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Last night I watched the highly hailed Inconvenient Truth for the first time. It was kind of like when I watched Bowling for Columbine the first time. It was an amazing film, and it did give me information that I did not know, however, the overlying motif of the film was one that seemed kind of obvious to me. Inconvenient Truth = treat the planet well, plant a tree, maybe walk to work instead of driving, don’t leave your lights on all night. Bowling for Columbine = Don’t raise your kids to be like the fictional Michael Myers, don’t kill people, and maybe background checks on guns aren’t a horrible thing.

That said, I appreciate what Al Gore has been doing. He’s won a lot of respect with me, and perhaps people should spend less time “thinking about terrorism, and more time thinking about saving their planet”. I like his take charge attitude and it prompted me to make a drawing also in this cat theme like the other day. Hope you like it:

Hope all is well with you folks, I’ll be posting a lot (hopefully) the next couple days. Until then though, be well and go plant a tree or something.

peace

Sometimes you find yourself so overwhelmed with the list of things that you have to do that you just have to start drawing some things that a.) have nothing to do with your upcoming shows, and b.) are completely ridiculous. Last night I stepped out for a drink at Beth’s job and sat down with my sketchbook. I drew a couple things that were terrible and then decided to draw my cat. I came up with this. I love it, and if you know my cat, which some of you do, you’ll love it too I think:

I also let a girl at work touch my sketchbook. She showed me her best stick figure so I added to it. I think this is super funny, we’ll see if you feel the same:

Tennis fans anyone? Anyway, I’ll have some more serious stuff up soon ( I have three days off this week ) but for now I will leave you with this.

peace

For once the image says everything that I want to say.

As soon as I get batteries for the camera I will upload some photos of the large piece that I am working on. It has a human being in it. Very exciting. I hope that working large will help loosen me up a little bit.

We’ll see what you think when I have batteries in the camera. Peace.

-Mike

Today I drove to the coffee shop in Sandwich, NH and sat down with a coffee thinking about Travis Millard’s work. I started to work robot arms in a similar pattern to some of his shapes and thought that they looked pretty cool. I was thinking it might do me well to have a couple simple pieces like this in my show to balance out some of the detail in the other work that I am hanging.

I’ve also been thinking that it might be cool to take these shapes and make them into a tree that a bird is perched in or has a nest in. What do you think?

I also started work on a new birdhouse piece. I need to come up with several for the small wall feature at the Hive Gallery. I am trying to make the bird drawings a bit more scientific, so that every bird can look the same. This is more so that I can pay attention to the different species of bird.

I want the bird house to become a house with multiple perches, birds and nests. I am trying to focus more on group shots now, as opposed to single character shots. I will keep everyone updated on the status of this piece as well.

Thanks for stopping in. Peace.

-Mike

Today I started to work out a sketch of robots specifically to fit into a piece that I had started a long time ago for the “What if the World….” show that I had planned out. The piece was not going anywhere and it was a shame becaue there is a big opportunity to get some waterwork in there. I have been really into the difference between the textures of robot and water and wood, etc.

So The sketch ended up like this, and actually led to some more ideas which I will be sharing tomorrow:

This sketch is feeling really big for me. I am not usually one for having more than two characters in a piece anyway, and this feels really strong to me. So I immediately started to take it to the old painting and try to work the robots in. Here is what I got:

I hope you dig it. In a couple days I should have the finish up so that you can get a better idea what it looks like, but I enjoy the line of robots working their way into this bird’s space. I might have to add one more robot in the foreground on the right. Not sure yet.

Gotta run to be a line cook again. Hope all is well, and drop me a line to let me know what you think of the work. The email link is to the right.

Peace.

-Mike

Yesterday I was sitting back and taking a look at my show. It is a good thing to do when you need to finish work, you need it to look cohesive, and you need it all to be good. There was just one problem. It wasn’t looking as good as I’d like. As a group I could tell that the body of work was pretty good, but still suffering from some problems that I had thought that I had evaded by now.

I did the only thing I could. Critique. Beth was kind enough to direct me through a crit, and I left the crit with three pieces that I was solid on, and plans to make three or four more much more successful. To someone else, having three paintings for a show in April done might seem like a cause for concern, but me, I’m just getting started. This is not to say that I haven’t been working on the show, but rather that I need the stress to make something good. Here it comes.

So check out the first piece that I’ve been working up since crit. I am in love with where this is going, and with the fact that it doesn’t seem to be taking too long to get where it’s going either.
Let me know what you think:

I’ve been feeling pretty influenced by Mel Kadel, who has given me some more ideas as to how to use space. I hope that I can make this piece really feel what I intend and reflect that. Her work is totally awesome by the way. You should really check it out. It’s so good it makes me talk like a cali girl.

The second piece that Beth and I worked on was a piece that I had thought was finished, but upon second thought I really had to agree with her that it was a bit stagnant. Check out the new sketch. The new piece should arrive on the blog soon.

Gotta run to the day job. Whopping four hour shift, maybe I’ll post some more stuff later.
peace

-Mike

I needed to get a piece together for February’s group show at the Hive Gallery, and on relatively short notice, so I decided to put together a piece from some older ideas that I had been working on. It has been a while since I have brought the plants and pipes together, but I still think that the idea is pertinent.

Most of the work that I have pumped out lately has been highlighting a little more painterly and a little less of the attention to detail that I was going for in the past year or so. I have been yearning to see some Jasper Johns or Rauschenberg in person. The physicality of their work was so intense, and albeit my work doesn’t get as close to that as I would like, I hope that there is a least a little bit of that flair in it.

I have also been missing hatch marks in my pieces lately. I am trying to eliminate to much of what I am starting with I think. It is something that I will be paying attention to in the next couple weeks as I finish up the Blue Bottle Show.

More to come soon.

-Mike

I’ve been working hard in the studio, but unfortunately that doesn’t always mean that I end up with an awesome finished product. I’ve had to scrap a couple pieces lately because of faulty compositions and have taken them back to the drawing board, but I did get this under painting off and running this morning, which is pretty cool.

It’s starting to look like complicated scenes are not what is going to really make this first show rock. I think it is going to be more about characters up close. You can’t quite see yet, as the piece is really just started but, there is a tape deck in this robots chest and the bird is pulling the actual tape out…

I thought it was kind of a cool way to go with the angry look of the robot with his hands in the air.

Let me know what you think.
In other news I finalized the dates on my two other shows this year. The Hive Gallery show will be in May. The opening is May 2. The Art Stream Studios show, titled “Dwellings”, will be October and November.

This is really turning into a busy year. Wish me luck, no drama, and time to play pinball. Peace.

For those of you who don’t know the Seattle style. It is passive aggressive. That is merely a little internal joke for myself and not a pot shot at Washington’s biggest city.

I was working out the Mighty Lark piece that I layed down last night, and decided that it really needed to be more colorful and painterly than I have been working. The Mighty Lark is clearly an ambiguous character, perhaps the paint application should be the same.

Either way, here is yesterday’s piece in its entirety. Let me know what you think.

I am kind of in love with the shock in this robots eyes. It looks as if maybe he just had an accident, but it’s probably the bird on his head.

In other news, yesterday I finally set up an Etsy site to sell some of my work. You can check out my shop here. I have a modest four pieces up, but it’s a start. Stop in and grab a painting. I’ll soon have some prints up as well.

Take it easy folks.