Little farther

Making progress:

Painting Process Update

Progress on new painting - at the Denver Art Museum

The next two weekends (October 20, 21 and October 27, 28) I will be painting in the painting studio at the Denver Art Museum. You can see me work on a large new painting from noon until 3 pm each of those days. I would be happy to answer any questions about my work or technique - hope to see you there! Here's the current progress on the work I will be bringing to the museum:

How it is looking

the blues really helped.

Studio Update

small detail of in-progress painting (still pretty rough)

I'm still working on the tree painting along with three other smaller works. My current studio listening includes:

A fantastic podcast live set by Deerhunter (free download)



Barn Owl's new album Ancestral Star



and the new album Lisbon by the Walkmen (easily one of the best albums of the year)

continued

This painting is going to be a tricky balancing act of hard and soft edges.

At work

update on the new painting

More progress

New Painting Progress

It has been a while since I've worked on a large painting -this new one is 2'x7' and based on the same series of photos that inspired "Reverberation". Here are three stages of the process that has taken place over the last couple of weeks. The right side is more done than the left side so far but there is still a lot of work to do.

Current Work in Progress

The painting looks better now (more glow/white sparkles), but here's a photo from a few days ago. It goes well with a quote from this date in Henry David Thoreau's journal:

"The most valuable communication or news consists of hints and suggestions."
Henry David Thoreau- July 29, 1857

Currently on the Easel

This is a corner of my new studio- cleaned up for a recent studio visit. Although it is hard to see in the view above, the branch along the top of the image I'm painting reminded me of the one seen in this Steichen painting from 1905:

Eduard Steichen, "Cooper's Bluff - Moonlight Strollers", Oil on Canvas

Current Progress

My main focus the last couple of weeks has been getting my new studio in order (pictured above). I'm doing a lot of drawing at the desk right now too. Have a great weekend everyone!

Things are falling into place

Here's a photo of things as they were on Saturday. As of yesterday, Mindy Bray's site specific work directly on the wall of the gallery is nearing completion (you can see her working in the background of the above photo) and nine out of ten of my works are installed. We will be laying out the group exhibition for installation this afternoon. It is a real honor to present my work with such a talented and inspiring group of artists.

Natural Selection

Part of being an artist is knowing when to say "when" and learning how to edit. Not every work "works". There are pieces of mine that didn't seem to grow with time - they festered. There are also pieces that are missing something. I usually refer to that something as the "punch" (as in, "it doesn't have any punch"). Here are a few recent examples of works that have been sanded down and now only exist as digital images:

This fog painting was going ok as of last night but it won't do for the current show and I needed to make the tough decision to paint over it and re-use a good panel for something more powerful.

This was a brief sidetrack of several attempted drawings of sinkholes. I painted over this work and the next piece also was a failure. I think this piece of paper will end up with my pizza box in the dumpster.
These six lackluster works were also recently sanded down and one was painted over to be this:

Upcoming Exhibition

I'm sorry I've missed a couple of days - I'm also sorry to report that my posting may be a little sparse in the next month or so because I have a show opening on February 5 and I have tons of work to do. Expect to see some of the progress here. Mark your calendars:

• February 5 - March 20, 2010
  Nathan Abels
  Natural Causes at Rule Gallery
  
  Also on view:
  Alan Kitchen, Mindy Bray, Eric Lo Presti, Alexander Binder, Jason Stopa, and Yoshitomo Saito
  
  Opening Reception:
  Friday Feb. 5, 2010, 6-9pm
  Show runs through March 20, 2010

New Couch, etc.

Here's what our living room looked like with the old couch:
We got a new couch yesterday and moved a lot of the room around. Having a couch that sits higher off the ground really opens up the room. Where the wildfire painting hangs in the photo above we've re-hung the eight foot long highway painting. We moved the credenza (and tv) underneath it instead of on the opposite wall. What we're still planning on changing is the rug, the lampshades and the curtains. Changing the rug to something larger and more neutral will make a big difference - I'm dreaming of these rugs. We're even considering re-covering the side chairs with a softer fabric. For now, we'll just have to imagine those changes because shipping and back-orders mean we won't have this room quite how we want it for another couple of months.

Process

Last Sunday I showed you all of the canvases I've been preparing. It seems that was a bit of a distraction because right now I'd like to plan on my next show being made up of just panels. So Thursday after work I built three more sizeable panels:

(I don't love the logos on the back, but it is better plywood)

I'm going to be painting at least one of the fog images that I took in City Park recently, but in order to do so I had to have new references. To clairify - when I tried a foggy image for my last show I found that it was easier to obscure it if I could better see what I was painting in the first place. The same was true with the waterfall image I recently completed. In short, I painted both works mostly from better-lit or daylight images and then added fog or darkness over it - rather than painting directly from a foggy or night time image.

Here is the reference image I used for a work I did last year- I painted this pretty directly (including most of the tree branches and far off mountains) before adding a layer of semi-transparent blue/white over it for the final painting:Here are the references for my next work:
Above is the image that I will be portraying in the painting and below is the day-light image that I took yesterday to have a better idea of what I'm painting:

(hope this all makes sense)

Current progress

I've got six canvases being primed for new paintings.

Sorry I haven't been posting much in the way of other art/artists lately...I'm juggling a lot of things right now and tying to keep up. Here's a self-portrait by Edvard Munch that I've been thinking about a lot lately:

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Burning Cigarette

1895; Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 85.5 cm - photo from the WebMuseum.

Recycled

These six panels were just taking up space in my basement and I didn't really care for them any more so I sanded them down this afternoon and stretched canvas over the smaller ones. While sanding I noticed that the painting on the far left in this image actually had another painting underneath. So after re-priming that one I'll start the third painting on the same panel.

Four gone.

Six gone.

Past Progress

Although I have been working (on and off) on this painting since early August, I only had a couple of progress shots: