New Friends, Uneasy Paintings, and The Tree of Life - Category: From the Studio

Good Morning! 

This is the last week I have to get my work done for Caggio. I am almost there and it feels good. I wouldn't recommend locking yourself away for four weeks and painting because you will go crazy. Seriously. I have made friends with every june bug, squirrel and morning dove that lands on my porch. They are great friends and after our week of deep, intellectual conversations  the squirrel even asked me to be her maid of honor in her wedding in late August. It feels great to be loved. 

Okay, enough of that nonsense. It all honesty it has been a trying week in the studio. Only good artists know how to finish their work, so I always get anxious when putting the finishing touches on my paintings. There is a fine line between getting it right and a massive fail. I remember hearing from an artist that whenever he thought he had a "Great" idea he knew the painting would be complete crap. It was the ones that he felt really uneasy about that usually ended up being good work. So maybe it is a good sign that I feel uneasy about everything that is happening in my studio right now. There is a joke among my family that if I don't like a painting it will sell. And it is true, every painting I have ever felt undecided about is the first one to go at a show. So in the end it is all worth it and I usually end of loving that painting I hated in the beginning. 

Here are some details of some of the paintings I have been working on this week: 

 

I did make it out to the Oriental this week to see "The Tree of Life" which was an amazing mostly non-verbal, non-linear, collage of nature, grace, life, and death. I imagine that the director and writer were sitting  in a dark little cafe somewhere,  drinking scotch, and they were hit with a moment of brilliance to make a movie about everything. Instead of laughing it off they actually did it. It  is movie about all of life's big existensial questions- about the beginning of time, coming of age, wrestling with God, the magnificent micro and macro beauty of nature, loss of innocence, grief, and love. At first I didn't know what to make of it and by the end I was an emotional wreck. I also thought it was a great movie to watch around the time of Father's Day.  It is a great movie in the sense that is doesn't "preach" at its audience about these major, controversial topics. Whether you are a Christian or atheist, someone who believes in creation or the Big Bang, or someone who is just neutral, you can approach it with your own experience and interpret it in any way. It is personal and universal at the same time. It leaves it up to the viewer to fill in the blanks.  Any work of art that embraces contradiction is a mystical, brilliant thing. So go see it!