The final piece

This is the final piece that I made for my wife. She is very happy with it, as am I. I don't believe that it's my best painting for ever but for having had a nearly ten year hiatus from my last time with the paints I have to say I am pleased. I should have taken the picture of the whole wall, to show you it in context but I wanted to highlight the painting.

Ink or Paint

Geez, I must've been busy lately. I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted over here. I inspired Phelan to take up her keyboard and but her works online, and then dropped off myself. Sorry, to you three people a month who pop in here. :)

My wife A~ recently "commissioned" a painting from me. Actually she pestered me into getting out the brushes again after nearly 10 years and wanted me to paint a somber tree-centric piece for our front room. I've worked on a couple of studies this week to see if 1) I still had any ability, and 2) how I wanted to do this piece. I thought I'd share with you and see what you thought. I'll be painting the final work this afternoon, so input won't really have any impact on the final piece, but I am curious.

This was the first study that I did. It was done with black India ink and some white acrylic paint. I like some elements of it, but it really doesn't speak to me. I thought the tree came out too blocky and essentially lifeless.

This was the second, and I have to say my favorite of the two. I painted it with white acrylic and some ordinary black latex interior home paint. An odd choice, I know, but it was what I had on hand, and I think the richness of it worked nicely. I definitely liked the tree better on this one. It has a bit more life to it, and seems to tell a story.

I'd love to hear any ones thoughts, and I'll try to post a photo of the finished piece over the weekend.
P~

Scribble 2

During one of my two deployments to the Persian Gulf, I went through a period where I wrote a lot of short poetic desriptions. I call them that for lack of a better way to describe them. They are not, to me, truly poems on their own, but do contain a sort of poetic nature to them. Either way they are some of my favorite little snippets from my journal. Let me share a few:

• A garden within a cubical
of sidewalk, planted by natures
hand, lends a brilliant venue for expression.

• Sitting on a bench beneath
a shade tree kept me from
howling at the moon.

• A row of trashcans within
a locked enclosure.
Forced recycling?

• In a clutter I dwell between
dirty dishes and the remains of
a long journey.

I know they are a bit odd, but they bring to mind the clearest images of the moment that I captured with them that they will forever hold a fond place to me.
P~

Untitled, (age 16-17)

Time drips by,
with but a subtle hint of life gone past.

It creeps by,
leaving only the distant ticking of the clock on the wall.

It has no true form,
but gives slight clues, such as the gray hair of an old man's head.

Time is precious,
however it comes from a well which will never run dry.

Time is lonely,
but only for those who choose for it to be so.

Why is it that man,
unlike the universe, attempts to control time?

Perhaps it's because man,
unlike the universe, has a limit.


P~

The non-meme (Influences)

I'm not really one for the meme thing. (For those few of you not in the loop here, memes are basically user driven information blasts about topics like 7 favorite things or 10 things you didn't know about me, that are generally passed via the "Tag your it" process and refer back to some original posting.) Anyway, as I was saying, I've never been really a big "memer". per se. They always have requirments like tag five others and leave a link back here to this post and I guess seem just a little too self promoting to me. So this is the non meme. Partially because I'm the non memer extrordinaire, and partially because I only know one other person with a similar themed blog, Phelan, whom I could even direct this too.

So anyway what's all the blathering about? Influences, that's what. I've posted a few writings here so far, and a few paintings. I thought I'd share a couple of my influences.

1. Bob Dylan - I remember listening to him as far back as possible. My dad's "Bob Dylans Greatest Hits" album was played an replayed, not so much for the music, which was/is great, but for the writing. It just hit something in me. "How many times must a man look up, Before he can see the sky? Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have, Before he can hear people cry? ~ Dylan" I remember when I started really trying to write, I think the folky, preachy thing kind of came through.

2. Jim Morrison - Later, in High School, I found "The Doors". Of course I liked their favorites, Light my fire, Break on through, you know the classic rock station standbys. But the magic happened for me when I found "The Lords and the new Creatures: Poems by Jim Morrison." In it I found a new way of looking at writing. One that let me out of the trap of iambic pentameter, and made me realize that I could write a thought as a feeling and a color as a fear. "I am a guide to the Labyrinth, Monarch of the protean towers, on this cool stone patio, above the iron mist, sunk in its own waste, breathing its own breath ~ Morrison". In the future you'll see my writings like this. They paint a picture in my head, a memory on paper.

3. My uncle Ted - The roaming uncle with the VW beetle, wrap around sunglasses, stories of rockhounding in the southwest and works of art that painted my childhood. He was the first "great artist" that I ever knew. I think a good deal of my curiousity and desire to learn how to create things were influenced by him. I wanted to paint, and draw, and learn to make silver jewerly like the octopus earings that he made that would seem to climb up the wearers ear. If your reading Ted, Thanks.

4. My Mom - Some time in High School, my mom and I were looking through some of her old papers and I saw a few of what I believed were my doodles but didn't recognize. As it turns out they were hers. The style, the way we sketched and played with the lines and shapes was uncannily similar. I obviously got a good portion of my ability from her.


Well, there you go, a little look inside my creative mind. Now I'm not tagging anyone, and I'm not requesting a link back, but I'd love to hear from you or have you post a link to where you talk about you influences. Thanks for reading.
Till later.
P~

Mixed media (cubist)

I used Conte' crayons, charcoal and pencil on this piece. It was made back in '90 while I was in College. It was one of my only experiments with cubist style. It's actually grown on me the more that I look at it.
P~

I'm in the sandbox.

It seems that I've been pulled out of the sandbox today and got my first hits on this site that were generated by Google rather than a link from my parent site A Posse Ad Esse.
My little expressive site is growing up...
P~

Scribble 1

Digging, always digging.

Shoving the earth around.

Making it better, more functional.

Like plastic surgery on an old woman.


P~
Some time in 1992 while in Saudi Arabia.

B&W India Ink on 100% cotton paper

Well the title says it all. This illustration was made from a mix of straight black india ink, and a wash of dilluted india ink. I created this toward the end of 1989 or early 1990 during my freshman year in college. I was focusing on art at the time, and was really enjoying experimenting with different media. Someday I'd like to revisit this type of work, but till then, I always enjoy this particular piece. My wife always liked this piece as well and it hung in our last home for a while.

P~

The world inside my dreams.

My eyes, they see not the things they wish to;
a solitary bluff of green grass topped by a tree,
with rolling fields of grain and wild horses roaming.
An intoxicating world, a playground for you and me.

These things I say I wish to see have been hidden or killed off by us,
A rushed society of material things with factories spilling smoke.
Our engines that we make, they pollute us too.
We must take this problem more seriously, for it's really not a joke.

Our ancestors, they called our home a land of virgin soil.
They said also that our lands would yield bountiful crops; and so they did.
And I say did, for our land is drying out, for we have misused it.
Things like this I did not notice when I was just a kid.
But now I do.

And now I only see these things in my peaceful dreams.
These dreams of spacious meadows, of gently blowing wind.
The quiet world of forests and unpolluted streams
and I dread the moment of daybreak at which time my dreams must end.

I long to see these things again, the things I've never seen,
I wish to go at least once again to where I've never been.
To my world of forests with gently flowing streams,
the world I love so very much, the world inside my dreams.
P~ 4-15-86

I had to chuckle as I transcribed this to the blog. I wrote so dramatically didn't I? "For this'', and "for that..." oh well, I was 15 and in 9th grade. I Guess I was a bit of a greenie before it was vogue huh? I had to fight the temptation to edit and change the way the poem read. I think I could re-write it better, but it is what it is, I want to document it as such. Maybe some time in the future I'll get back to it.

Hope you like.
P~

Where to begin?

At the beginning of course. So here are a couple of the earliest things that I have. They're not great works of art by any means, but hey, we all start somewhere. right? I obviously wasn't thinking of my future need for historical accuracy when I drew them because I didn't bother including a date but since they were both done before my Grandfather passed away, I would put them at some time before I was 7, that was '78 (alright now, everyone stop adding that up in your head!) Thanks to my moms meticulous care for all things creative by me, I have them still and really do enjoy looking back.



I've been going through the collection of writings and drawings that I have and trying to decide which one I want to share, and how, and it may take a little bit to get consistent. I'm really excited about it though.
Glad you stopped by.
P~