Family Gatherings

Here is my Italian family. I am not Italian, and as I have just finished seeing all of my extended relatives over Christmas, I can be sure that none of them are Italian, either. It's fun to make believe a bit, though.

This is done in watercolour pencil crayons and it is only moderately huge - 2x4 feet or so. I like using these pencils, but the end result is so smooth compared to oil pastels, or even paint. I also used some soft pastels and gouache - can there be anything better than gouache? I liked the way that this hand here worked out.

A goal for 2013: more ethnic intertwiners. The search begins for source images with figures that overlap, drape, and interact - the more twisted together the figures, the happier I'll be.

Three Figures

This is my current favourite work of mine, and it has me itching to get out the oil pastels. Look for more like it in the days to come.

Port-right?

I am very interested in portraiture. Identity, Schmedentity! Bring it on!

I have to constantly remind myself not to worry about realism. In the epic words of my old art teacher Carla, spoken when we were drawing dishcloths: "No one is ever going to say 'that's not my dishcloth'." It was more relevant at the time.

Landscape, it's where it's at!

I'm interested in landscapes as places of being; that is, in how the eye can inhabit them, and how one can imagine a home outside the body. After all, if it isn't flat-out portraiture, art is all about places and things, and places and things (a path, a stairwell) are all about people anyway, about US, about YOU and ME.

Welcome!

Welcome to my brand-spanking new art blog. Please look around and enjoy. Post your thoughts about art. Contact me and offer me half of your Nigerian princely kingdom, I won't mind.

Oh dear, I fear this might be the time for some kind of mission statement.
Unfortunately, nitwit, blubber, oddment and tweak have already been taken from a greater speech than this one. I am an artist and I enjoy painting, drawing, and collaging. What am I after in art, you ask? I'd like to capture a little bit of what I see, and, silly as I am, send it back to you again. I like the real world very much but I'm not particularly concerned with repeating it over again. I'll leave that to the illustrators of vases by windows (they do a valuable service to blank walls everywhere, after all). Me, I'm after honesty in representation, truth to impressions, something that captures the subject and not just the view. It's a tricky enough goal, and worse, I'd like to work towards it without being pretentious, and in the art world no less. Here are my humble attempts.