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!

Hello from Denver! And other updates

Hi y’all,

Welcome back to the blog! I know it’s been quite a long time since my last post… in the neighborhood of three months, I believe. A lot’s happened since then.

As many of you probably know, I relocated to Denver, Colorado. I’ve lived in New York for the last nine years (with a few relatively brief excursions in Oregon, India, Jordan, and Lebanon). It’s been a big change. I’ve been here about a month, and so far I’m really liking it — lots of sun, the food is good, people are genuinely nice and helpful, and, of course, the mountains are only an hour away.

It feels apt that my first painting here and the last painting I finished in New York are both landscapes. Here’s the last one from New York; I’ve posted some of the WIP shots of it on the blog before:

Inwood Hill Park - 12” x 16” - oil on canvas

I painted this at a park in Inwood, the last neighborhood I lived in in the city, just down the road from my apartment. Inwood had long been one of my favorite spots in New York, especially Manhattan, so it feels right to have gotten one last image of it before I left.

It also feels right to start off here in Denver with a painting of the mountains. I grew up in Kansas City and came out to the mountains every chance I got.

Guarded Sunset - 12” x 12” - oil on canvas

This painting (and a number of others) is now available for purchase on Saatchi. And as always, feel free to poke around the “Shop & Learn” section of my website for other goodies or to email me directly at slreichmanart@gmail.com if you’re interested in a piece you see on the website or Instagram (or you’d like to commission a new one).

But back to the fun (nerdy) stuff. I’ve been trying to get a little looser, more impressionistic with my landscapes. I’ve always naturally favored a rougher, more painterly approach, but I’ve often felt myself conflicted between the desire to render more tightly, adhering more to “reality” (whatever that means) and the desire to let the brushstrokes do more of the work.

Between New York and Denver, I spent a couple of weeks back in my hometown (more on that later). While I was there, I went to the Nelson, the biggest museum in Kansas City. As I wandered around the French painting section, I found myself more and more drawn to the impressionists and post-impressionists:

A post-impresionist whose name I failed to take down… woops

Paul Cezanne

Claude Monet

Their free brush strokes and their impressive power to suggest form, light, even people and gesture with so little — that’s something I aspire to. I’m a long way away, but, fortunately for me, I’ve got some great landscapes to practice on here in Colorado.

I was back in Kansas City for a couple of weeks. My mom, as I suspect some readers here might know, was having surgery to remove a benign tumor on her brain stem, and I was in town to spend time with her before and after the surgery. This was her third round having the tumor removed since 1999, and it was definitely trying for her and the rest of the family, especially with the pandemic still strong in the Midwest. That’s made me all the more grateful to have such strong, supportive loved ones. The surgery was a success, and my mom, trooper that she is, is doing much better.

During my time in KC, I got a few sketches in of my mom’s recovery. I drew this a few days post-op:

Mom, post-op; pen and ink on paper

And this I drew after she was released from the hospital and was recovering at home:

Mom, recovery; pen and ink on paper

In a strangely well-timed development, I also got my contributor copies of the two poems I had accepted for publication way back in April right as my mom was getting through the worst of the recovery. They’re both about family, and one (I’ll let you guess which) I actually originally wrote for my mom’s birthday. It’s been through a good amount of revision since then (they both have), so it’s great to see them out in the world.

Mother Memories, published by Sand Hills Literary Magazine

Heaven Cannot Hold Her, published by Sand Hills Literary Magazine

There’s a lot of gorgeous work in this issue of Sand Hills Literary Magazine, the journal that took them, so please consider supporting their amazing work by purchasing a copy of the print issue!

I’m also happy to share that my drawing of my partner’s cat, Cashmere, was invited to an online exhibit organized by Exhibizone and distributed by Biafarin. You can check out my page on the online exhibit here. And here’s the drawing:

Cashmere - mixed media on paper - 16” x 12”

The exhibit is open til the end of the month, so be sure to stop by and check it out soon! And in case you’re wondering, yes, Cashmere knows how cute she is.

Finally, I’m happy to share that my collaboration with musician, producer, and 10/10 good friend Kevin Shoemaker, a.ka. Dandelot, went great! I made eight digital drawings for Kevin’s debut album (one for each track), and we released one a day, along with behind the scenes info on the making of each track, in an exclusive online exhibit — Chanukah came early this year.

We’ll be selling posters with all eight drawings soon. In the meantime, check out our discussion on the collaboration below, and be sure to get signed up for updates on the album release, album swag, and more here!

That’s it for now! I should be posting here more regularly now that I’m relatively settled. In the meantime, thanks so much for reading, and keep creating!

Satan's stages of grief, angel heads, and more!

Hi y’all,

Welcome back to the blog! This week, I’ve got updates on the shop, some forthcoming poems, and more work on the Milton project. First, I’m happy to share that I’m now selling originals online on Saatchi Art! You can find them by clicking here. I’m starting with a few pieces from my semi-abstract, surrealist eye series, including several of my hamsas. For those who don’t know, the hamsa is a symbol in Jewish and Muslim culture that keeps away the “evil eye,” protecting its owner and/or bringing them blessings.

“Hamsa (Base),” oil on canvas, 9’’ x 15’’ (for sale on Saatchi Art)

“Hamsa (Blessing),” mixed media on canvas, 12’’ x 16’’ (for sale on Saatchi Art)

“Hamsa (Space),” mixed media on canvas, 12’’ x 16’’ (for sale on Saatchi Art)

“Shipwreck,” oil on canvas, 26’’ x 30’’ (for sale on Saatchi Art)

The idea of this series is to explore liminal spaces — between abstraction and representation, Jewish and Islamic culture, energy and reason, etc. I’ll share more on that as I add more to Saatchi. As always, you can find more products and services in the “Shop & Learn” section of the website. And don’t be shy to inquire about other original paintings, drawings, or commissions via email at slreichmanart@gmail.com!

I’m also excited to share that I have two poems forthcoming in Sand Hills Literary Magazine. I’ll say more about them once they’re out in the world, but, for now, stay tuned, poke around their website, and consider purchasing a print issue!

Outside of all that, I’ve been making more headway on the Milton angels project. As I shared in the last post, I’ve been slowly (but steadily) stitching together the angel bodies à la Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (which, by the way, is also a retelling of Genesis). Here’s where I left off with the full-body pen and ink study:

Angel body, back view, pen and ink

You might notice there’s a crucial element missing here . . . and since I don’t intend on making headless angels, I’ve been thinking through how I might go about illustrating an angel head. I’m a sucker for the classics (shocker, I know), so I started off by distorting some Da Vinci and Michelangelo head studies I dug up in one of my anatomy books.

Da Vinci copies, with distortions; pen and ink

Michelangelo copy, pen and ink

Michelangelo copy - distorted, pen and ink

I’ve also gone through my usual process of doing an anatomy study and distorting it:

Anatomy study, muscles of the head and neck, pen and ink

Anatomy study - distorted, muscles of the head and neck, pen and ink

I don’t think I want to have something quite that alien-looking for the final version (maybe Satan at his most fallen?), so I’m still looking around and experimenting. I’ve even been distorting line drawings of people on the train. Do angels need to wear masks?

Observational drawings on the NYC subway, with distortions; pen and ink

On the painting side of the project, I’ve completed the oil study for the angel wings:

Angel wings, back view, oil and acrylic on canvas

As I’ve been working on the wings, I’ve been thinking more about how much visual chaos I can sneak into a painting before an angel goes from “good” to “bad.” This one’s a bit closer to good, but, when you get closer, you can see that I played a little more with color and texture than it looks like from a distance.

I’ve been thinking of this as an early stage of Satan’s fall, perhaps when he’s convincing other angels to join his rebellion in Heaven or leading the charge against the pro-God forces. In Paradise Lost, Satan’s fall from Heaven is only the beginning of his descent into moral depravity. As he gets further along, he grows more and more tormented by his decisions.

His outward appearance grows more distorted as his inner torment increases. Accordingly, as I’ve been painting more and reflecting on the studies I’ve already made, I’ve been looking at them as Satan’s “stages of grief.” The torso study might be Satan in Hell after the fall from Heaven.

Satan torso, back view, oil and acrylic on canvas

If you look closer, you can see there’s more warm/cool confusion in this one than the wings study. The torso study is now stretched and ready to go, by the way, for anyone interested in purchasing it.

The warm/cool and textural confusion grows more pronounced in the leg study I completed a few weeks ago. That one could be Satan traveling through Chaos, his corruption nearly complete.

Satan leg, back view, oil on canvas

That’s it for this week! I’ll be posting again soon with more progress on the angel head drawings, oil studies, and more. Thanks for tuning in! Have a great week and keep creating.