new paintings This is Nomen, 60"x30" oil on board. I finished it and the painting below, Anagama (78"x24" oil on board) in the past week or so, and will be shipping them out to Wilde Meyer Gallery in Scottsdale as soon as they are safely dry. I'm going to be part of a group show of abstract artists at the Tucson location of Wilde Meyer in January, so I'm starting to push towards that show.

I played around with my new color ideas in the center panel of Nomen (it's hard to see that in the photo, but you can click on the image for a larger view.) The paint was deliberately layered in contrasting bright colors, which come through in bits and pieces in the final layers. This has always happened in my work, but usually the layering tends to be the result of re-working, rather than forethought. It's kind of gratifying to realize that something that you've been doing all along can be done more efficiently, and perhaps more powerfully, by giving it conscious attention.

Anagama is named for a type of Japanese wood fired kiln...a word that has entered my vocabulary due to my son's passion for ceramics (there are abstracted images of fire and pots in this painting, rather obscured as is my tendency.) Something about the clay firing process fascinates me...not in any technical sense (I know little about that)--but the idea of it, the stoking of hot fires for many hours on end, the raw clay becoming functional vessels, and the beautiful surface effects created by the heat of the wood firing.



  ¶ 3:26 PM