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I love painting. I am constantly thinking about painting. When I'm sitting by myself, I'll be looking at something or someone, and thinking about how I would mix that color or how I would make that shape. I find myself laying awake at night, ideas running through my mind. Sometimes I paint just to get it out of my head.
I paint a lot of things just because I think the idea is funny, like naked chicks flying thru space. I love chaos. I love things that don't make sense. Things that are theatrical, and things that are subtle, like someone walking in the rain, deliberately walking through the puddles instead of around them, huge trees growing out of 4th floor windows, girls fearlessly crushing spiders with their bare hands. Anything absurd sparks my interest. I like to paint women, particularly nudes. I like putting nude people where you wouldn't ordinarily find them. I think women are beautiful and their curves are really fun to paint.
Sometimes I will do a painting based on an emotion from a memory that keeps resurfacing in my brain. painting is kind of a way of releasing that emotion. I try to make people who look at these paintings feel that emotion welling up in their chests. Vonnegut once said that any work of art is half a conversation between two people. I like that.
A lot of what I paint turns out to be almost a metaphor for how I feel about life, or society. I use nudity a lot when I want to describe freedom, or thinking outside the box. Body image is something I think about a lot, as well as our obsession with labels. I dislike pretension and bullshit. I don't paint big-eyed children and puppies.
I paint a lot of portraits, since then I can focus on the people. I have gotten very fond of using patterning in my work. I like for there to be a lot of intricate things crammed really close together and pattens give you a lot of stuff to look at.
I work from photos a lot, because it's more convenient than getting someone to sit for me, and also I can use more dynamic poses and combine several photos into one painting. I paint a lot of my friends, because they're handy, and it's fun making a good likeness of someone I know. I will also take pictures of myself, and change my features, if I don't have a friend around at the time. I also take pictures of random people at concerts and festivals, someone I find captivating, or a gesture I like. I do love to paint from life when I get the chance. Painting from life is fun because I have to work quickly, so I get something that is more immediate.
I like to paint big. To me, a big painting has more power to absorb you. It has a life of it's own, it commands it's own space. Likewise, there are times when a small painting can be very intimate, and I like that, too.
I really like bright colors. I don't know why I'm so drawn to them. Maybe it's a reflection of our modern culture, so saturated in advertising, gaudiness and plastic. Or maybe I just want the world to be prettier. In any case, I like to use an over the top intense palette of straight out of the tube colors. I like playing with color relationships, using color as an abstraction, or to emphasis a mood. I like for there to be a lot for your eyes to soak in.
Most of my work is fairly representational, except that the colors are suped up, or non-local. I enjoy painting light and shadow, although sometimes I like to make a flat line drawing, with everything simplified. I use patterning to simultaneously simplify and flatten shapes, and add detail. I like for my patterns to be obviously drawn by hand, with imperfections aplenty. In an age where it is so easy to machine perfect images, I like the contrast of imperfection. I like high contrast images, and interesting compositions. I like bold unblended strokes.
In addition to my oil painting, I have been collaborating with Lara Lenta for a few years. These are mostly oil pastel drawings, and are much smaller than my paintings. Because they take so much less time to make, and because of Lara's influence, these are a lot more abstract in terms of color and shape. It's a lot of fun stretching the limits, and letting a drawing be driven in a way that blends our styles. Most of the time we will be drawing simultaneously, building off of each other's strokes. Our style has been changing lately to allow more planning and intention, but the drawings remain very spontaneous largely because the two of us bring different ideas to a piece and create something new in between. We are currently playing with depth, allowing some things to be flat and other things to be three dimensional; and deliberate distortion of parts of the figure. We are also planning to expand to making larger work, and working in acrylic as well as oil pastel.
To me, the most important thing is for a picture to be fun to look at. It's great when someone is able to get the feeling, or the social commentary of a piece, but it's just as awesome when someone is drawn to an image, and can't explain why they want to stare at it. I believe art should be accessible to everyone.
Some people and things which I think are really cool, and have surely infulenced me are Gustav Klimt, Zac Smith, Vic Muniz, Ellina Kevorkian, the Dada movement, Surrealism, Renee Magritte, German Expressionism, Ego Schiele, the Fauve movement, Filmore Poster Art, Jim Henson, Brian Froud, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Shel Silverstien, Dr. Seuss & Neil Gaiman.
I work as a graphic designer and freelance mural painter. I love my work, it's fun and challenging. I'm determined to never have a boring job that I hate. I prefer happiness to piles of possessions.
Other Mediums: I also mess around with a lot of other mediums. I do a lot of sculpture. I usually work with polymer clay because of it's speed and availability, although I have done work in ceramic, bronze, wood, and other media. As in my painting, I gravitate to the human form, although I also create fantasy figures, imitative work, and miniature. Another one of my recent projects is furniture collage. My first project of this nature is a chair that is on display at Barefoot Coffee Roasters in San Jose. I like the history of old furniture, and the possibility that each piece has to become something new and exiting. I also enjoy origami. I learned my first figures at age 7, and I finally created my first original figure (a flying pig, of course). I make Pysanky (Ukrainian dyed Easter Eggs) in springtime. I like drawing portraits on the eggs. I have a lot of fun editing my photos with Photoshop, and creating graphics with Corel Draw.
If you'd like to view my artist resume (which lists my previous exhibits), click here.
Thanks for looking at my galleries! May you be inspired and have the desire to create. If you would like to know more about my work, or if you are interested in a piece, feel free to contact me at orangesunkist@sbcglobal.net