Light Space & Time Exhibition

I recently received an award for my painting Decline from Light Space & Time Gallery (https://www.lightspacetime.art/open-art-exhibition-2020-painting-other-media/ ). From a group of 1,004 participants, I was awarded Special Recognition for Excellence in Art in the 10th Annual “Open” (No Theme) Art Exhibition. I consider this an international exhibition because the entries were from artists in 34 different countries, which is very exciting! For me, this is an important step as I make the transition from a student artist to an independent artist. Making work is only half of the job. The other half is marketing myself, applying for grants, shows, and competitions, and selling my work.

As I continue to make work that I want to make, I am also trying to be heard. It is important to me to do both. Being admitted to and awarded in this competition was important to me. It gives me a little more visibility as I move forward and enter more shows and competitions. It is also exciting to see the other work that was more successful in this exhibition than my own. It gives me insight to the other active artists around me. I can try to do better than them next time, or do something different or more original than the rest. At the same time, I see that I should continue making the art that says what I want to say because it is doing well in the eyes of others.

Decline, Oil on Canvas, 4’ x 6’, 2020

It is hard for me to think that I am doing well. Just because I was given an award, does not mean that I should stop or slow down on my work. It has been really hard the past few months to be motivated to create anything, but I know I can do better. To admit that I have accomplished something is almost like admitting defeat because it feels like saying I am finished with my work. I am definitely not finished. In fact, I feel that I am only just beginning to express myself in art in a way that I have not done before. I have not really accomplished anything until I feel I have said everything I need to say, which may never come.

Again, I am genuinely pleased with the result of my application to this show. Light Space & Time Gallery is a great online source for new up-and-coming artists like myself. They have several articles on how to write artist statements, how to apply to calls for entry, how to promote your art, and so many others that are extremely useful. Beyond that, they have an extensive collection of art to view from their archives. Please go check it out, it is worth the time. https://www.lightspacetime.art/

Fuel and Forlorn

These two paintings are part of my newest series, titled Fragments. I am working on a third painting for the series, titled Fortified. The paintings that make up the series focus on haunting images set in a diseased world. Completely void of figures, the paintings present the viewer with unsettlingly empty spaces that feel post-apocalyptic. A gloved hand fuels a vehicle, a series of trash cans stand in an open field, a dining hall lays imprisoned behind a fence. Torn paper covers layers of the same image seen from different perspectives, all the while emulating the collapsing world. What are these scenes to us if they lack the makers of the scene? What do these man-made creations mean if man is removed?

The world is in chaos. The odd and mundane scenes I am painting take the world of the pandemic and rip apart the many layers tucked underneath. By layering a variety of different forms of paper I am infusing the work with nuanced messages. Sometimes the paper may be black and painted on with white paint, creating a world of inversion; other times it is the greasy paper of takeout bags, fusing the waste of an increased cultural activity with imagery of emptiness. Along with the repeated painted scenes on each layer of paper, text is spread throughout the paintings. From pages in a book to my own personal handwriting, these mutilated blurbs show both my understanding of society and the decay of it.

Fuel is a piece looking into the casual act of filling a tank of gas. In this new and strange world we live in, the actions we often see as commonplace become dangerous and unsettling. Hands are no longer mechanisms to achieve basic tasks, but also carriers of disease. We are haunted by the touch of our own hands just as much as the touch of a stranger. The outside world no longer has moments of peace. It is a deadly frontier and every moment could lead to our demise. This simple act, along with many others, has been perverted. It seems impossible not to be in constant fear of interactions with the outside world.

Forlorn, Oil and Paper on Canvas, 24” x 24”, 2020

With the end of people, who is there to take out the trash? Forlorn examines the institutes of society we take for granted, like the system of waste management that we use. These crates that carry our used products also carry disease. If the garbage man is sick, who takes out the garbage? If we are sick, are we exposing the people that manage the trash of the city? Once people are gone, there will no longer be a need for these trash cans. They will become relics of a time once cherished. As our world crumbles into nothing, the simple desires of fast food and the twenty-something-year-old lifestyle will be distant and petty. It is time to reexamine what is meaningful to us as a society.

As we reach the end of the year, consider what is important to you. In the next painting of this series, I am examining the activity of dining out during the pandemic. It is still completely possible to do so, and many people do, but is it worth it? I miss the way the world was eight months ago. I enjoyed eating out with friends and family, going to an arcade or playing a round of mini golf. I miss traveling without the worry of dying from something I touched in a gas station. Unfortunately, COVID-19 is not going away anytime soon. This is a hard time to live in, but change has never been easy. Once we get out of this, things will be different and we will all be better for it. Don’t forget to show people that you love them, even if you can’t show them in person.

Evolution: Part One

It’s time to look back on my growth as an artist. For a long time I thought this painting was the best one I had ever made. Autumn Clear was a peak point for me, and I made it while I was in high school. Looking back, I can see so many ways that it could have been better, but it still was a well-composed and colorful painting. I loved making it. I was honing my abilities with creating landscapes with acrylic paint and I felt that I had accomplished the most I could with that subject matter. It was time to move on, paint something more challenging.

Prom Night, Acrylic on Canvas, 2016

I started exploring figures and portraiture, lighting and colors beyond daylight. I decided I wanted a challenge, so I chose to paint myself with eight of my friends. It was a true trial. Looking back, it was a disaster. I used a screenshot of a poorly lit photo off of Snapchat, I left out objects that completed the image, and the perspective of the background was warped. That aside, it was the best opportunity to paint different skin tones, different face shapes, and different kinds of hair. My understanding of all of these things was elementary. In terms of skin tones, I felt that I understood there were differences, I was just unable to properly represent them. It was still useful to my growth as an artist. In painting the shapes of the faces, I unintentionally created caricatures of my friends. Part of the issue was that I knew their faces; another part was that I had very little formal training on rendering the figure and the face. The hair was tragic; I knew that it needed darks and highlights, but I had no consideration for the layering required to make it feel real.

Abstract Drawing, Charcoal on Paper, 2016

Looking back, Prom Night was a turning point. It was not my first portrait, nor my last, but I learning to be critical of myself and realize that there is always room to grow. The next major turning point for me came from my first college level drawing class at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. After seeing that I needed significant work with my rendering skills, I decided to focus on sharpening the details. However, exploring the abstract end of drawing broadened my scope much more. We had an exercise in which we toned our paper a medium gray, put on one song, took an eraser and a piece of charcoal in each hand, closed our eyes, and didn’t stop making marks on the page until the song was done. Afterwards, we were to create an image from the marks we made, and this is what came from mine. Unrealistic, but very emotional for whatever reason. I knew art was meant to make us feel things, I just thought it had to look beautiful to achieve that. It was around this time that I was trying to understand why I hated the Abstract Expressionists. It took a long time, but something was finally starting to click.

Self Portrait, Oil on Canvas, 2017

Several months passed. I finished out my drawing class with some very detailed drawings and sketches, and moved on to a painting class. The professor was an incredible painter herself. She made incredible figurative work with bright and colorful palettes. Her name was Sarah Stolar and I still use the basic palette she gave us for most of my paintings. Near the end of the class, after really playing with and learning how to use oil paints in a much more critical environment than I had ever experienced, we were assigned a portrait project. It was a challenge. We were to paint from a mirror, which was something I had never done, and that made it difficult to compose. There are a lot of good things that came from this piece. For one, painting a white T-shirt gave me access to a much wider range of colors than I expected, and I started examining the underlying colors of things a little closer. For two, I was getting somewhere with the hair, really layering it and trying to get the dimensionality of it, though it still came out a little flat. I also started understanding flesh tones a bit more, but the shape of the face was still rough. I was starting to get somewhere. Clearly I did not think too hard about backgrounds at the time. It’s not a bad background, it’s just rough and meaningless.

After this, things started breaking down a bit. The school I was learning all of these formal techniques from closed down and I had to start looking elsewhere for education. I turned to New Mexico State University and enrolled in a few studio classes, one of which being a sculpture class. I will be exploring more of my growth in next week’s post, so keep a look out for that!

Start of a New Piece: Garbage Cans Painting

Sometimes I see things that catch my attention and hold it for a while. It confuses me or causes me to wonder. I think those kinds of things that cause a moment of pause are some of the most interesting things to paint. When I choose an image to work with, I often have at least some idea of what it is I want to paint. I will sketch the idea out, find the location I want to stage a photograph, and have my girlfriend, Selena, or a friend take the photo. But there are some moments that break this practice.

Sometimes I see scenes play out right before me and I can’t help but to snap a photo of it. I do not always know if the photo I take will actually be useful to me. I take many photos of odd things that turn out to be meaningless by the time I review it. It’s part of my process to come up with ideas for imagery. What better place to look for ideas than real life. This particular scene was so strange but somewhat mundane that I felt inclined to photograph it. A series of trash cans were strewn across a grassy field with trees looming in the distance in front of a bright orange sky. It was ominous, there was no real reason the trash cans should be out and the sky was almost unnatural in appearance. There was something about this image that made it a prime candidate for my current technique of layering and tearing paper. It was mundane and strange and it needed to be seen.

Once I decided on the image itself, I stretched a canvas and projected the image onto the canvas. The reason I have been projecting the image is to ensure some consistency after I have covered the painting with layers of paper. I do multiple projections throughout the process to keep the general composition the same. Once a general outline is made, I filled in the space with odd colors for the underpainting. Originally, I used this technique of odd colors (usually complimentary colors) to create a greater sense of depth in the painting, but now I am using the colors to create more emotional connections and give a sense of chaos and a world turned upside down. The layering of marks is still present in my work, though.

The way I layer paper is just like adding an additional layer before continuing the same painting. It is the way I see reality, multiple overlapping layers which eventually break down and reveal what is beneath. It is multiple perspectives and sides of things depicted with torn paper. I am breaking through the layers of reality. The paper layers are important as well. With this piece I am using notebook paper and writing on it for the first layer, connecting my understanding of art and education with a series of dumpsters and tearing it apart. I am also going to layer greasy paper bags from fast food restaurants on it, connecting the activity of eating takeout food at home or away from the restaurant with waste and oil painting. Everything is overlapping and connecting, and it all is set in a time of a pandemic.

I think that is important to remember. The context of this series of paintings is the pandemic. The way the layers are broken down and the strange imagery might not have been possible or relevant in a different setting. The pandemic is revealing things we could not see as clearly before, but in the same way everything becomes a fragmented puzzle. I am using these new methods to piece together this puzzle for others to see. I am very excited about this series, I think it shows dynamic and interesting network of themes and ideas.

More Progress on the Gas Pump Painting

This has been a bumpy ride for a painting. That’s a good thing. I like when things give me a little bit of a challenge. The frustration leads to growth. I have learned quite a bit from this piece.

Continuing from the last post, I layered book pages on top of the canvas and torn black paper. I did so at an angle to keep things looking dynamic. I then traced the projected image over the pasted pages in red so that I could see what I was working with. The text was somewhat disorienting, But I was pleased with the appearance. From here I painted in the true colors of the image I was working with on everything but the hand and the gas pump handle. It was striking to me, so I left it for the time being.

Now for the frustrating part. The black paper tore off very easily. The book pages were difficult in every respect. There was very little grip, the small pages kept the tear from flowing, and I was only able to tear the first layer. If I was able to tear more that a single layer, I would tear the black paper underneath as well. That meant I either tore away too little or too much. I stopped working on it for a few days to do some research on how to solve this problem.

I asked my boss at the sign shop if she had any ideas of what to do. Given she has worked with many kinds of materials both in cases of installing and removing, I figured she had something. She suggested I look into the different processes for removing wallpaper, specifically using a mixture of water and fabric softener. It made sense, though I don’t know who would have discovered this process. Paper often acts as a sort of fabric, so loosening it with fabric softener is part one. Most glue is water-soluble, so once the paper is more responsive to liquids the mixture can work away at the glue underneath. I decided I would give it a shot.

It was not easy, but the mixture worked. On the areas I had already torn away, the mixture allowed me to work away the paper more easily without getting rid of the black layer. The combination of glue, paper, fabric softener, and water created a flexible, plastic-like substance that sort of peeled away like hot vinyl. It took a lot longer to work through, but I was very pleased to have a reliable method for removing pasted paper. Once that part was complete, the painting had become chaotic. The layers were all visible sharp tears and it needed to be balanced.

The next step was to paint a little more on top of the chaos. I finally painted the glove its proper color, then the arm, and then the nozzle. I only painted portions of them so that the layers were still visible but gaps were bridged. I then added colors from the under painting to bring that forward once more, though in a much more understated way. The addition of the darker tones and colors helped to focus the painting, though it is still quite energetic. I added more white line work to again bring the layer forward. I added to the sky with blues and under painting violets, and did the same with the rest of the painting.

This painting is now complete to me… for now. I will let it sit so that I can stare at it and ponder, but I am moving on to another painting. The plan is to continue with this new style and try to develop it into a consistent practice. I think I will call this one Fuel.