’ (right)

Outside of the recent shows, I’ve been continuing to hack away at the cherub painting. When I last posted, I had finished all the studies and was starting on the underpainting. I’m very excited (relieved?) to share that I finally have finished the underpainting:

“Cherub — Ezekiel’s Vision” (WIP) - oil on canvas - 42’’ x 26’’

Freaky, right? If you’ve been keeping up with the project, you know that I’m using Ezekiel I (yes, that Ezekiel) for the textual reference. The Bible’s got some pretty bizarre imagery.

This painting has been a long haul . . . and I’m only halfway done. To give you a better idea of the scale, here’s me and the painting side-by-side:

I’m 5’11’’, and it comes up to my waist, so it’s not quite life-sized (whatever that means), but it’s definitely a biggun.

Because of its size, I think some aspects of the painting are better seen up close. Here’s a quick tour of the details:

I used such warm colors because Ezekiel describes the cherubim’s appearances as “like burning coals of fire or torches”. You can look forward to some color studies of burning coals (and maybe torches?) in my next post.

Aside from all the painting news, we also recently released a new issue (15.1) of Consequence. Stop by the website and pick up your copy up today!

The reading period for our next print issue is also open. If you’re a writer, be sure to send us your best work on the culture and human consequences of war and geopolitical violence before the reading period closes on October 15!

That’s it for now. Thanks for stopping by, and keep creating!

Faces, skulls, animals, and more

Hi all,

Welcome back to the blog! Today, I’ve got updates on the cherub painting and the self-portrait series, as well as some news on publications, shows, and festivals.

At the time of my last post, I had recently completed two self-portraits and was working on a third. The first two were a pen and ink and watercolor combo:

Self-portrait — watercolor and pen and ink on paper — 12’’ x 9’’

Self-portrait — watercolor and pen and ink on paper — 8.5’’ x 8’’

The third, which I’ve completed since, is mostly oil (with a bit of acrylic magenta) on canvas:

“Drift” (Self-portrait) - oil and acrylic on canvas - 12’’ x 12’’

As I said in my last post, I usually do self-portraits when I’ve gone through a major change or am at a transition in life. I spend so much time focused on writing — working on my own, editing others’, teaching it, reading it — that it’s a relief to be able to engage in self-reflection without the demands that writing imposes, especially when the dust hasn’t settled or I’m having trouble making sense of exactly where I’m at.

This piece, then, is appropriately titled “Drift.” I couldn’t tell you exactly what it means (if I could, that would sort of defeat the point), but I can tell you that there’s something about the play of super-saturated and muted colors, the screen-like effect of the brushwork and paint-handling, and the fluid-but-structured mark-making that captures the push and pull, the visibility and obscurity, the forming and dissolving that I feel in my self these days. Of what, exactly, I suppose time will tell.

In other painting news, I’m continuing to make progress on the cherub. When I last posted, I had finished the animal studies for the cherub’s heads. The cherub painting is based on the description of the cherubim (or what rabbinic scholars decided are cherubim) in Ezekiel I. Ezekiel describes the cherubim as having four faces: one, facing right, of a lion:

Lion head study - oil on canvas - 14’’ x 10’’

another, facing left, of an ox:

Ox head study - oil on canvas - 10’’ x 14’’

another of an eagle (direction unspecified):

Eagle head study - oil on canvas - 14’’ x 10’’

and, finally, the face of a human. At first, I didn’t think I would need to do a human head study (I’m a bit more familiar with the human head than I am with animal ones), but, after thinking about it a bit, I decided to do a few anyways.

I didn’t want to make a completely generic, mannequin-like face, so I began to wonder if anyone has any idea what ancient Israelites (Ezekiel’s kinsmen) might’ve looked like. It turns out, someone does. Or rather, some people do. A group of researchers, Kobylianski et al., published a study in which they reconstructed the face of two ancient Jews — one male, one female — based on the morphology of their skulls. I did charcoal studies of them both.

The male was from the Hellenistic period (third century BCE):

Head and skull studies, male - charcoal on paper - 9’’ x 12’’

and the female was from the Roman period (37 BCE-324 CE):

Head and skull studies, female - charcoal on paper - 9’’ x 12’’

With those, and a study of the full cherub complete:

Cherub, Ezekiel’s vision - charcoal and dry pastel on paper - 12’’ x 12’’

I finally felt ready to start the actual cherub painting. Ezekiel says the cherubim look “like burning coals of fire or like torches,” so I’m starting with an extremely warm underpainting:

Cherub, Ezekiel’s vision (WIP) - oil on canvas - 42’’ x 26’’

More updates on that to come. In other news, I’ve had/will have a few shows and publications. Last month, I showed at the Pancakes and Booze show here in Denver once again.

And, a few weeks ago, “Drift” was published in Artstonish magazine.

I was also accepted into the Wrightwood Arts and Wine Festival. I’ll be heading that way next month, so I should have more updates on that the next time I post. In the meantime, here’s a couple of 100% candid, organic photos I took for my application.

The artiste at work…

A preview of what my booth will look like

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading, and keep creating!

Hello again - updates, angels, animals

Hi y’all,

Welcome back to the blog! After a long . . . long hiatus. Things got a little crazy with a fuller teaching schedule, but I finally have some time to share a bit about the past months with you. Going forward, I’ll try to update the blog closer to once a month.

Most recently, I took part in the Pancakes and Booze show in Denver. I showed several pieces from my hamsa series, as well as one of my skull paintings and “The Dionysian.” Here’s them all together for the show:

From left to right, top to bottom: “Hamsa (Space),” “Hamsa (Blessing),” “The Dionysian,” “Skull #3”

As you might’ve guessed from the title (“Skull #3”), the skull painting is one of several. Here are the others for the curious:

“Skull #2” - 10’’ x 8’’ - oil and acrylic on canvas

“Skull #1” - 11’’ x 8’’ - oil on canvas

As you can see, I started with a lot more color, but to get the effect I was shooting for, I found it actually worked better to use a more limited palette. I’ve had this idea of trying to use color to do what William Blake did with line for some time now. In his drawings and prints, Blake overemphasized contour, making it hard to tell if lines were moving toward or away from you and if they were in the foreground or background, which in turn created some fascinating optical allusions. If you’d like to see some examples (and read more about how this worked), check out Stephen Leo Carr’s “Visionary Syntax: Nontyrannical Coherence in Blake’s Visual Art.”

I had experimented with this idea in abstract paintings before starting the skull series:

“Coherence” - 5’x3’ - mixed media on raw canvas

“Line, Color, Value” - 5’ x 3’ - Mixed media on canvas

but I hadn’t tried it with something representational. Once I did, I found that having a lot of saturated color made the whole thing feel a little like foreground, which was interesting, but not what I was shooting for. What I wanted was a foreground and a background that were constantly shifting, depending on what you look at and how long you look at it for.

What worked much better was to start with a very limited palette — the Zorn palette to be exact — using oil paints, then add a bit of acrylic magenta on top of the oils once they dried:

“Skull #3” - 12’’ x 9’’ - oil and acrylic on canvas

Because the limited palette created a clear background and foreground first, the saturated acrylic was able to move fluidly between them. The shift in texture from the smoother, earthier oils to the more irregular, plasticky acrylic also created a contrast I hadn’t expected. Happy accidents, right?

“Skull #3” has sold, but if you’re interested in the other two, they’re still available — feel free to shoot me a quick email to inquire about them.

The remaining painting, “The Dionysian,” has equally nerdy origins. I began reading Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy the first summer of the pandemic. Apparently, it was really important to Rothko, plus the title seemed apt for the time . . .

“The Dionysian” - 18’’ x 13’’ - oil and acrylic on canvas

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche argues that there’s an underlying tension in ancient Greek art between what he calls the Dionysian and the Apollonian. The Dionysian, connected to the cult of, you guessed it, Dionysus, embraces the primordial chaos of the universe. Nietzsche identifies more fluid art forms with this impulse — music, lyric poetry, non-representational art. The Apollonian was named for, right again, the cult of Apollo. It tried to redeem the pain of primordial chaos by creating order and beauty — narrative writing and representational art are its chief . . . representatives. In this piece, I wanted the viewer to get mostly swept away into Dionysian chaos but to also have a little bit of Apollonian representation to hold onto.

In other news, I have a poem out in issue no. 6 of Pinky Thinker Press. The poem, “Court Poet for a Night,” came out of a year or so of experiments in which I was looking for ways to unite how I might perform a poem in a spoken word and/or musical context and the way the poem appears on the page. Well, that and being very broke during art school and finding some very strange ways to make money.

I also recently did an interview with Shoutout Colorado. We talked about my transition from casework to the arts, influences, favorite spots in Denver, and more!

I’ve also been continuing to hack away at the (new) angel project. I’ve taken a detour from the Paradise Lost project for a while, focusing instead on the angels as described in Ezekiel I. When I last updated the blog, I had just completed my cartoon of one of the cherubim from Ezekiel’s vision:

12’’ x 9’’ - pen and ink on paper

Since then, I’ve created a fully rendered version:

12.5’’ x 12’’ - charcoal on paper

As you can see, Ezekiel’s cherubim have several heads, only one of which is human. Since I’m not super familiar with lions, eagles, or oxen, I’ve decided to do several oil paint studies before moving onto a full cherub. So far, I’ve completed the lion head:

Oil on canvas - 14’’ x 10’’

and the eagle is under (somewhat painstaking) progress:

14’’ x 10’’ - oil on canvas

Welp, that’s all for now, folks. Thanks for tuning in, and, as always, keep creating!