Wonder

Now this is a wacky painting as seen to your left, I call it "Peaceful Assembly"...

It's a crowd scene, you probably could guess that.

I had this big canvas that I got from jamey down the hall when he quit art which I wrote about a coupler months ago.

First I painted this big painting called "Big Man Dancing" which had this guy on it dancing to some music. I liked it but it was really really difficult to paint for some reason, I think because I was painting over something that Jamey had on the canvas that somehow did not facilitate the fluidity of my paint.

I should mention that this canvas is LARGE! It's five feet wide by six feet tall.

At some point whilst painting Big Man Dancing, I got fed up with the paint facilitation, as I mentioned, and took out some acrylic paint and boldly painted over the oil paint.

I'll get some paint facilitation I thought to myself.

And I did. That acrylic paint went on slicker than a cat's whiskers and I had myself a brave new painting.

Butt (and it's a big BUTT) back in the recesses of my sorry synapsed brain, I remembered something about not mixing acrylic and oil, but I'm thinking to myself, what? it will only last 100 years instead of 500? What do I care about that?

I did broach the subject carefully though with a few people and from what they said (Reilly Jensen) I was a little more worried. So finally, I just took off that old canvas, restretched on a new one, put a little gesso on it and started over.

And as I took the old canvas off the frame, the acrylic paint flaked off, so I don't think this thang was going to even last 1 year. Bunk!

Anyhoo, I started painting this big old painting with all the faces and things and it got to be kind of an obsession with me, I just worked and worked and worked on it until it was done. I've never really worked like that on a painting before.

And I got it done and this is what I've got. Fifty faces, all of them made up completely. I think what's weird about it is, they are all made up faces. I mean if you make up one or two faces people think it's kind of cute. But 50 faces?

I think they start to wonder about you.

Top Ten Best Museums (and Ham Restaurants) in the World

Ok, here is a list of the best museums (and Ham restaurants) in the world.

1. Prado - great.

2. Seattle Art Museum - sucks, shouldn't be on the list.

3. Tacoma Art Museum - a beauty. Just saw an exhibit by the guy to the right there, Akio Takamora. His stuff is a little repetitive, kind of ho-hum, once you've seen one, you've see them all, it's almost if he doesn't have any rhyme or reason to his work and I say this with absolutely positive objectivity. This drawing I call "portrait of a self-portrait."

4. Doll Museum in Bellevue - one of a kind for a reason. Never been there. Chris has, many times and it's just one of many reasons we all wonder a little about him.

5. Museum of Ham - not really a museum, it's a restaurant in Madrid. It's a chain of Museums of Ham. You can't get ham like this at most museums, lemmetellya. All kinds, your black forest ham, etc. of course the menu is all written in Spanish, like Julie and I are supposed to understand THAT!

6. Louvre - this is the one in Pocatella, Idaho not Paris, France. No, Ha Ha, kidding about that, it's the one in Paris France. I went there once, stood in line in front of the IM Pei addition, the pyramid in the center of it, and listened as people ragged on it. I liked the pyramid but didn't like the museum, I raced (I was fast back then and easily outpaced tourists) to see the Mona Lisa before they could see it (Ha! I won!) and saw some Michelangelo something or other. But I felt at the time that the other paintings left a lot to be desired, I mean how many HUMUNGOUS paintings of horses can you look at? I mean one HUMOUNGOUS horse is one thing, but a whole bunch of them? You got to be a big horse lover, maybe a big horse lover will love it there, I don't know.

Since then, however, I've come to have an appreciation of some painters who more than likely have some stuff hanging there such as Titian, for instance. And probably some others too, so I think I should go back and check it out, avoid the horses altogether except of course when they're in a Titian painting ("Portrait of a Horse").

7. Outboard Motor Museum, south of Tacoma - never been there, but Chris has. I think they wanted him to be the resident artist there, but he declined.

8. Chicago art institute - CRAMMED with art, lots of impressionists (who are in my dog house lately, just how many paintings did they paint, the rascals?). And how cold do you think it can get officially and still support human life? I'd say about 20 freaking below, about the temp that it was when we visited. Luckily, I have eggs-perience at the cold stuff, or Julie and I would have been frozen stiff in the middle of a big field that Julie wanted to cross and to which I said No Way, do you want to be frozen stiff? Midwesterners know to avoid a field during a cold snap. And why there's a field in downtown Chicago is a question that we asked ourselves. In the warmth of a nice bar.

9. New York Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum - Yawn, take me someplace great, will ya? Ha Ha, another joke. These two museums probably should be rated higher than the Outboard Motor museum, but only because the book store at the Outboard Museum didn't carry any copies of "Outboard Motors: Do you love them or do you not, finding them stinky and noisy?"

10. Unofficial Norman Rockwell Museum somewhere in Vermont where I was at Tamily's wedding - this is not the "official" Norman Rockwell museum even though it's run by one of the people who actually was in a Norman Rockwell painting way back when. It's got a lot of Norman Rockwell stuff, which I guess shouldn't be a surprise.

I don't pretend this is a definitive list of the top ten best museums in the world, but I would be willing to argue my point on any one of them with gusto. And believe me, you haven't seen gusto like I got gusto when it comes to the best museums in the world. (I might not have quite the gusto on the ones I haven't been to (but are on the list).)

I just have to say that I know two of the best going to museum people in the world too, Julie and Chris. They really are the best and all their bestness comes out the most in museums (except that Julie's back gets a little sore if she's on her feet in a museum all day.)

Best going to Museum People

(Tie) 1. Julie and Chris.

Anatomy of a Painting Idea

My friend Sid asked me the other day why I changed a painting that she had seen. And for some reason I had it on the brain and I think I was thinking about why I had changed it myself so I had a lot to say about it.

The old painting consisted of this face at the bottom of the large rectangular canvas with a trail winding up to the top of the canvas where there was a housing complex. The canvas was sityated on the easel in a vertical manner. (I'm setting the scene here, it's very dramatic, doncha think?)

Well, I didn't really like the painting for some reason (can't really say why) but I think it had to do with this face at the bottom which I found was less than satisfying. I think maybe he looked too specific or something, I like people to look a little more general. Also, I think I didn't like him because he wasn't a whole person. He was just a head.

And I didn't really like the housing complex either. I've found (because I've done a few housing complexes lately) that you really have to find the right note when doing a housing complex and that's difficult to do. People all the time think they can do an abstract painting (and they can) but it's still difficult to do a GOOD abstract painting, it has to have that ooomf which comes from who knows where if you find out please let me know. (Probably it comes from Canada or somplace, right under my nose.)

Anyway, I thought about doing some more people on the piece and started that but thought Naw that aint any good, so I flipped the painting 90 degrees so the canvas is going horizontal now and I sat and looked at it for awhile and then, out of the blue, I decided to paint a tuba player and an accordion player.

Now, I'm not sure why that subject matter came out when it did, but I have thought about doing something along those lines at one point and maybe I was tossing it around in some inaccessible brain I have for awhile and so maybe it isn't such a big surprise to some part of me.

It really does seem like I have two brains, one that handles talking and things like that, and one that handles writing. When it comes to painting, I think that I use the part that handles writing more than the talking side. I guess we're talking left brain and right brain, but somehow it seems different than that.

If I'm in the studio during a long day, the right brain starts to take over and I do all sorts of things that the next day, the left brain looks at in wonderment and says (because it can talk) THAT sucks!

I had thought enough about the tuba and the accordion that I had drawn a little sketch of something a few months ago and I knew eggs-actly where it was in an old sketchbook. I hunted through the studio and found the sketchbook and turned right to where the drawing was in the front of the book.

So, armed with the little sketch, I painted in a tuba player and an accordion player by mostly painting in the background around the shapes, which I've started to do more often, especially when I'm painting over something.

This is called painting the negative shapes (I think).

I have to say that I kind of recommend that kind of painting. For instance, instead of drawing and painting somebody's actual hand, you paint the space around the hand, and for some reason a lot of times you get something that looks way more like a hand than if you struggled to draw it. (Hands are tuff).

Continuing to paint negatively, I debated (Do it! No, Don't do it!) for awhile once I got the two people on the canvas if I should maybe just flip the canvas back vertical and just have the tuba player. The tuba player's image I really like, it shows the bell of the tuba but you can't see the person's head.

But I decided to go with the two people because I thought maybe a tuba player with no head would be a little too impersonal and I did like the image of the accordion player(female) who is looking off camera to the right, kind of checking out to see if the audience is enjoying the music.

There's something appealing to me about people in that situation where they really want you to like what they're doing. It shows, I think, a very good side of people.

The music aspect of it is there too, because I'm not sure if a tuba and an accordion combo is very common and I think it adds a little something to the whole thing. Some humor possibly but for all I know, tubas and accordions are very common duet mates. I mean, we saw trumpets and accordions all the time in Spain when we went, and cafe owners who would come out and shoo them away before they could really work a sweat up.

To finish it off, I added in a music stand for the tuba player (for compositional purposes) and filled in the background with a curtain (also for compositional purposes), as if they were on a stage for an audition or a recital.

It's funny, but a lot of the time I'll have ideas during the day or night that I come to the studio with planning on implementing them. But when I sit down in front of a blank canvas with say about four ideas to choose from, I suddenly start in on something completely different, like a tuba and an accordian.

Probably it IS something like my left brain has thought up all these things and is communicating to me while the right brain has ideas too that just aren't communicated until I sit down and pick up the brush...for some reason, I tend to go with the idea that comes out of the blue (or so it seems)...

Anyway, I left some of the old painting in the new painting, so the tuba has some red lines in it (from the remains of the houses of the old painting) and the accordion is green.

That may change and in fact the whole thing may change again, but that is....ANATOMY OF A PAINTING IDEA.

Bunnies

Went to First Thursday last night, saw some art and talked to a few of the dudes who had some shows.

They all have this look in their eye when you talk to them like wow Im really doing this and they also are trying to figure out if you're important or not.

I'm not.

So they talk to you and generally they're nice but when they do figure out you're just some schmuck from East Brickhouse, a few miles outside of Hicks From the Sticks, they tend to start looking over your shoulder at everybody else at their show.

I think I do the same thing whenever I have a show. It's tuff and on occasion you find yourself not listening to a word a person is saying to you. You get distracted.

Anyhoo, some some good stuff here and there but wondered why can’t people just make good art? If they’re going to do it, why not make it good?

That's a good question, one I think people could ask me too. It's funny, but everybody who makes art and shows it thinks in their heart that it's good, even people whose art is turrible (which I say non-judgementally).

I don't think they think their art is a masterpiece or anything I think they think that their art is adequate for the venue. If somebody came up to them and said "hey there, you want to show that pic of yours there, that one with the bunnies, do you want to show it in the Louvre? We have some space available"I think they might think, well it ain't no masterpiece and say to the Paris representative of the Louvre who is in town and has seen their art unexpectedly, "why no, I don't think I better. Are there other bunnies in the Louvre? Are you curating a bunny show? well, maybe...would I have to pay to have it shipped there? Just where in the Louvre would it be, like in the basement or something? Do you label the paintings in French, would I have to put my artist's statement in French?"

Once the initial shock of "an Homme" from the Louvre asking for your bunny painting subsides, you'd have a million questions. (How do you say Bunny in French? Jambon? (that means Ham)).

Anyhoo, we saw some paintings of bunnies last night that elicited the comment from Chris that he liked "the wax stuff with the bunnies or whatever."

The bunny guy had a lot of paintings there probably around 30 or 40, most of which (if they contained a bunny) I didn't like all that much, but some of them (bunny free) that I really liked.

I think it just goes to show you, if you make enough paintings, some of them are going to be good.

Do you think if you laid out all of Vincent Van Gogh’s work end to end that every one of them would be a masterpiece? I think not. I know if you laid out every one of MY pieces end to end there would definitely be some of them that are better than others.

You know you DO get your masterpieces every once in awhile (I say this objectively and think as I write it of my masterpiece "Man Eating Burger" that reminded some people of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" it was such a masterpiece) and I think as you continue to work, the quality of your work becomes higher and higher (until it drops off completely which we don't want to think about) and so after a while, EVERYTHING is a masterpiece or maybe EVERYTHING is CLOSE to being a masterpiece with the occasional REAL masterpiece every so often.

F'instance, you know you can look at Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and think it's a masterpiece compared to his "Postman at Arles" but both paintings are kinda up there.

Maybe I better stop using Van Gogh for my greatest artist of all time segments since I saw a list recently of the top artists ever as voted by British art students...it's a long list (I'm tied for 33rd) but here is the top five. 1 Marcel Duchamp2 Pablo Picasso3 Francis Bacon4 Henri Matisse5 Lucian Freud6 Philip Guston.

Kind of a weird list, huh? Marcel DuChamp number one? Van Gogh was actually tied for 17th on the list so I guess his period in the sun is over.

C'est domage.

I mean if you paint a bunny picture do you ever think it will be a masterpiece? Best masterpieces of all time 1 Mona Lisa 2 The Pieta 3 TheBunny picture 4 Campbell's Soup Cans 5 The Last Supper.

I don't think you shouldn't paint bunny paintings, it just I think there are certain uses for certain paintings and not all paintings (while they still are good) are not destined to be masterpieces and that fact is acknowledged by all, including the artist.

Maybe as a whole genre, like say you painted hundreds of bunny paintings you could then collectively say you've painted a masterpiece.

Maybe then but probably not. I think you'd have a better chance of painting a masterpiece if you painted a madonna and stayed clear of the bunnies.