Yee Jan Bao

Yee Jan Bao, oil on canvas, 36x48"

Yee Jan Bao, oil on canvas, 48x72"

Yee Jan Bao, oil on canvas, 48x72"

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.

Recent Interior Inspiration

We've been changing our decor around lately and today marks the arrival of a new couch (photos soon). Yesterday I retired an old thesis-show painting to our basement storage space.

Our interior inspiration been Harriet Maxwell Macdonald’s home from a 2007 issue of Domino magazine. These rooms balance a variety of textures with a calm, airy feel and the palette is muted but not bland:

, originally uploaded by nequest.

A Moment

This sunset in the Moraine valley of Rocky Mountain National Park was incredible.

We also saw a mother-moose and her two young but I wasn't able to get a decent photo through the brush. Here's the blurry photo I did get (the third one is coming through the brush at the top of the image, but it is really hard to see);

Speech Falls Silent

Pierre-Narcisse Guerin, The Return of Marcus Sextus, Oil on canvas, 217 x 243 cm, 1799 (source)

"The characters in a tragedy, the places; the air one breathes-these are sometimes more fascinating than the tragedy itself, the moments preceding tragedy and those that follow it, when the action is firm and speech falls silent." - Michelangelo Antonioni

Nothing appears as it should

film still from Lord of the Flies

"Nothing appears as it should in a world where nothing is certain. The only thing certain is the existence of a secret violence that makes everything uncertain."

~Lucretius (source)

Parking Lot Icebergs

I took these photos last Friday.

Variations on a Theme

A couple of weeks ago I posted a photo of my studio with my current progress and a painting by Edvard Munch that I have been enjoying lately - Self-Portrait with Burning Cigarette (1895). After that post, Norwegian artist Markus Brendmoe emailed me a few examples of his works that also ruminate on Munch's self portraits. I'm particularly fond of his recent work interpreting Munch's Self Portrait: Between Clock and Bed.

Edvard Munch, Self Portrait: Between Clock and Bed, 1941,
Oil on canvas 149.5 x 120.5 cm

Markus Brendmoe, Self Portrait: Between Clock and Bed, 2009

Jasper Johns has also done numerous variations on the patterning found on Munch's bed spread (from Self Portrait: Between Clock and Bed) including this print, made in 1976.

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Burning Cigarette

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

Markus Brendmoe, Self Portrait with Cigarette

Markus Brendmoe, Quiet, Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 100 inches, 2007

Robert Polidori

Robert Polidori, Versailles, Salle de L’Afrique, Portrait Achille Bazaine 1867, 2007, colour photograph

great composition.

Florian Maier-Aichen

Florian Maier-Aichen, Untitled, 2005, c-print, 71 1/4 x 91 1/2 inches

Florian Maier-Aichen, Untitled, 2005, c-print, 62.2 x 73.7 cm

Similar to Simen Johan (below) in technique, Florian Maier-Aichen combines digital and analog photography techniques to produce photographic works with a painters eye.

Simen Johan and Mindy Bray

Stunning photographic works by Simen Johan. The press release for his just recently closed exhibition reads, "In his ongoing series Until the Kingdom Comes, begun in 2004 and first shown at the gallery in 2006, Simen Johan depicts a natural world hovering between reality, fantasy and nightmare. Merging traditional photographic techniques with digital methods, Johan's images are crafted over time and may include a synthesis of landscapes from various geographical locations and animals photographed in captivity or in the wild."

Mindy Bray alerted me to his work. Mindy has been working at a residency in Aspen for the past few weeks and has been posting about her work and experience there on a blog called Ten Weeks.

Photo of the Day

"Claire Rambarde" by David Picchiottino

The Echo of the Place We Are In

City Park, Denver - photo by Lorna Cochrane

Henry David Thoreau - October 30, 1850 (yesterday, 159 years ago)

"I used to strike with a paddle on the side of my boat on Walden Pond, filling the surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, awaking the woods, “stirring them up,” as a keeper of a menagerie his lions and tigers, a growl from all. All melody is a sweet echo, as it were coincident with [the] movement of our organs. We wake the echo of the place we are in, its lumbering music."

I love that last sentence.

Art and Meaninglessness

Medardo Rosso - image source.

The Guardian's Johnathan Jones wrote an article today called "Why the Best Art is Meaningless." In it he elaborates on his belief that once the concept or meaning of a work of art is made clear then, "what is left to say?" To Jones, "beauty is better than a big idea," going on to say, "Real art doesn't have a message, doesn't necessarily say anything."

It is interesting to read the comments on this post as well - poster BestoftheBest writes, "it's possibly the abstraction of a meaning or intention and the involvement this beckons, rather than the bleeding obvious, that nourishes. The veneer of meaningless is a bluff. But if there's nothing there, it evaporates pretty quickly." Another comment by shakinwilly reads, "Not meaningless but ambiguity is a characteristic of great art."

In undergrad I was frequently asked what are my "concepts" and even in grad school it was a very concept-driven program - I'm not saying these are bad things but the freedom of making art that doesn't have to push an idea is very appealing to me as an artist.

I have been having this constant quarrel in my mind about my next show - whether I should have a more defined concept or not. The statement I wrote for the upcoming issue of New American Paintings reads, "These images are a response to natural processes and the noticeably unnatural human habitat. They depict the effects of construction and destruction – each image functioning as a visual pause; a contrast in this persistent turbulence." I stress the visual image in this statement - perhaps more than a clear concept.

I personally agree with the sentiments of Jones and as it stands right now, my next show will be "about" ambiguity - with what Jones calls, "real art's difficulties."

A post at Learning to Stay blog called, "Why We Need Art" goes on to stress more than our desire for mystery but our need;

• "We now know enough to know that we will never know everything. This is why we need art: it teaches us to live with mystery. Only the artist can explore the ineffable without offering us an answer, for sometimes there is no answer. John Keats called this romantic impulse 'negative capability.' He said that certain poets, like Shakespeare, had 'the ability to remain in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after facts and reason.' Keats realized that just because something can't be solved, or reduced into the laws of physics, doesn't mean it isn't real. When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art."

~ Jonah Lehrer, from Proust Was a Neuroscientist

The Bells

Kris Martin - via the Flog. See also:

Jannis Kounellis, Bells, 1993, Bronze bells, rope, wooden beams.
Photo from the Tate Collection.

Snow Photo

photo by Lorna Cochrane - taken last night.

Small Ink Study

Nathan Abels, untitled - small ink study, ink on primed paper, 5x7"

Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell

Just this week I've had two people ask me how to get their work or the work of a friend of theirs "out there" - mostly wanting to know how to sell art. I generally tell people there is no magic formula, but maybe there is...

John Baldesarri, "Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell"
1966-68. Acrylic on canvas.
68 x 56 1/2 in. (via Man Made Lakes)

Currently Outside Our Window