Le retour.

Yes! I have been absolutely abysmally awful awful awfully terrible about posting here over the past 9-10 months or so. Yikes. There's been a lot of life change going on, a breakup, an apartment move, a broken ankle, some sadness and some happiness and some painting (but never enough!!!) Anyway, I'm going to try for a quick recap here, and then let's move forward in the second half of 2013 with some hardcore productivity, shall we?

The Converge exhibition in NYC last November was terrific! A great show, a great collection of work, fun opening. Since then I've shown in another group show at Artists' House in Philly this past April, the "Year of the Woman" show. Again, great work, great people!!

Me with some paintings that I sold at Artists' House's "Year of the Woman" exhibition, April 2013.

(Photo by Charles Walsh)

I also went to see some other people's art... here I am at Eleanor Ettinger in NYC (photo by Daniel Maidman):



I also met some new artist friends at the annual Portrait Society Conference in Atlanta, Georgia - here I am with Quang Ho of Denver, Colorado (photo by Melissa Gann Burgess):

Some artist friends in Philadelphia hosted some artists friends from NYC around the time I was still on crutches with a broken ankle - here's some of our merry crew in Rachel Constantine's studio before heading out for dinner (l-r: me, my studiomate Stephen Early, Rachel Constantine, Victoria Selbach, Nancy Bea Miller and her husband Paul Downs, and Alexandra Tyng. The incomparably awesome Daniel Maidman is the one taking the picture, and somehow we managed to not get Garth Herrick and art conservator Lauren Cassady in the photo!! Whoops.)

Speaking of awesome artists from other cities, earlier in the spring I finally had a chance to meet the amazing, super-wonder-magical artist couple of Rory Coyne and Lauren Levato, visiting New York City from Chicago, Illinois!! A bunch of us met up and it was groovy (l-r: me, Rory Coyne, Lauren Levato, Chris Leib, Daniel Maidman, Reiner Hansen - photo taken by David Kassan):

In addition to hanging out with artists, I've been sitting for some artists, too... here's a painting done of me this spring by the awesome and amazing Fred Danziger:

And here's a painting sketch of me in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts cast hall by David Shevlino:

Here's a drawing of me by Scott Burdick (CHECK OUT THAT HAIR!!! This does not occur in nature, I assure you):

Here's one little one by my studiomate, Stephen Early:

  

And, OF COURSE, I've been doing some painting of my own, as well... not as much as I'd like, but that's the way things go when life is kind of crazy and ankles are broken and other life stuff gets in the way. Boo. Anyway, here's one of friend and incredible artist Felicia Forte:

force of nature, oil on panel, 8"x16"

Also, I've done a sketch of Matthew, who helped me to not lose my mind during my period of convalescence with the broken ankle:

sur la terrasse, oil on panel, 12"x12"









More soon! Really. I swear it won't be another 9 months before I update again. For REAL. But just in case, you can always find me on Facebook... I'm very update-y over there.

Peace out for now. Keep painting, y'all.





















Down with the DPC.

Hey there Internet, Happy Fourth! I've been celebrating our nation's independence by... painting!!! Whooop! No fireworks for me, just the explosive magics happening in the art studio! Or... something.

Anyway, on Saturday I did some outdoor landscape painting - definitely still frightening and uncharted territory for me - with a groovy group of people from PAFA, including Mike Manley, David Campbell Wilson, Alina Osipov and Lexi Thomas. Mike has a great recap on the blog for their painting group (the "Dirty Palette Club"), so I'm going to be lazy here and link to his post, add a few photos of my own, below, and then call it a day - an independence day, in fact! Woot!

 Mike in the comfy chair

 Alina and her painting

 Painters in action

David being all arty

PAFA ASE!

Last Friday evening a friend and I went to check out the Annual Student Exhibition (or "ASE") at the venerable Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (or "PAFA") right here in Philadelphia. This event constitutes a Big Deal here in our fair city of brotherly love, as this represents the work of the best and brightest products of the institution known far and wide as this nation's oldest fine art museum and school. Pomp! Publicity! Prizes! And, hopefullly most importantly, Art.

While there was a great amount of work on display, from not only the 3rd and 4th year certificate program and BFA students but also the MFA student body - therefore making for an interesting but slightly overwhelming viewing session - I have selected out a few of the pieces which grabbed me upon first viewing to mention here. First off was Alabama native Christina Weaver, whose wall of work centered on paintings and charcoal drawings of bridal gowns. While bridal gowns wouldn't normally strike me as a compelling subject, the artist's superior painting and drawing skills, paint handling, use of composition all conbined with spooky atmospheric effect of the works made her wall immediately eye-catching. Here's one of the paintings:

Brides and Accessories, 49"x35", oil on canvas, by Christina Weaver

Another series of pieces which stood out for me were a series of eye paintings (how curious that I would be drawn to eye paintings, ha) by artist Mark B. Goodson. The idea behind the paintings is that they are "The Critical Eye of PAFA," in other words, close-ups of the eyes of all of the faculty critics in the MFA program. See them all at this link on Mark B. Goodson's website or see this one below as an example:

The Critical eye of PAFA 2010 - a series of 12 paintings

(this one above is of Tom Csaszar)

2010, oil on canvas, each panel (as above) 6"x 12"

by Mark B. Goodson

The last series of pieces which struck me as memorable were graphite drawings on illustration board by Karen David, an MFA student for whom I can unfortunately find no website (so I'll have to post my crappy photos from my crappy camera). They were delicately rendered and utterly disturbing in a kind of 1920s Dada-ist vein, but wonderfully so - here are photos of her work taken by me, a terrible photographer with a terrible camera:

Drawings by artist Karen David



There was, of course, much more to the show... this guy's work, and this guy, for example, etc. etc., but, as I mentioned, so much work quickly became visual overload. And I don't want to have blog post overload either! So that's all I'm posting. If you're in the Philadelphia area, go check out the show yourself, it's up until June 8th. Check out http://www.pafa.org/.

Time to go get some painting of my own done, people! Peace out.