Hope -- ink sketch

Hope, ink sketch on paper, 2008, 5.5" x 4.25" approx.

Happy New Year.

This Is The Way The World Ends...

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays & a Wonderful New Year...don't forget to look after the planet.

Armageddon sketch

Looking back over the year's work, it strikes me that while I've been quite prolific, most of the works have been on a small, somewhat intimate scale. The epic has been lacking. So, with that in mind, here's a preliminary sketch for "Armageddon"...it should be interesting to see how this develops. Stay tuned.


Fine-line marker on granite printer paper, 2008, 11" x 8.5". Please click on it for a larger view. It ties up a lot of past influences & ideas & shows the way forward. It's the end of the world as we know it...

Menowar again

This is just to announce that the painting "Men O' War" (or even "Menowar")-- also just published in Sow's Ear Poetry Review -- has been accepted for the Limner Gallery "Emerging Artists" show in March (from the 7th to the 28th) 2009. Below is the piece:


Menowar, 2007, acrylic on plywood, 18" x 30".

I'd also like to mention that there is another painting of this subject, begun before but finished after the one above -- I didn't like the original version, but later returned & "fixed it":


Menowar Variant B, 2007, acrylic on plywood, 18" x 30".

The painting was done for possible inclusion in the Museum on the Seam's traveling "Coexistence" project. It is unclear whether the piece (in digitally altered form, printed on a large banner) has been or will be exhibited on the continuing world tour of that show. Here is the piece as I altered it in Photoshop:


Noexistence, digitally altered painting, 2007.

Around the same time as the painted versions, to help with visualizing the piece, I did a small pen & ink sketch:


Menowar working sketch, 2007, 6" x 10" approx.

Backtracking further, I did a painting in 2004 called "Man O' War", which was the basis for the double version:


Man O' War, 2004, acrylic on plywood, 24" x 19.75".

The 2004 painting was in turn based upon a 2003 brush & ink drawing, which was created at around the same time & in the same spirit as the War Room pieces:


Man O' War, 2003, brush & ink on paper, 14" x 11". Private collection, upstate NY. Also published in Direct Art magazine volume 11, Spring-Summer 2005

It's always interesting (to me, at least) to see how a particular image evolves & takes on a life of its own. I don't usually do multiple versions of a piece. I sometimes do, as in this case, or in a few other thematic examples you might be able to notice in my work.

At this point I have no further plans to do other versions of "Man/Men O' War". But, you never know.

Sketch of a Man's Head

New small brush & ink drawing of a man's head, partly inspired by a news story about previously unknown Leonardo sketches being found on the back of one of his paintings.


Brush & ink on paper, 2008, 9" x 7".

"Menowar" in Sow's Ear Poetry Review

Just a note to mention that my painting "Menowar", done in 2007 & intended for the Museum on the Seam's Coexistence exhibit, has just been published in Sow's Ear Poetry Review, alongside the poem, "Moving Out: Saudi Arabia, 1992" by Eric Paul Shaffer. It's printed in b/w (though the painting is in color), as it's a b/w magazine. Here is a scan of the image:



I didn't include the poem itself for copyright kind of reasons.

The Sow's Ear is a fine publication originating in Winchester, Virginia, I believe. Thanks to editor Kristin Zimet for getting in touch. Here is their web site:

www.sows-ear.kitenet.net/

ImageLoop Slideshow

I can rarely resist a new gimmick...

Total Collapse drawing

Here is another new brush & ink drawing, dedicated to the Bush administration & the current stock market/financial world situation:


Total Collapse, 2008, brush & ink on paper, 14" x 11". Hmmm...maybe unrestricted capitalism isn't always a good idea...

Graveyard of the Colossi

New drawing, that was not actually intended to be a comment on the current financial crisis in the USA & abroad, but it might as well be.


Graveyard of the Colossi, 2008, brush & ink on paper, 14" x 11".

Grotesque Head 2 (Screaming)

Another new smallish drawing in a more expressionistic/grotesque vein, like the one below. Same dimensions: 11" x 8" approx.

Grotesque Head (sketch)

This is just a fairly quick ink & brush drawing of a head. I've been looking at quite a lot of Alfred Kubin & Odilon Redon lately -- can you tell?


Grotesque Head, 2008, brush & ink on paper, 11" x 8".

"Love, War, Fire, Wind: Looking Out from North America's Skull" due soon

"Love, War, Fire, Wind: Looking Out from North America's Skull", the book collaboration with Eliot Katz (poetry) & myself (cover painting/design & interior ink drawings) is just about ready. It should have a January 2009 release. The back cover blurbs are in from Allen Ginsberg (RIP), Adrienne Rich, Howard Zinn, Alicia Ostriker, Jim Cohn, William Heyer & (last but definitely not least) Tim Slowinski. The book has about 180 pages, of which around 55 or so are my drawings. Here's the front cover again:



And here is the back cover with the blurbs:

Click for readable version. As you can see, the only thing missing now is the ISBN...more details to follow.

In the Vortex (color study)

In the Vortex, 2008, acrylic on board, 16" x 12".

Above is the color study for a painted version of the Vortex image from the Timeless series (below & link). It was painted under bad lighting conditions (gloomy outside, electric lights casting shadows inside), so it's surprising that it came out reasonably well. I was originally intending to do a more detailed treatment, but it became apparent that the painting would have to be on a larger scale. Stay tuned, as they say...