I Can't Have Tea Late at Night Because of All the Ayes Ayes

This painting explores the idea of insomnia, and its psychological effects. An interesting side effect of lack of sleep is the distortion, or ripples, in the stream of perceived reality. Deprive yourself of sleep long enough, and the world of dreams begins to seep into our world of being awake. Whether the cause of insomnia is internal or external, a lack of sleep can alter our perception and temporary understanding of time and space, and we can begin to question the certainty of our being and what we traditionally perceive as normal life experience.

The aye-aye is a nocturnal lemur from Madagascar with an unusually long middle finger. Some natives of Madagascar believe that aye-ayes are heralds of evil. The superstition surrounding the aye-aye is that if one should point its narrow middle finger at someone, they are condemned to death. It is also believed that aye-ayes sneak into houses through the thatched roofs and murder the sleeping occupants by using their middle finger to puncture the victim's aorta. Because of this some villagers will kill ayes-ayes on sight and hang up their corpses to ward of evil.

In this artwork the woman sits naked at the dining table, while floating up towards the chandelier on the ceiling as a group of curious aye-ayes ransack the house. The woman has given up, letting go of any semblance of control, accepting everything with an indifferent passivity, creating a symbiotic relationship with the inquisitive lemurs. The aye-ayes in the artwork are a manifestation of insomnia, the furry heralds of the inauspicious, with each passing moment the problem becoming larger, more out of control.

This painting was created in 2010.

The Blind Prophet of New Orleans

The man in this artwork is blind, his sight is not of light waves, but more metaphysical.  He is the landscape of New Orleans, he is the streets, the buildings, the bridges, the trash, the enslaved horses, the ubiquitous street musicians, the bittersweet smell, the ancient cracking sidewalks and musical rot iron. The city speaks through his mouth, but no one listens.

If our lifetime was only one day, could you believe in the existence of the stars and the eternal deep night of the universe, if all you had ever seen up to that point was the blue skies and clouds?  The revolving dance and song of the prophets echo throughout our history, alternating between respect and ridicule, between a belief in that which is only tangible and that which is beyond what our eyes can see.

Most prophets from western religions could be seen in the same light as the homeless man preaching in the street. Moses talking to a burning bush, Abraham about to kill his son because of voices he hears. These are just two examples of many. If these events took place today, on our modern stage, how would the average person look upon these prophets? Imagine a modern day prophet warning the cities inhabitants that there will be a terrible flood in the streets of New Orleans in the near future.  Who of us would take them seriously, would even stop to discuss it with them? How do we draw the line between illusions and fantasy, and our shared collective reality, and is there even a line?

This painting was created in 2009.

Spring

I will be participating in an exhibit titled Fresh Faces, which runs from May 1 - June 5 at the Bath House Cultural Center in Dallas. I created a piece for this show titled "Interrupted while constructing my chrysalis". Its a piece that shows a woman building a chrysalis around her, hidden away in some room or basement. Someone is walking down the stairs interrupting her work. The original idea for this was going to be a green misanthrope style lady, but the work evolved on its own into this idea.

May 15th and 16th I will have some artwork included in the 5X7 Exhibition and Fundraiser for the Arthouse at the Jones Center in Austin. My first artwork to be shown here in Austin. I created 2 untitled pieces for the fundraiser that I am donating to the Arthouse. One is a man holding 2 doves. The idea for this painting was created while watching a documentary on Tesla. Toward the end of his life he loved feeding the pigeons of NYC, and had a favorite white one. Tesla was a brilliant man and his love for animals persuaded me to respect him even more. The other is an abstract of Nikki. The colors remind me of the way Ladybird Lake smells early in morning. There is a certain blue-green smell that is nice when you are close enough to the lake the wind blows your direction. These paintings are small, which was interesting to work on canvas that small.

My art will be included in the publication Moulin Review, Vol. 2 and Vol.3. Im looking forward to seeing my artwork in these publications, and reading the stories and poetry by others as well.

We bought our first home and are currently moving so I will be taking a break for a while. We are staying in Austin but moving to the South-West section, which has more of a hill country flavor about it. I think when I do start my art up again I will be creating some scenes from the hill country.

The Elephant's Au Pair

The Changing Tides

The Judgement of the Owls

I Throw My Rose at the Bull

I find violence against the innocent for entertainment both abhorrent and sad. In this painting the bull has defended his life against the many swords of the matador. The empty seats in the stadium reflect the silence and disbelief of the crowd, the accessories to the matador’s actions. Red blood escapes the matador blending with the red of the cape, linking the red in the rose that I throw to the bull in victory.

Rainstorm Approaching The Town By The Sea That Never Existed

In this painting I was interested in the idea of art creating a world that momentarily exists to the viewer. Just for a moment your eyes walk the streets, go into the buildings; feel the approaching rainstorm in the air, smell the salt of the sea. The mind wonders back to reality with the slightly melancholy fact that this town does not exist, nor has it ever.

I personally love the feeling of approaching rainstorms. This unnamed town cant see the rainstorm approaching because of its position on the mountainside, but I'm sure if you were on the streets you could feel it. The relatively calm sea (calm before the storm), made for an easy trip for the person in the yellow rowboat, who looks like they were just at the town across the harbor. Which town they call home is unknown even to me. At first I had the sea crashing with waves, it matched the swirling turmoil of the thundercloud. But after painting over it and noticing the calm, tranquil feeling of the sea, I left it in a state of momentary serenity. Ive also recently had a great interest in Japanese art, especially that of Hokusai. I believe some of his works have had a slight influence on this piece especially.

The town itself is reminiscent of the Cinque Terre region of Italy. The buildings clinging to the sides of mountains plummeting into the sea. The buildings themselves I added very light elements of Asian and Islamic architecture.

In a lot of my recent paintings I show a sun that is either setting or rising. In the painting I complete before this one, "Chiron Serenading The Autumn Woods", the sun is a morning sun, heralding a new day and season. Ive been asked if it is setting or rising in this work, I believe it is setting. I love the rain at night.

Chiron Serenading The Autumn Woods

"Chiron Serenading The Autumn Woods" shows the scholarly centaur Chiron playing a bouzouki guitar in the woods during late autumn after all the trees have lost their leaves.

The trees in this piece are dancing erotically to the music, surrounding Chiron in a circle as he is playing. There is a communal, sexual, and spiritual feeling in the movement of the trees as they respond to the music. The dull winter sun peaks through the branches as an ocean of cold clouds is coming towards the scene, heralding the beginning of a new and colder season. Chiron sits on a path, contemplative, performing a musical celebration, a story of the year that has past, one last dance before the sleep of winter.

I now find myself drawn towards doing art that involves nature and the outdoors. Living in Austin you have a lot of great outdoor locations to hike and be around the natural world, and I believe this environment is making its way into my artwork. I have more ideas for nature centered art in the future.

Female Centaur

This is my artwork for the 2nd of the 3 Body Art Balls in Dallas I participated in. Its titled Female Centaur. I was originally going to paint the model but it tuns out she was allergic to the paints I had, so I improvised and covered her in color plastic wrap and painted parts of that. The back legs of the centaur costume that I created where attached to her front legs and had bendable knees, so when she walked the back legs moved in tandem with hers.

Christmas Queen

In 2000 I took part in The Body Art Ball in Dallas. This was the first Body Art Ball (they continued on for several years afterwards, I took part in the 2 following years as well). This is called The Christmas Queen.

The Young Poet Rumi

The painting "The Young Poet Rumi" shows a young Rumi (sans white beard) composing a poem. The painting is a visual narrative of catharsis. Peacock feather in hand, the flow of ink has veered off the paper and knocked over an ink well as the weight of emotion from what he has just written causes him to collapse in creative exhaustion, his heart pumping blood onto the green table. Two young birds fly in through his open window bringing flowers. These feathered muses also bring him inspiration metaphorically through these gifts of flowers.

When I see this painting I can smell the salty air of the sea just outside Rumi's window. The lines of the poem on the paper are from the poem Heroes:

Does any artist paint for the sake of the picture itself,

without the hope of offering some good?

No, but for the sake of the viewers and the young

who will be drawn by it and freed from cares.

Peony

This is a new found objects sculpture Ive recently completed. It will be included in the Natura Fragilis exhibition at the Bath House Cultural Center.

Darfur

This painting depicts a woman from Darfur, beaten and clinging onto life, looking back at the viewer and wondering why no one is helping her.  Why is she being ignored by the rest of the world? The women and girls in this region are receiving the worst types of violence committed especially against them. This is the image of someone that has hit bottom and is sitting there waiting. However you can see the strength in her eyes, a dim light that is taking refuge in the depths of her pupils, a light that will soon well up and shine bright again.

The image of this painting came to me all at once, in an instant. The surface of the canvas is rough, beaten and worn as is the subject.  To me it’s a painting that is constantly challenging the viewer to solve the answer to an unanswerable question - Why?  Why the violence, the rape, the murder, why against us? Against me? Why is more not being done to help the victims?

This solitary symbol of the victims of Darfur will never relinquish her question of "why". Her gaze digs its questioning stare deep into the viewer looking for answers as do roots dig into dry soil searching for water.

Freud's Subconscious

Sigmund Freud, feeding the materialization of his subconscious (a ring-tailed lemur) a cashew. His own creation and discovery, the subconscious, now a living entity of its own, resting upon his shoulders, needing attention and further nourishment (especially cashews)!

Just a fun painting about the creation of new fundamental ideas and how we incorporate them into our framework of reality. 

Why a lemur? Something Id really like to do one day is to feed wild lemurs in Madagascar.

Midnight Storm Rolling Into Venice

Midnight Storm Rolling Into Venice is an architectural piece depicting the city of Venice at midnight just as a storm is blowing in from the Adriatic Sea.

All the people are inside their homes, the streets are deserted; the winged lion of St Marks is cleaning himself (now that he doesn’t have to sit still pretending to be a statue).  A wooden chair waits the viewer in the lower left side of the canvas, inviting the viewer to have a seat as their eyes wonder through the city streets and breathe in the cool, salty air just before the storm

The Way the Light Dances in Istanbul

I have seen by traveling to different countries that the light seems to have a different hue, a nature all its own in relationship to the geographical elements, the plants, the stones, the dirt and animals (I include people under the animal description). Light seems to have its own unique characteristics based on the angle its hitting the earth, the longitude and latitude you’re standing on at the moment.  This is the light vibrating and dancing through the ancient and modern streets of Istanbul, broken up into cross sections of time, a split second of sensation and time tiled like slides for a microscope.

The Griffin and the Cello

This piece is title "The Griffin and the Cello". It shows a griffin (with the anthropomorphic addition of a woman’s head, arm and breast) playing a cello on a street corner. All the people in the street have umbrellas, and you can see from the water rushing down the street drain that there is a break in a rain storm. The griffin is resting her foot on a flower of life ball similar to the way Chinese guardian lions do.

The cello to me is a very sexual instrument when the musician is a female.  The female musician wraps her legs around the large wooden vibrating instrument, playing and creating notes, a communication takes place between the musician and the instrument that is both intimate and sensual. The music that is made floats through the air, calling nature to rain more, to produce more water to nourish the earth. The figure in back watches the street musician playing in admiration.

The female griffin musician playing the cello represents a woman creating life, the intimate relationship between mother and baby in utero. The creation of life is pure, natural, animalistic, and beyond our comprehension.  It is the nexus between our dimension and another, the one we all came from before this one.

I look in on admiration at my wife as she creates life. This painting was finished the day we found out we are having another baby. 

Jasmine Tea With Okapi

This piece titled Jasmine Tea With Okapi is a fun story showing an Okapi wondering into a tea house at night, and a geisha serving him some Jasmine tea. The okapi seems smitten with the geisha serving him, though the geisha seem a bit unsure.  He has probably been to this tea house before, most likely has a crush on this particular geisha.  She knows this and seems a little uneasy that we have wondered in and are viewing the unorthodox relationship between the two. 

Yellow butterflies are flying in through the window and partaking in the spilt tea on the table and gathering nectar from the wild cherry blossoms in the geisha's hair.  This idea of the yellow butterflies is influenced from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book 100 Years of Solitude. 

The hanging lamp forms an eye, drowsily staring back at the viewer. The situation created by this scenario, combined with the blue-night milieu, nature with her wild cherry blossoms, yellow butterflies and anthropomorphic okapi, gives birth to a conscious; a situational conscious whose eye flows through the hanging lamp and stares back at the viewer with an ancient ambivalence.

The reason I chose an okapi for this piece is to contrast the natural markings of the okapi with the unnatural ornamentations of the geisha (and other women who find it necessary to over decorate themselves).  

San Francisco Under a Marigold Sky

This is one of the new paintings I recently finished. It shows a person (me) laying in the foreground holding a thread that winds its way through the hills of San Francisco. The thread represents where I have physically been, the time and experience of walking through the city condensed into a material object. 

When we visit or live in a city, the more we explore it the more we collect memories and associations with that bit of geography, the wider our definition of a place becomes. We also see places without physically standing on them (the water in the bay, the sky, the air around us) that we have sensational memories of (sight, smell, temperature). 

I am currently reading Joseph Campbell's The Hero of a Thousand Faces, and he talks of a world navel.  I represent the world navel with the dark somewhat ominous spiral expanding in the center of the city, a nexus between this plane of existence and a dimension beyond our senses. A connection with the experience of exploration and learning  that lies between memory of tangible, physical surroundings and a deeper understanding that lies beyond what we can explain in words, beyond what our senses can comprehend, something that can only be suggested through symbols, presented so each individual can meditate individually through their own framework of the reality that exists beyond our comprehension.