new work.

i've taken a liking to using oil pastels on luan plywood. i've also taken a liking to drinking in our detached garage and going to town on cheaper canvases.

here's the proof.

i started working on this first piece (Immediately Below), temporarily titled Cyclops Gothic , in a park near my apartment during a breezy work-free afternoon. i had taken the day off, and it actually felt like we (by 'we,' i mean texans) were going to experience fall (the season, not of society), so i hopped in my car, rolled down the windows and drove off to pick up some banh mi (vietnamese frenchbread sandwiches, a respectable solo park food). equipped with some drawing pens, some newly purchased oil pastels, and some plywood, i had everything i needed to act like a pretentious park-painter.
i'll be honest, it was fun, pondering the subject matter that the passers by expected to see when they saw a stranger arting around in the park.
for some reason though, i felt like i was letting these complete strangers down for not having sketched a sailboat, or bluebonnets, or a mountain. maybe next time i ought to create an orgiastic amalgam of the romanticized painterly images...this is what the people want, right? but then again, who the hell am i to assume what these folks were expecting to be on the opposite side of that plywood? after all, as i was leaving the park, i spotted a flier for a mountainside bluebonnet boatsex party. who'd a thunk it?

now, as for the second piece here (Immediately Below), i decided at lunch on a friday afternoon that my evening would entail: (1) drinking beer (2) working on art (3) doing so in my garage.

as it turns out, i succeeded at all three of these endeavors on that particular evening. after gathering my standard bag (several bags) of room temperature supplies, i remembered objective #1. quickly switching to macgyver mode, i made a makeshift cooler from an empty coffee container (by 'made a makeshift cooler,' i mean that i poured ice in to the coffee container). i managed to jam 4 beers in the container, creating a whole new folgers blend, and made my way down to the garage for beers and mixed media.

after 8 shiners in, this is what came out.

my hands became fluid over the square piece of masonite, ebbing and flowing as they pleased. with my ipod on shuffle, i applied frantic strokes to the sometimes jerky, yet sexy rhythms of the mars volta. then, john coltrane and i gave birth to cool in the form of blue cornflower knuckle caressing.

as witnessed in the various textural additions (string, fiber, etc.), only the beer can explain my affinity for adhesive that night.

it's a mess. but i think i like it.