Ruined City Inside a Giant, Broken Egg

New drawing for the Journey to Somewhere collaboration:

Ruined City Inside a Giant, Broken Egg, 2011, brush & ink on paper, 11" x 8.5".

Apparition Over a Ruined Town

New painting, Ruined Cities series:


Apparition Over a Ruined Town, 2009, acrylic on board, 20" x 16". I find this oddly joyous, despite its somewhat apocalypse-y subject matter...

It's All Over

Another ruined colossal head drawing:


It's All Over, 2009, brush & ink on paper, 23.5" x 18".

Babylon

New painting in the Ruined Cities series:


Babylon, 2009, acrylic on board, 20" x 16".

Ruined City with Colossal Head

New brush & ink drawing based on the painted image in the post below:


Ruined City with Colossal Head, 2009, brush & ink on paper, 23.5" x 18".

Normally it goes the other way round, with the drawing first, then the painting. Sometimes however...also, the drawing is larger than the painting, so it's not so strange, perhaps.

Ruins with Colossal Head

Another new painting:


Ruins with Colossal Head, 2009, acrylic on board, 14" x 11".

This one is technically unfinished, with just the underpainting & the "false highlights" (I don't know if that's a technical term or not, but it sort of describes the function of the way I indicate where the highlights might be). When I looked at the unfinished state of this one, I liked the dreamlike atmosphere it had, so decided to leave it in this rather uncooked state, for now, at least.

Red Ruins

A new small painting:


Red Ruins, 2009, acrylic on board, 10" x 8".

I've always liked depictions of ruins -- Desiderio & Piranesi and so on. What with the current state of the world, the Ruined City paintings have become some kind of metaphor for that...and I still like images of ruins. I created this small painting with the intention of donating it to a local fundraiser for the schoolkids (that's the Rhinebeck NY Whale Watch auction, btw). Also please note that the red in the image is a bit off -- my scanner can't seem to handle cadmium red; the actual red is more orange than this.

Here is a better version, in terms of color:

Also some more work done on the image, and signed.

Ruined City with Sphinx

Ruined City with Sphinx, 2009, acrylic on board, 16" x 12".

I've always liked paintings of ruins, & this came out of a dream I had recently where I had a massive studio in an unnamed city (might have been Brooklyn, but it was a dream anyways), and in among the industrial buildings were stone colossi...not sure where that was coming from (paging Dr. Freud...)

So, this is a continuation of my "surrealist" (heavy quotes) painting method where I fill in the background/sky area first with blended colors. This is partly supposed to make things easier & quicker (Marcel Duchamp didn't like to paint in backgrounds either), but I found myself pretty much repainting everything. I guess I'm a control freak or something...I like the way the sky looks like waves, btw, a nice inversion...