whats good about painting with wine? you drink it.

two things out of about ten tonight stood out to me, enough to photograph badly and share (man, i need to get the photo stuff down)...

the first is something ive already written and come to terms with since: they're panties. ok? i know they are, you know they are. my approach isn't dirty but subconscious, and i know what youre thinking when you see the image. i still have some highlight work to do on the shape to provide more the definition of cloth and the sheerness, but im done trying to say its not what it is. im not that good of an artist to bullshit you into thinking youre not looking at what youre looking at. meaning is one thing, image is another. superficiality and the commercial world; they are one in the same.


calvin klein
25 x 19.5"
pencil, wine, gesso, house paint.


i also started with some marks on a sheet that i thought would turn into a logo of some sort. after some coverage and observation i found myself looking at a knee in the foreground and the rest of a thigh and torso in the background. i remembered how much fun it was to do the 'fake musculature' so i layed into the paper with a sharpened watercolor pencil. i have no idea how i will keep this thing from bleeding black after another coat of some background treatment and focused lighting work. a challenge. fine. i will take it.

fake knee
25 x 19.5"
guache, wine, watercolor pencil

these things were broken up by me trying to repair an old cassette tape i found title 17:22. i know its a sound work i did about ten years ago. in the past i would use the Playstation Music Generator to make beats and drones sampled from Fugazi instrumentals... i cant remember the theme of this tape, so i did my best to straighten out the warped/wrapped strip of tape. cassettes are a bitch because you CAN SEE THE PROBLEM through the plastic, so you keep pulling out tape, trying to pinpoint the problem inside the case, but you just keep pulling until something bad happens. i was about 1 cm away from snapping the tape, so i stopped in hopes that one day this year i will amass all of my broken tapes, open up the cases, repair the actual tape, reassemble and enjoy tones from the past. i know i have a problem getting rid of cassettes that may/may not have anything of value on them, but every once in a while i will find some one minute long song (or a ten minute jam) from when i was so concentrated on a theme that i really CAUGHT something, really recorded a moment that may resonate with someone besides myself. in my mind, that is one "truth" of Art and proof that someone IS an artist - the ability to bottle a moment (or a series of times) in a form of choice and have it mean more than just that moment.

man, i didnt have that much wine. wtf.

just got upstairs from a pretty amazing session in the studio. no, i wasnt laying down the tightest of drum grooves. and no, i wasnt wah chicka wahing my way to deep soulness... i was listening to christian mcbride. one of my underlings at wfyi burned me a live cd, and yea, my mind has been blown. im pretty sure its the live at tonic album (disk 1) and it is outright amazing.

so piece wise, i started off with two pretty mundane washes from friday; kinda transparent yellow green just washed up with a two inch brush. i threw them up, hit them with what was left of the pallet, and let them dry. well, tonight i was wishing i could have played some drums, so one is a cymbal (ride from the vibe i was on) and the other a bass drum with a hammer headed pedal kicking in. a few reds, some orange to freak it out in places, and some illustration black lines for overdone form. finished off with some pink/white wash over the remaining flat space and ive almost got a whole drum kit painting. well, not even close to a whole kit, but im happy with the product seeing as both pieces seem totally plastic ideas of what i was feeling. richard nicholson would be proud.

then i got back to four smaller pieces, again from fridays beginnings. they all deal with memory and how the past cannot be changed through thoughts. one may decide that selective memory can help an individual keep the lessons (not) learned from past mistakes or decisions from haunting them, but there is no use. none. you remember the bad stuff and it stings. your memory, if youre messed up, reminds you of one good thing assigned to that painful memory in hopes of taking the sting away. if youve learned anything the sting is still there, only dulled by time and life and how you work now, but it still stings.
the pieces started as washy profiles of people i remembered from the late 90's ... just the most abstract of sketchy portions of the persons.... i cant even remember who they are now... probably friends from the days i casually did some drugs i cant afford now.... but people in my memory nonetheless. tonight, with the help of some late 90's bands blaring through headphones, i was able to layer on some high and low lights, much like the sing of memory i spoke of before, only with the ups too.
one can say taking the sting of a memory away is just "leaning" while i say its just making the memory more coherent.
yea, a cop came to talk to me while i was at some party, but i really remember how awesome the band he shut down was when it happened. that isnt really learning. thats just reminicense.

so ive got some paintings that deal with memory popping out of me. they still look like right now.

and one more: a twisted body piece like the ones from april, only way smaller and less worked. i still want to layer in some blacks like i had with the larger pieces. but the simplicity of the sketch, almost f. baconey in its approach, really makes me want to return hardcore to the figure.


now if only me and my wife had matching schedules.......