Contentment

This painting just "fell out" today. As usual, I had the feeling I wanted to convey in mind even while I was contructing it, but the painting went easier than usual.

Model for this one was Daniel Garretson.

Three New Paintings

These are part of a crown chakra series I started last month, now finished. Several more to come - molding is drying right now.

Today's Work

Big boon to my work, especially during this long cold snap; I now have heat in my studio space! My brother in law and sister removed an old mock-woodstove electric heater from my parents' house and my father installed it in my space yesterday. It's just a space heater, but boosts the temps up to about 50°F, making the paint behave much more predictably.

Worked on two paintings today. They're not quite where I want them yet, but close. This one, called "Watchful Mind" needs to have more blue worked into the little extensions of energy above the head. I really want them to be tiny traces of light in a subtly nuanced field of blue. I might end up painting over them with the blue cross-strokes and then add very thin touches of warm white on top. The feeling is someone who's always on guard, almost chronically so. They're not expecting good or bad, but always in a guarded state.



This one, called "Preoccupation" is still hotter than I intend it to be. The cool blue at the bottom needs to be worked in along the top sides a little more. The auric field next to the face is looking more flame-like than I'd like, so something still has to happen with that space.

The heavy red-brown folds over the head are actually sculpted in canvas hanging over the face. I do like the face that the face is blending into the area around it, losing identity and definition within their own troubles. It just isn't integrating well yet and the upper areas are too solid.

These photos are also taken at night in artificial light. The colors don't reproduce as well as if they were shot in daylight.

In the works ...

"Shared Joy"
A busy transition stage in the studio. I finally have all the rough bits smoothed out of "Shared Joy". Being a bubbling up of laughter, I wanted this one to be smooth and rounded in its sculpting. It's now done, but with very thick molding, it's going to be wet and very heavy for quite some time.

This one was built on the old canvas for the original attempt at "Stellar Flame". I wasn't happy with that one and built the current one from scratch. Then I removed as much of the sculpting as possible and built "Shared Joy" over the remnants. There were still some ridges of upward movement that I went ahead an incorporated. They fit the mood pretty well. The cluster of heads at the top and bubbling up from the guts at the bottom (can you say "belly laugh"?) took care of the most obvious ridges.

"Shared Joy" features a cast of Karry Brothers, who was kind enough to do an open-mouth, smiling pose. The faces of those sharing in the laugh include my parents, John and Sophia Wessel, my partner Wendy Sawyer, Peter Mitchell, Tom Fitzgerald, myself and my friend Helen Wassell, who passed away in October this year.

Crown Chakra Studies
I have a bunch of smaller pieces, four "portrait" sized pieces focusing on the crown chakra in different states of energy. These are sculpted and currently being primed. I always do several layers, so they need to dry in between. One more layer and they're ready to go.

The cast for the one of the left is Daniel Garretson. It's intended to reflect a balanced, zen-like state. The upper center features a cast of Wendy. Called "Preoccupied", I used canvas to drape the top of the head, so it looked weighed down. The lower center one is a cast of Sophia, and is intended to reflect the heightened state of mental energy people experience when they're learning something new and exciting for the first time. The one on the left is a cast of Wendy and is intended to show someone watchful and alert.

I have more in mind, but I'm running out of face casts. I'm ALWAYS looking for people to cast, so if you're interested, please contact me. The idea is to have as many different faces as possible. These images are about everyone, so the wider the range of humanity, the better - all sizes, races, ages welcomed!

"1,000 Feet per Second"
This one popped into my head today while listening to Radiohead's "OK Computer". The song "The Tourist" is about that overcharged, hyperactive state and the sparks given off while in that state. I know that feeling very well, and could see the finished painting in my head. This is just in the sculpted state right now, so it needs to dry thoroughly before priming. It's lightly sculpted, though, so it shouldn't take long.

Wow. The top of my head is really flat. So *that's* how I balanced a cantaloupe up there!

Two Paintings in One Day!

Ooooohtay! Those paintings that I can't think of a title for are done - did them both in one six hour session today. Not the greatest color and lighting in the world on these photos, but you get the idea.

I also have four crown chakra paintings sculpted and first layer of primer on, a new batch of paper soaking in water, and a new batch of latex goo mixed up. I'm just about done sculpting "Shared Joy" as well. It's taking some time because I started with a rough batch of goo and now I'm smoothing it out with the new softer blend. So much for finger-prints.

The Joys of Cough Syrup

I've been knocked out with the flu for about a week and a half and, thanks to the Joys of Cough Syrup, have a new series living in my head that's eeking it's way out. I have a bunch of new paintings sculpted and drying. One is the "Shared Joy" piece I've been building for months. It's very wet and heavy at the moment. Then there are four small pieces that are part of a series that began to sprout this past week - a series focusing on the crown chakra at different states of mind / soul.

Some will be more medium sized, like in the sketch shown, but all are tightly-cropped and focus on the head and immediate surrounding energy. One, called "Preoccupation" is weighted down at the top with fabric and shows the tension of energy from the rest of a person's existence being held down by worrisome thought.


I also want to go ahead and make a painting that my friend Helen and I were planning to do before she passed away last month. It involves a person at the center, curled up and sheltering themselves from prying hands. We were discussing her extensive experiences as a cancer patient and the inner resistance to always being "worked on" even though you know it's helping. She often talked about us collaborating on a whole show called "Fear Gone", a joint venture between my sculpted canvases, her notebooks, sketches, medical records and leftover medical devices, but now I think creation of this piece and another one that shows the same person unfurled and free despite the hands would probably complete the process for me. Her courage and determination in the face of catastrophic, life-changing illness was a tremendous inspiration. Her ability to never let her spirit fall, no matter what happened to her physically was amazing.

Anyway .... I'm going to need a LOT more casts.
Hoping to recruit a bunch more models for this round. Anyone who's interested in volunteering, let me know! I've also found a great way to process my latex goop into a smoother consistency. It's almost buttery, but still has some stucco-like qualities and doesn't need to sit for months in the latex to get there.

New progress!

The graphics business has been *very* busy since June, so not much time to work on artwork. The show at Lotus and Orchid was good, but unfortunately, like so many galleries these days, they had to close. Noelle Ellis was a wonderful gallery manager and I hope she'll be able to start another one up when the economy picks up again.

I've finished one commissioned piece - well almost. When it dries, we're going to mount a board with a wood plane embedded into the hands of the figure. There will probably be some touch-ups after that. He person commissioning the piece is the figure cast for it and he's known for his trademark pink logo and company vehicles, so I leaned more to the red, rather than blue base-tone. It's a fiery looking piece with only touches of greens and blues along the physical pieces and heart chakra area.





I'm also starting a pair of related paintings. The first one is the initiator/emitter of a thought pattern. The second is the receiver of that thought, showing his response to it.

They'll be primarily blues and light yellows with inclusions of other colors, a bit like "Resolution". Just started blocking in the basic colors on the first one today.

Haven't thought of titles for any of these yet. I hate titles.