Altar's, GMO's,!!!'s

Altars, GMO’s, !!!’s

‍ ‍After deciding to go freelance as a scenic artist I finally had more time to get back to my own personal work which had been set aside for years. Painting sets for theater and stage productions involved long hours and was physically exhausting…the last thing I wanted to do was go to small studio and work on something that reminded me of my job. Also, I found myself not wanting to think about art or reasons for making art. I just wanted to sit in my small studio and relax, escape listen to music and just paint. Had to try and disconnect from painting as work and reconnect with my true love of painting, no pressure to make art, no deep hidden meaning, just paint, drink coffee, make stuff without any judgement of the final product. I spent a lot of time looking at street art, Japanese tattoos, outsider or self taught artist, Chinese costumes, aboriginal art…anything I thought was interesting…trying really hard to stay away from art books past or present. At the time I spent a lot of time looking at The Throne of the Third Heaven by James Hampton as well as the Healing Machines by Emery Blagdon. I thought these were perfect examples of spiritually driven passionate work by a janitor and a farmer who offered unpretentious work made from found objects or other unorthodox materials. In both cases the inspiring scale suggested the work was only a small piece of a much larger plan.

The altars were the beginning. Sometimes I would spend days just painting small pieces of cut wood and listening to music…some days I would turn them all upside down…some days stack them all on top of each other…some days cut them up and reassemble…put them together then take them apart…every day was different…sometimes not knowing what was going to happen next…I just let things happen without judgement.

Dots ablaze acrylic on wood approx 24 × 10 × 10 inches

‍ Altars, armour, battleships, floats, repetition #3 ‍ acrylic on wood 34 × 20 × 8 inches

Swimming to salvation, continued acrylic on wood 37 × 17 × 11 inches

‍ Altars, armour, battleships, floats, repetition ‍ acrylic on wood 32 × 16 × 11 inches

Altars, amour, battleships, floats, repetition #2 acrylic on wood and Sintra 29 × 22 × 7 inches

The neighborhood #2 acrylic on wood & Sintra 45 × 21 × 11.5 inches

The neighbor hood #1 acrylic on wood & Sintra 45 × 21 × 11.5 inches

Sleeping thru the fire acrylic on wood & Sintra 26 × 10 inches

Sleeping thru the fire #2 acrylic on wood & Sintra 34 × 15 inches

Grass fire! acrylic on wood & Sintra 26 × 12.5 inches

Grass fire near the Barnet Shale acrylic on wood & Sintra 26 × 12.5 inches

Trees #1 & #2 acrylic on wood & cedar 52 × 22 × 11.5 inches

Trees #3 & #4 acrylic on wood, cedar & Sintra 52 × 22 × 11.5 inches

Swimming to salvation acrylic on wood 13 × 28 inches

Fault line acrylic on wood approx 9 × 22 inches

Fire! Over there! acrylic on wood approx 14 × 20 inches

Swimmers acrylic on wood panel 12 × 12 inches

Around 2012-2013 the controversy of GMO’s…genetically modified organisms… was constantly in the news. Even though it was primarily discussed in regards to food there were also plenty of discussions brought up about questionable medical research or just secret laboratory experiments in general. There was this picture painted of the white coat mad scientist alone in his lab creating all kinds of horrific out of control monsters, mutations, diseases etc. Anyway, with this in mind I began to think about these imaginary creatures that I would refer to as my GMO’s. The first one was not really consciously an attempt to create some sort of hybrid but once I hung it on the wall I realized it appeared to be moving, crawling and twisting as if it was alive. It was titled Selective memory: souvenir#1 but in fact it was the first GMO. shortly after this piece the cross between Betta fish or the Siamese fighting fish and exotic crawling, flying beetles began to take place.