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"Everything is autobiographical, and everything is a portrait, even if it's a chair." ― Lucian Freud

Portrait of Time 13" x 19" mixed media on broken table

Inside Grindio (Self #2) 11"x 14" mixed media on a Trace canvas 

Together

What is painting?

Do you sense how all the parts of a good picture are involved with each other, not just placed side by side? Art is a creation for the eye and can only be hinted at with words. - John Baldessari

My friend and fellow artist, Trace Mendoza, gave me an old metal art box and these interesting surfaces that he had painted on over and over again. I did an oil study on one of the surfaces and placed it within said art box. Here is the resulting matter...

Noelle study in a Trace art box 7 1/2"x 13 1/2"x 6 1/2" mixed media

Taped Setting

The space around the figure is very interesting to me. I usually create an environment that's tactile and with perceived depth through shapes and the contrast of black and white tape.  Overlapping the figure with tape adds to the ambiguity of grounds (fore, middle, back). It suggests the in-between, like the very finite moment you are teetering between dreaming and waking up. Here, that reality is permanent.  

Claire with slight head motion in front of jutting light forms 12" x 16" mixed media on wood

Bert reconfigured 12" x 15 3/4" mixed media on wood

 

Tape Edit Part II

John (Tape Edit) 1:1
In the beginning was the Tape, and the Tape was with Human, and the Tape was Human...

Tochito (shorty) 12"x 19" mixed media on wood

Trace space 16"x 12" mixed media on wood

Bryce between perceptions  16"x 12" mixed media on wood

Tape Edit

Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss. ― Hal Holbrook 

I've been working on a series of mixed media portraits. For the most part, I use black/white tape, charcoal pencils, watercolor, and Mod Podge. The piece right below is the first of the series where tape started to take over my surfaces.

Mikey with void (revisited) 10 3/4"x 15" mixed media on paper glued onto masonite

 

Noelle with diagonal light form 11 3/4"x 19" mixed media on wood

 

Noelle with crystallizing light beam 12"x 16" mixed media on wood

Facind Paint 2011

The kind of audience that doesn’t spend the time to really look at a painting suffer from what David Perkins calls,  “audience impressionism”.  

Audience impressionism is a special case of that general problem with human cognition […]: hastiness-a disposition to reach a quick resolution driven by the rapid intuitive mechanisms of experiential intelligence.

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Erik (self-portrait) 50"x 26" oil on wood

Erik (self-portrait) detail

Jessie 18"x 28" oil on wood

Mikey 18"x 28" oil on wood

Claire 11"x 14" oil on wood