Garage Mural - Trail of Fireflies: Hot Summer Nights

Trail of Fireflies: Summer Nights, 83” h x 190” w , spray paint and acrylic on metal, 2024.

Summer and winter seasons merge in this otherworldly landscape with shapes and patterns derived from the dance of the fireflies. The winter season is shown by painting trees without their leaves and summer is represented with green grass and firefly markings. Looking at sunsets is one of my favorite activities as they are colorful, ephemeral, and forever changing throughout different weather and cycles of nature. I used artistic license with the colors of the sunset behind the weaving lines of the river. Different species of fireflies create different marks when they glow and fly through the sky. Some make a dot, dash, squiggle, zig zag, or a even a j-shaped flash. It’s pretty rare to be able to see this many synchronous fireflies glow at one time. I have only experienced it though viewing time-lapse photography. The images and phenomena were so inspiring to me that I wanted to immortalize them in a painting. It gives me great joy to imagine their nightly flights. The firefly marks have become a recurring motif in my work and I have incorporated their glow in many paintings. I used Montana Gold spray paint for the background and Nova acrylic mural paint for fine details on the trees, pink flowers, and firefly marks. As typical in my work, the pink flower forms are not literal flowers but flower inspired. They could also be marine creatures, amoebas or something else. I try to evoke a hybrid of subjects in each of my artwork forms and invite the viewer to use their imagination.

See other artworks that incorporate my firefly motif here. The mural design was inspired by one of my smaller studio paintings shown on the firefly blog. That painting is in now in a private collection.

The project took about 36 hours including 6 hours of priming. I used an existing painting and slightly altered it for the initial design to fit the garage format. The smaller studio painting took around 3-4 months of full-time work spread out over 1-2 years time.

Please reach out to me about custom murals. I would love to collaborate with you.

Mural Process

 

Expedition Spectrum - Inspiration

EXPEDITION SPECTRUM gives the viewer a visual opportunity to meditate on color; to connect their thoughts toward inner awareness and close observation of minutiae in nature. The paintings in the Expedition Series journey into unknown spaces inspired by bird songs, forest canopies, and seafoam. With these prompts from nature, the works focus on depicting simple pleasures and silver linings. Viewing the paintings invites a chance to slow down and investigate our surroundings.  With this introspection comes resilience, no matter where we are. The painting process I employ is the culmination of my personal quest to find joy in color and to radiate warmth and optimism on each piece. The works act like fantastical prisms of nature, reflecting the shifting magic of color, from red through purple, one color at a time. Expedition Spectrum renews the spirit and shifts the mindset towards hope.

 
 

Diving into Lost Lens

Lost Lens, 52” x 60”, acrylic on canvas, 2020

Lost Lens, 52” x 60”, acrylic on canvas, 2020

In painting plankton and stars, they become yours, each other, and hopefully something else. I think of this painting as a place to get lost through the lens of imagined nature. However, I zoom back and forth to depict a balance between things that exist and things that are imagined. The piece incorporates some real Amazonian flora and fauna. The rate that that flora and fauna in our ecosystem is being destroyed through climate change is absolutely devastating. By bringing attention to the amazing amount diversity in our environment, I hope that the painting encourages us to conserve our world. Consider all the things we have yet to discover. Color is bright, vivid, and amplified. In the rainforest, colors are so bright they look painted- it’s fantastical. It is this energy that I try to capture in the painting. On another layer, the composition looks through a telescopic lens, or is it a microscopic lens? I developed this painting for 6 months and finished just before the quarantine started. It was a quick painting relatively speaking as I often work on paintings this size for 1-2 years. The energy and excitement of the painting process was all encompassing. I often get stuck and move to another work but every once an awhile a painting flows and I just ride the wave. The work offers a glimpse of beauty, a shimmer of hope, and a space for comfort. I think art can provide a space for healing and highlight our connection to the world. A lens like tool can offer greater clarity on a subject because it allows you to see beyond the capacity of human eyesight. The painting magnifies scale to create an impossible situation. A burst of optimism is what I want to put out into the world with my paintings. The focus is on what’s outside of the lens and the space inside zooms outward to the cosmos. A densely populated canopy of beauty surrounds the cosmic circle. A great pause has forced us all to experience life more slowly during the quarantine. All of our routines have changed even for me even though I am still working from home.  There is a slowness and greater appreciation for seeing flora on walks in my own neighborhood. There are many lenses to view the world that are personal and collective.  I like to experience that and dream of new surprises around every corner. These are nutrients that feed the soul.

Daily Drawing Project TAKE TWO in 2020

Beginning on April 1, 2020

Studio view with Daily Drawings / Color Meditations Nov 2019 - March 2020.

Studio view with Daily Drawings / Color Meditations Nov 2019 - March 2020.

Since this past November, I have been thinking about bringing back my Daily Drawing Project from April 1, 2011 – March 31, 2012. I self-published a Daily Drawing book on blurb—if you are not familiar, that was 9 years ago and not 10. Recently, I chatted with artist Philip J Mellen on AHTCAST where I talk about this project in a two part audio interview. Get excited!

I have been pondering how I would do this project the next time, what would be different, and what would be the same. Mostly I wondered if I really wanted to do this project ever again. I think that I do but have been carefully thinking about how to approach it. There are positives and negatives to the project—more positive than negative, but it tends to take over the amount of larger pieces that I have energy to create in a year. My studio focus has been larger paintings over smaller drawings. But that can change if I want. I listened to this fantastic podcast called I LIKE YOUR WORK with artist Erika B Hess where she interviews San Francisco based artist Lisa Solomon. Check out the interview here. Solomon wrote a book about watercolor meditations. Anyway this podcast was special to me, as I really liked how Lisa would practice color meditations for 30 minutes to begin her studio practice each day. I even bought her book a few months ago, although in true confessions I have not read it yet. I DO plan to read it shortly. I’ve only paged through it so far but very much looking forward to reading it.

Additionally, I have always wanted to get more into blog posting but I’m lazy and would rather make paintings instead of write. I do have a blog with 4 years of blog posts but my last blog entry was in 2014.  It’s mostly photos of art but there are some blog posts and essays on my work. I published the daily drawing project on the blog so you could see the work without being connected to me on social media. I would like to figure out how to move this to my website or if I can do that without having to move each blog entry individually. That is another project for another day. For now, I’m just going to use the blog template on my squarespace website as it’s much easier to update, and for older entries I will link to the old blog.

The photo above is a pile of daily drawings/color meditations that I’ve worked on since November 2019. I don’t really want to show people these, as they are not what I would consider finished works. These pages are a place to let my mind rest from noise of the world. These are also preparatory works or warm up exercises that allow a place to meditate and experiment. The daily drawings are a way to begin painting right away when I don’t really want to paint or would rather do absolutely anything else but paint. They lighten the mood and give me permission to begin right away instead of puttering around the studio and staring at everything for hours. Puttering around time can be useful but sometimes it’s debilitating.  It’s all part of the artist journey. The time to be quiet and look inward is now. Lots of time for introspection and self-awareness in a studio practice. Sometimes it is good to just begin even if there are strong feelings of failure or blocks that discourage working at all. Sometimes it’s good to patiently look and let the artwork tell you what to do next. Both are appropriate solutions and ways to move forward.

April 1, 2020: Daily Drawing No. 1

April 1, 2020: Daily Drawing No. 1

EXCITING NEWS!

I’ve decided to start my Daily Drawing project again on April Fools’ Day in 2020. I’m not sure how long I will do it but I started today. Since I’ve been having a lot of trouble concentrating in my studio, I needed to put additional structures into my practice and life. I have to allow for moments of joy without pressure. Since I’m the only one here there is only myself to count on.

Project Parameters:

1.     Format of 8 inches x 10 inches (Whelp this is big and that freaks me out!)

2.     Watercolor media (Can use other media later but base starts with watercolor)

3.     Start a new one each day and consider approximate time limit of 1 hour.

4. I can work on one from the prior day as long as it’s within the same week of drawings.  Once a new week begins I cannot go back and work on the last weeks drawings. At the end of the week I will sign each of the finished drawings with a date on the back. The works are finished at this point and I cannot go back into them. I can however choose to destroy them later.

I can add new parameters for each week to allow for change but generally follow the 4 rules above. I start on April Fools’ Day to give myself permission to stop at anytime as a joke. Keep it light, airy, and fun. That is after all the entire point of maintaining a studio practice as an artist. Sometimes being an artist is not fun especially as you get older and the business parts and intense rejection pummels you down on a daily basis. It’s important to work hard to forget about all of that junk and try to make it fun again. Maintaining joy in my studio is #1 right now, which is very hard to do. I might not post these everyday on social media and still have to figure that portion out. Perhaps I’ll post weekly on my blog website or even monthly. I look forward to sharing more as I figure out this new project.