Laying It Down

  Making art is always a process of discovery. Lately I have rediscovered how richly sensual is the process of painting, and especially atop an encaustic (wax) layer. And, it's not just fun to create them, but fun to view them in person.   

Because each of these works is a build of digital print, multiple layers of wax, and then finished with detailed oil painting, the depth that shines through is surprising.   

All are based on images that are my own original digital images. 

The top piece is Chasing Birthdays (12" x 12" on a cradled ground). The middle one is from Summertime (also 12" x 12" on a cradled ground). And the last, perhaps the most simple, but sweet to my eye, is Lil Sleeping Buddha. Can't remember his size because now he snoozes in New Zealand.       zzzzzzzzzzzz                       

I'm already in the process of making new ones.

                                                                      

Hey

    Much of my work that I post here are those with organic subjects, but sometimes I do branch out beyond the dried twig. This time I chose to work with a bit of technology, challenging myself to create an image that is not only conceptual but also demonstrates that we can see things anew if we just look at them differently.
 
    In case you don't recognize the object, it is a mobile phone. The text was created with a couple of additional layers, capturing actual vernacular from texts I have received from my teen son. To render them, I used the pre-WWII Royal typewriter inherited from my parents, and which I used extensively while a teen myself to write poetry and letters, way before we even imagined anything like a computer, Photoshop, or layers, not to mention cell phones.
 
     More layers were added, thanks to images lifted from my grandfather's 1918 copy of Anatomy of A Human Body by Henry Gray, F.R.S. (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons). The tome is commonly known as Gray's Anatomy and this 20th edition was "Thoroughly Revised and Re-edited" by Warren H Lewis, B.S., M.D. The book, some 2.75" thick and which is fraying a bit around the edges, cost my grandfather $9. He used it at dental school in Berkeley, California, almost a century ago, after which we built a successful  practice in Bakersfield. I daresay he would not have approved of teen use of cellphones, nor of my choice of one of Gray's illustrations, the innocent prostate gland, positioned just under the illustration of the brain. Well, just think conceptually.