AN UPDATE -- OR, HOW MANY TIMES CAN YOU BEAT A DEAD HORSE?

Over 2 years ago, I wrote a post called "I Hate My Painting," and I meant it wholeheartedly. (A lot of folks have read that entry. Seems to be a popular phrase to Google, I guess.) I struggled and farted around with it. And then it became this painting, and may have been something else in that in-between. Clearly I wasn't sure enough of it to let it be. I think I've got it though. Now it is hanging in Tomato Head, and I like it enough to let other people see it, outside of the confines of the internet.

fin.

Here's what it was between the "I Hate my Painting" post and the creepy girl painting.  Not good either.

TEXTURE CITY AT THE SMALL HALL GALLERY

Sometimes I drive around for hours taking pictures out of the window of my car. Occasionally I have help, and other times I drive down the same street seven times in a row attempting to take a picture that isn't blurry, or the wrong thing. Staple-covered utility poles, colorful buildings, peeling paint, crumbling facades, weathered billboards, hand-painted signs and murals, and posters and ads taped to windows and wheat-pasted to walls appeared again and again and eventually became a new visual language. My current work is layered, blistering and peeling, colorful and collaged, and suggests the handmade and hand-altered energy of a city, the passage of time, decay and renewal.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO CALL THIS

But I kinda like it.

THE ELUSIVE GIFT

BOMBAY

GREENS

SCABS

Someone in my studio described my most recent work as "scab paintings." I'm embracing it. Here are a few of my most interesting scabs, peeled from the larger paintings.

FINALLY

After finishing wedding presents, I finally had some time to get back to what I've been thinking about, and grasping at, and I think I might have gotten somewhere I want to be. Hallelujah.