letting Loose

Happy, Oil on Canvas, 12 x 16

3 Men

I combined a couple of different figures that I have painted separately, into a beach scene.......this one is 24 x 36 oil on Canvas

Sugar Sugar

24 x 36 Oil on Canvas.....I've been looking back at the fighclouds that I've done in the past and reimagining them.....

Mark

I found a Canvas 24 x 48 in my studio building, it had a 3/4 portrait on it and I thought I would try painting one of my own, I've always liked the 3/4 and even the full length format as used by Whistler and others but I' feel like I could only make the face interesting, I wondered how to make the rest of the body interesting.....so I thought of my friend Mark, he has been HIV positive since the mid 1980's and very out and proud of that. I've also been looking at the paintings of Elvira Bach lately and I love how she paints bodies.......

Trying Something New...

Sammy's Beach 2  16 x 20 Oil on Canvas...

I have been looking at Milton Avery Beach Scenes lately and thought I would try one myself....I’m not sure when I first became aware of the work of Milton Avery. They must’ve had some at the Minneapolis Institute of arts in the Walker Art Center which was one of my favorite places to ride my bike to as a teenager. 

But when I was in New York I got to spend some time with an Avery at a clients house. During my second stint at college at Columbia University school of general studies I was employed and taught for the school of bartending the student voting agency and one of the clients who hired me regularly was a psychiatrist and his wife who had an apartment in the 60s and had a small Avery on the wall. I asked him about it he explains at the Museum of modern Art used to have this kind of rental or try before you buy program and so he picked out the Avery and brought it home and lived with it for a little while and decided he wanted to buy it so that’s how we ended up owning it and they entertain quite often I understood their idiosyncrasies and I like them and they liked me so I got to spend a lot of time with the Milton Avery painting and I’ve always aspired to Avery‘s kind of simplicity there’s so much content there with so few brushstrokes I’m sure I was thinking of Avery as I painted this

Listening to Francoise Hardy on a Rainy Friday Afternoon

I love painting flowers, It's such a calming soothing experience and feels great in this day and age...I almost go into a trance when I do it.....I love that! This is Oil on Canvas 18 x 18 inches

Palette Knife Paintings...

When I was a little kid I loved the work of Bernard Buffett, I still do even though he's not so well thought of, when I mention my Fandom sometimes think I've gotta be kidding... but I'm not and this is how I've been using that love...One of the cool things about using the palette knife is that my self critical voice gets turned off and I enter something like a trance,,,,,,,it's like I leave the room

Back to Bluto

I spent Most of 2017/18 improving my painting skills by keeping the subject matter the same, the cartoon character "Bluto.... I thought I'd try another one... this one is 12 x 16 inches

Wild pea

A friend posted this image on insta.....(I'm supremehanson there) and I asked if I could use it, I really enjoyed making this small 8 x 10 oilpainting yesterday, 

Sunflowers In a Vase by Philipe Malouin

I loved making this painting because it was so challenging! To make the yellow sunflowers pop from the green background took a lot of experimenting but I loved the results, the vase designer liked it too!

Studio Wall.....works in progress...

My first exposure to oil paint was at a manikin factory in Long Island city in the summer of 2002. I got a job painting faces on manikins, it was a great job and I really liked it and I learned a lot  but it took me six weeks before I made one they could use but once I got it I got really good.

The way I got the job was in an AOL M4M chat room And I got a message from a guy saying “I see in your profile that you were an artist do you want a job in a manikin factory?” I was working at the Museum of modern Art and I knew that job was going to end soon and I would need another job so I said “sure” his response was “it’s the Drybrush method can you do that?”

I said sure so he gave me an address in Long Island city and told me to show up Monday morning at 7:45 AM it wasn’t a problem because I’m an early riser did though seem a little weird but I should just show up at some factory in Long Island city but it also seemed like something I should pursue so I went there and he gave me a palette with some oil paints on it  and a baby manikin and some brushes and told me to paint. I was pretty nervous and I did a pretty bad job but he looked at it and said I had some talent and I would be able to pick it up. So I went downstairs negotiated my hourly rate,  filled out all the paperwork to join the union and punched the time clock......and  this kind gentle man kept giving me lessons but I wasn’t picking it up,  it was really frustrating I just couldn’t figure out how faces were put together.  Every day on the subway I would stare at people,  look at their faces and  look at all the details how they combined then I get into the manikin factory and I try and replicate what I saw and it was close at times but always a little bit off I remember one time I gave a baby eyebrows that were too big and my boss yelled at me saying the baby looked like Joan Crawford.

I remember the day I finally made one that could use,  once I got it I got it and I kept at it and I became pretty good and as I was doing it I realize like oh I bet I could transfer some of the skills to a canvas and it wasn’t until around 2008 long after I left that job that a friend asked me if I could paint his portrait I said sure, So I my friend sent me a photograph of himself cropped the way he wanted it and I did a pretty good job of painting it but he didn’t like it. My then current boyfriend was traveling a lot to the far east for work and he was away for long stretches of time so I started to make paintings of him and they were pretty good. 

An ex-boyfriend‘s dog had recently died and so I painted her and that turned out really good he bought it so I made another painting of her from the same photograph it was different and it was good too.... so I made paintings of myself I had a photograph that I really liked that my friend boyfriend to take care of me and Fire Island and I made a painting of it and really liked it the next day I made another painting from the same photograph and it turned out really different but I liked it to the third day I did the same that one is quite different but I liked it to so I spent the summer Painting Portraits of people and dogs . 

I asked a friend of mine who worked at a very nice gallery if you would come over and take a look at them he came down to my basement studio sat down in a chair looked at the wall and said “dogs and men with beards, dogs and men with beards” I didn’t realize my scope was so narrow so I started painting women and babies and I got a few commissions and I kept at it I really enjoyed it but I didn’t exactly figure out how it worked with my previous bodies of work and I kind of bothered me and then I stopped thinking about it and just kept at it..

Joao

This painting came from a photograph in a friend's Instagram feed. It’s something I started doing in 2016 I would see a friends new haircut or a beard style or some odd lighting and I would download the photo and make a painting of it just out of curiosity.

Usually I see something that I feel would be a challenge that I’ve never painted before and then I’m curious to see if I can paint it, I'm learning as I go along....

My first exposure to oil paint was at a manikin factory in Long Island city in the summer of 2002. I got a job painting faces on manikins, it was a great job and I really liked it and I learned a lot  but it took me six weeks before I made one they could use but once I got it I got really good.

The way I got the job was in an AOL M4M chat room And I got a message from a guy saying “I see in your profile that you were an artist do you want a job in a manikin factory?” I was working at the Museum of modern Art and I knew that job was going to end soon and I would need another job so I said “sure” his response was “it’s the Drybrush method can you do that?”

I said sure so he gave me an address in Long Island city and told me to show up Monday morning at 7:45 AM it wasn’t a problem because I’m an early riser did though seem a little weird but I should just show up at some factory in Long Island city but it also seemed like something I should pursue so I went there and he gave me a palette with some oil paints on it  and a baby manikin and some brushes and told me to paint. I was pretty nervous and I did a pretty bad job but he looked at it and said I had some talent and I would be able to pick it up. So I went downstairs negotiated my hourly rate,  filled out all the paperwork to join the union and punched the time clock......and  this kind gentle man kept giving me lessons but I wasn’t picking it up,  it was really frustrating I just couldn’t figure out how faces were put together.  Every day on the subway I would stare at people,  look at their faces and  look at all the details how they combined then I get into the manikin factory and I try and replicate what I saw and it was close at times but always a little bit off I remember one time I gave a baby eyebrows that were too big and my boss yelled at me saying the baby looked like Joan Crawford.

I remember the day I finally made one that could use,  once I got it I got it and I kept at it and I became pretty good and as I was doing it I realize like oh I bet I could transfer some of the skills to a canvas and it wasn’t until around 2008 long after I left that job that a friend asked me if I could paint his portrait I said sure, So I my friend sent me a photograph of himself cropped the way he wanted it and I did a pretty good job of painting it but he didn’t like it. My then current boyfriend was traveling a lot to the far east for work and he was away for long stretches of time so I started to make paintings of him and they were pretty good. 

An ex-boyfriend‘s dog had recently died and so I painted her and that turned out really good he bought it so I made another painting of her from the same photograph it was different and it was good too.... so I made paintings of myself I had a photograph that I really liked that my friend boyfriend to take care of me and Fire Island and I made a painting of it and really liked it the next day I made another painting from the same photograph and it turned out really different but I liked it to the third day I did the same that one is quite different but I liked it to so I spent the summer Painting Portraits of people and dogs . 

I asked a friend of mine who worked at a very nice gallery if you would come over and take a look at them he came down to my basement studio sat down in a chair looked at the wall and said “dogs and men with beards, dogs and men with beards” I didn’t realize my scope was so narrow so I started painting women and babies and I got a few commissions and I kept at it I really enjoyed it but I didn’t exactly figure out how it worked with my previous bodies of work and I kind of bothered me and then I stopped thinking about it and just kept at it..