P292 Artist & Orange Chair with Fossils

P292 Artist & Orange Chair with Fossils
24x30" oil, collage on panel
$800.00

My friend, collaborator and fellow artist desean posed for this picture some time ago, and it has gone through several iterations of itself, as well as crossing several series.

It began as an Orange Chair painting, and the under-painting and content were in that style. It was put aside, however, for some reason, possibly because it did not properly evoke the atmosphere of my discussions with Dennis.

When I next pulled it out, I was deep into the Paleozoic Series, and added more fossils to it, and the colour scheme of the series. Again, it was put aside. When the Orange Chair reappeared in some of the Paleozoic and Anomaly paintings, I brought it out again. This time, I added the patterns of the Anomaly Series and finished the painting.

Although it would sit comfortably in the Anomaly Series, I left it in the Paleozoic era, a tribute to enduring ideas that are dug up ages later, to be studied from a different angle.

Paleozoic Series

P275 Digital Mask

P275 Digital Mask
18x20" digital collage, acrylic on canvas
$350.00

This collage was done for the InterFaces online exhibit, the theme being 'the masks we wear'.

January 10, 2001: I began assembling two mask paintings for the exhibit, both with collaged elements, P275 and P276. Working on them both at once, using the digital shots I had taken of my own face and hands, I came up with quite different compositions, one where the hands and fingers seem to form a mask, and one in which the hands are holding or removing the masks. After they dried, I did acrylic under-paintings in French ultramarine, cadmium orange, and yellow ochre, carving out shapes.

January 11, 2001: In P275, the acrylic collage, there is only a mask, with two arms supporting it, the hands forming a mask in themselves, masking the mask. This image is more ambiguous, though it looks a little like a fossil, and I may put a version of it in the large hanging.

Paleozoic Series

P274 Creature with Virtual Mask

P274 Creature with Virtual Mask
24x24" oil, digital collage on panel
Private Collection

September 13, 2000: The new mask painting, P274 'Creature with virtual mask', has begun to show some alarming tendencies toward self-portraiture. Why does this surprise me, since the mask is a digital image of my face? But when it was simply under painted orange, it was more of a mask, less of a face. The creature beneath, who is removing the mask, is different, almost masculine. Yin and yang, or the reduction to mere opposites. Although the creature is simply one of my visages, it appears more real than I intended, which usually happens when I use the flesh colour. Even the orange, shocking at first, becomes a reasonable shade of skin when the features appear. The expression is always more important than the complexion. As well, this mask has eyes, each different, slightly askew, very human. Before I go to bed, I play with lights in the background, but everything added around the heads looks like hair, or an aura.

Tomorrow, a fossilized, fleshy shoulder and the larger-than-life hand, not so dainty. Perhaps it was swollen that day.

When I was arranging the collage and doing the underpainting for this work, I had thought of the orange mask as being unreal, but the orange colour merely added to its life, virtually a visage. As usual when I work with collage, I painted over and changed everything, eliminating digital detail and adding my own. I am particularly fond of extra bits of paper, which contribute edges that are not part of the original collaged image. The creature, then, is removing a lifelike face to reveal an icon of a face, the way the creature sees itself, an amorphous reduction. As well, the body is half in, half out of its shell...to whom does the violet robe belong? The disguise is but partial, making the gesture, or moment, a pivotal one. Is the creature assuming the mask, or removing it? Or the creature may be holding it up, like an artifact..."Pardon me, did you lose this?" Discarded, the mask may become a fossil, eyes crystallizing and skin turning to a ferrous shell.

Paleozoic Series