Well, LA is awesome!

September 09, 2016 in Uncategorized

I made it down here five days ago to start working on my upcoming show with Andrew Kline, titled Language of Memory. I am astounded at how awesome this place is. I have been wanting to spend some time here for a while and now I actually get to do it before heading back to the NC in couple months for a residency with Spectre Arts Gallery in Durham. Onward... There was also a killer trip to Prague and Budapest and Croatia recently.. more of that to come as well.

Language of Memory

August 22, 2016 in Contemporary Art, Exhibitions, Installation, Narrative Art, Painting, Sculpture, Uncategorized, Visual Art

Time has been flying by. I have some major announcements to make. First off, Andrew Kline and I have been working on a massive new show to debut at Superchief Gallery LA on November 12th, 2016. We have been working hard to bring you an immersive art, sound, and installation experience taking you through a future world where samples and visual reference from today have become the foundation of a society in the world of Unstoppable Tomorrow. It is also a conceptual exploration of shared reference creating a unifying but also very singular experience.

here are some works

Goddess 12"x12" House Paint, Oil Pastel, Pencil, Acrylic Lacquer on Wood Panel

Split Tales, 2'x4' House Paint, Acrylic Lacquer, Acrylic Paint, Soft Pastel, Oil Pastel, Pencil on Wood Panel

Time Signature 12"x12" House Paint, Spray Paint, Acrylic Lacquer, pencil on Wood Panel

Story of Life 24"x27" Spray Paint, House Paint, Acrylic Paint, Soft Pastel, Oil Pastel, Tempera, Pencil, Acrylic Lacquer on Wood Panel

I will be in LA living at Superchief for two months working on the installations leading up to the show. Get ready for some awesome documentation.

In other news, this website hosted by Bits & Bristles will unfortunately be coming down in October. I am working to get a new site up by then so please bare with me in the interim as I will be transferring the name over to a temporary blog style site due to time constraints.

Thank you for all your support. If you would like a preview of the show works and are interested in purchasing send me a comment or email to felixthethird@gmail.com and I will connect you with the good people at Superchief as well as supply you with any info you need from my end.

Much Love and thank you to all for your support!

-Felix

Getting Ready For Japan

May 15, 2016 in Uncategorized

I will be going to Japan in a few days, another trip to one of the most amazing places on earth. I am so excited to be painting with Koutaro Ooyama again, this time in Osaka. I will be updating as regularly as possible while I am working with him on a massive painting. Feeling good to be feeling connected and getting ready to be on the other side of the world for a while.

And Here We Are...

May 14, 2016 in Uncategorized

And here we are, standing in the soup of air, the humid entrance to a changing weather front, the thunder rumbling in translucent sound deep in the distance. The hum of crickets and the trickle of raindrops fill open ears. The glow of a Waffle House sign and the blinding nature of gas station LED lights offsetting it in a strange dichotomy of dimensional travel, of transparency between times. The loving lurch forward, the hating speed up to slow down, the laws swirl through air made of judgmental and righteous feelings. The mosquitos interface with gods original bizzaro land, one where the logic of the universe and all that occurs become a mesh of communication, a confusion of steadfast eyes and closed ears and open mouths screaming for the inevitable to halt and let their hearts congeal into stopping position before they change. Yet the change is the only constant no matter how hard they fight.

A young man asks me "Is that a Nikon or a Cannon?" with a limber slight drawl, or rather an airy relaxed almost classy slowed down accent, in no rush to then tell me how he has a Cannon rebel. He likes the Nikon's sensor and the overall image size, but he still loves the Cannon and the action and the way she moves. Then he says my waitress will be right with me and I proceed to say thank you and order a meal of proportions fit for Thor and Odin and all the warriors at the God's temple of Waffle House. North Carolina you are a strange mistress, an old soul full of sickness and beauty. You will forever be captivating to me in your slow yet unrelenting humid gusts of evolution. I'll enjoy this coffee, and then go outside in the the hot tub that is the spring night.

Another Photo of the Day

May 06, 2016 in Uncategorized

Photo of the Day

May 06, 2016 in Uncategorized

South Of The Border, 2014

Currently on View at Stephanie Chefas Projects.

April 19, 2016 in Uncategorized

Alignment, 16x20, Mixed Media on Wood assemblage Panel, 2016

Available through Stephanie Chefas Projects, Portland, OR

Photo of the Day 04/01/2016

April 01, 2016 in Uncategorized

Moving Forward!

March 02, 2016 in Uncategorized

Into awesome new things... More posts to come over the next two weeks, including an Oakland walk around, new paintings, and some Photos from Ireland I shot this past November... Good things come to, well, you without a whole lot of waiting... thanks for checking in.

Communicating Energies in Darkness(low res)

Art on Paper March 4th-6th

February 23, 2016 in Uncategorized

Great news. I will be represented by Joseph Gross Gallery at the Art On Paper Art Fair this coming March 4th-6th. A very cool new fair to check out in New York City. More info to come.

Back in the Studio

February 13, 2016 in Uncategorized

A new wave of thoughts and inspiration hit me recently. Contemplating a lot things having to do with a certain level of self acceptance and worth after a lot of hard work last year I have finally found myself re-discovering subject matter and ways of working and thinking and seeing that I find a lot of comfort and joy in. And at the same time these child like or comforting tropes find there way into this new language, a re-investigation of aspects of my life and influences I love. Digging into the ideas of armor, of attaching meaning to old icons like Gundam and trans formers, Wolverine and Psylocke, Hokusai and Matisse. Drawing as if in a notebook, exploring eighties manga lettering again, happy to re-discover these things that have always made me , well, happy, and to just immerse my adult self after a lot of hard growth back into a world where they are constant reminders of my own mythology and positive references that I can latch onto in a healthy way. These sorts of things help, much like Unstoppable Tomorrow, to continue to look at those things that cause me tension as I work through them as well in my art. Current status, feeling pretty good.

Current Status...

January 15, 2016 in Uncategorized

...at SFO on my way home for my birthday. Something about where I am from, Durham NC is calling me... it may be family it may be Bullocks BBQ it may be both and more... I am going to be meeting with some folks from the Golden Belt studio's while I am home and I am excited to talk about possibilities for making some work with them in the future... Bojangles, you need to also watch out because I am coming for you...

2015 Into 2016, a Romance Story.

January 01, 2016 in Contemporary Art, Narrative Art, Painting, Uncategorized, Visual Art

The new year has been born. The gregorian calendar new year that is. As many of you know I generally write a post at the end of the year summarizing the past events of the year and leading into the new. I have chosen to wait this time until the new year has dawned because, simply put, this year was fucking hard. To sum up 2015, utterly painfully gut wrenching, challenging, ego destroying, beautifully enlightening, intense, and full of awakening and coming to a place and feeling of real self worth like I have never known before.

2015 began with a move back to the East Coast, one that I publicized greatly, that I seemed to make a huge deal about and sort of base my entire being upon. It saw the supposed "end of an era" of living in California and a move into the resurrection of a nostalgic existence redefined by a very arrogant view of "inevitable success" that would become my reality left up to the wind as if I could do no wrong. It saw six months leading up to my huge move without much recovery, without much perspective, without much work inward, with really no moments of selflessness, and without much thought for what could happen.

Essentially blinded by my own sudden uphill climb into a life gaining attention and momentum in certain aspects, I began coasting and I ran headlong into the darkest moment I have ever had since before getting sober. I ran blindly with almost no real defense into what truly was the end of an era, and not at all the one I had planned on. Suffice to say, I was brought to my knees by my own fears, insecurities, unresolved issues, and arrogance and began the insanely hard process of addressing aspects of myself that were not working anymore, that simply put were cancerous which I had used as fuel to move forward for so long. The engines I thought that were "me" ceased to work so that a healthier "self" could be finally nudged to the surface, sometimes yanked, and replace them. While I now know this is what was happening, at the time I simply had no earthly idea as to why after this grand exit from California I was suddenly in the darkest place internally I had been stuck in for the past 5 years. I honestly thought I was losing my mind and that I was either going to drink or somehow go off the deep end.

The pain became so unbearable inside, while in Brooklyn on the 5th floor of an apartment building in Flatbush as an intense blizzard hit and acute bronchitis set in with my dear friend Katie who was also going through her own intense shit, and the darkest thoughts one can imagine cycled through my mind like a hamster wheel 24/7 leaving me sleepless and afraid to my core. I was truly lost and feeling my soul being ripped apart by the lack of work I had done on myself before leaving to embark on this geographical and spiritual journey. But it had to happen this way I now see. In what felt like an eternity (but was only a matter of weeks) the beauty of acceptance set in as I finally, in the most liberating and successful way (next to getting sober), "gave up".

I will never forget the clod of slushy ice that fell from an awning and hit me in the head on a rainy 33 degree day walking to the train feverish and coughing as I went to a job interview in none other than time square. I will never forget that moment where the powers that be, the voice of the universe simply allowed me to let go. And it all made sense, the test made sense. I had work to do, different work than I had thought. I had so much more inward training and work to do spiritually and psychologically. I needed to address my intentions, my motives, my goals, my outcomes, my needs, the needs of others, my place in things. So I packed it all up quickly and it was back to California. I simply knew with no fear and no fight and no more pain that I needed to be there, to dig deep and get right truly and fundamentally before forging out into a new geographical reality. I let the spirit in and suddenly my actions became sound and I was no longer fighting the tide, the tide was loving and liberating, and just a little bit, day by day, the edge began to wear down.

Now this is not to say that the pain just was gone. My insides still felt as if I had a war of angels and devils being fought inside, but it did not feel as if the darkside was winning any longer. It felt as if I knew finally that everything was going to be fine, I just had to hunker down and do the work and dig inside and truly unearth who the fuck I am and work to be of service and toward a life not ruled by negative ego to see that bright sun rise again over the ocean's waves. I felt as if I had been destroyed, ripped apart, left as a husk of a person, and still the bits that remained were being razed and chewed up and ground down and I realized I had to go with it. I got to work, quickly yet lived slowly, with an open eye for the things that brought healthy change in the state of hyper sensitivity that I awoke too and carried with me daily.

Life is one huge series of lessons, and I have to say at this point, humility truly is the best teacher sometimes. Humbled to the point of which I was willing to actually give up making art entirely simply to be sane and happy I began working hard in my recovery again, harder than I ever had to that point. I did as I was told, I took advice, I began working with others, I accepted my place in things, I accepted that this was reality and it is simply not about "me" and what I want, but about what I am here to do, how I can be useful beyond simply survival, how I can help others and live by principles and be of service to my surroundings and those who are going through life's torrent. I let go further and further and got back into a very healthy routine with a very different set of priorities than when I had moved at the end of 2014.

The art started coming by itself, or rather through me in a way it had not in some time. I was once again a conduit to express the unseen intangible aspects of growth and change and realization and fear and working through pain (as an indicator for change) that we all go through. I became incapable of deciding what I was going to make, what image I was going to craft, what technic I was going to use as my hands literally made work before my eyes from the most intuitive and deeply, honestly, communicative place I have experienced in years. I tried to force myself to revisit conventions and found them being ripped apart in a liberating performance of discovery and being in the present as I could feel myself becoming this new person. I simply became a channel for what needed to be said and shared. It became the most healing and cathartic work and experience I have ever had. I finally began to be freed of so many limitations of "self" and "ego" that I had placed upon myself so that I could be destroyed in order to be reborn. I mean this with all my heart, this experience took me to my limit and then allowed me to break through to an existence and level of gratitude I have never quite known before.

This was not just a sudden moment though where the year became easy by any stretch of the imagination. This was just the catalyst to begin letting the path of growth and change move forward, to let go of myself in order to let my energy develop. And thus the year took shape. A new apartment, a new studio, and a long hard road of work and acceptance to walk through. Interestingly enough, the highs of this year have been as intense in good ways as the lows were in hard ways. Part of it is that I feel I was reduced to this simple foundation again much like when I got sober, but in a deeper way. In a way where the devices that still ran me from the "old me" when I got sober finally ceased to work. In the way in which we find ourselves forced to change when we actually get what we want and it is killing us and we need to make a shift in understanding our path, that was and is my journey.

I succeeded in making two wonderful bodies of work that were a process of paring down, saying more with less. They challenged and overcame a sense of what I thought I needed to do to make art. This action showed me a new foundation to build from, deep in process and in the practice of "losing the image" in order to truly see what is beyond what our eyes and surface thoughts tell us and make us judge and want. I met amazing new people, including someone who has grabbed my heart and nurtured it as I have nurtured theirs and we find new things out about ourselves through one another in a dance of beautiful truth and eroticism and humor and deep honesty and growth as we grow together and bring others into our energy. This wouldn't have been possible without the intense and painful reality of what I went through in the beginning of the year and I know that. My armor and my sense of direction have been stripped down and I realized that I am just the person I am and that is beautiful and that is okay. This in turn allows me to truly see my friends and lovers and my art making with honest open eyes and love who they are at their raw core of being. Suddenly my inner strength and real love and acceptance of self worth and search for purpose beyond this abstract world humans have built has put me in places and moments that have become so incredibly powerful.

I Reckon I'm Not A Giant Robot After All

I had a solo show in Chelsea, NYC with long time friend and brother Joseph Gross. While in New York I spent an entire day and night with someone so close to my heart talking sharing about our growth, about the world, about intimacy and perversion, about psychic voyages, about love, and of course about food while eating at Yakitori Taisho. I did those exact things another night with another friend very near to my heart at Oh Taisho. I walked with an old flame and long time friend on the high line and across the city. At the opening to "From Here" at Joseph Gross Gallery I was so fortunate to have people I have known since the age of 17 to those I just met this year come and have deep discussions and loud laughs and hugs and all be so stoked to be able to come together again and be growing and finding our ways. I walked the city with a very dear friend as well the next day and got to the spend days with my brother Pete catching up and meeting our brother Charlie's newborn little Roscoe.

I even went to Dublin, Ireland to see my partner, this person I have found this wild cosmic and intensely bright connection with. I experienced a whole new culture and sense of time and explored ancient aspects of civilization. We laughed we loved we walked we explored minds, hearts, and flesh, we rolled around we kissed we ate delicious things we held each other closely, we absolutely made the most out of every second we had together.

I reconnected with my cousin, whom I had not seen for 24 years. who is a brilliant writer while on my first trip ever to Denver, CO for a solo show with Black Book Gallery. We went to Casa Bonita (see South Park). And on the same trip saw my newborn nephew and my sister and brother in law and my father even showed up. I traveled to LA and back a couple times. I went to shows, I went on dates, I explored a bit more kink in my life, I went swimming, I ate all sorts of foods, I let go of my conception of myself and also moved with a bit more caution yet also with a bit more hunger for experiencing more than just career advances and notches in my belt of life. I got to know Oakland and SF a bit more as well. I went to Harbin one last time with my partner before it burned down. I finally found a studio in a place with many other artists rather than in my own little world as I have been for years.

I have finally become more in tune with the idea of a life meant to be explored rather than a line of events that lead to a known result and a selfish as well as small view of what success means. It is as if life has opened up into the realization that no one thing makes or breaks a person, no one moment in life defines us for all of it, there is nothing that we do, no level we get to that suddenly we can say "I did it, boom thats it it's all gravy from here". That does not exist. Living in that concept drove me as far as it could, and while I am grateful that it did get me to a certain checkpoint in life, it is also a figment of my alcoholic mind. Life is four dimensional, maybe more dimensional. It is as tangible and firm as it is elusive and unexplainable.

Life is about loving others, about doing the best we can every day, even if somedays that means doing very little and resting and healing making sure we are healthy within so that we can once again go forth and truly be a part of the world and let our vision explode and become a part of the fabric of time. I took more time to tell people I love them this year, I made myself slow down so that I did not fall flat, I have begun to learn what it means to move forward into something sustainable rather than explosively into the ether without caring how I affect myself and others. I began to learn to love myself as well.

There were beach adventures, there were AA meetings, there were great meals with great minds with incredible conversations. My super close friend and art ally Terry Addison moved back to the bay. A lot of my friends had babies and tied the knot and families were created and bonds strengthened. Some people died as well and others were lost in the fabric of time. Cities changed, people changed, and the world continues to spin. I learned this year that I truly can feel deeply, that my life is going to go amazing places as long as I let it and stay in a forward state of being, and it may not be within the architecture that I thought that had to be. 2015 has been one of the hardest years of my life, and equally the most enlightening and filled with a sense of awakening like I have never known.

Last night, New Years Eve, saw a free ticket to see The Flaming Lips. Amazing! I was able to share New Years in Ireland via the internet with the person I am so deeply connected to on her time. I was able to eat a delicious meal with someone I have become quite honestly very good friends with due to the realities of this being the hard year that is has been, and after were able to go our friends' new home and see others that we are connected to. I was able to see the new year change with my best friend and his amazing wife (also a dear friend) and I was able to take a deep breath as the balloons dropped and the lights exploded and the youngsters enjoyed their drugs and detaching from reality as I used to when I was their age and I just got be so incredibly happy to be alive.

This year brought a constant ebb and flow of hardship and awakening. It was a none stop hold on tight journey through the extremely raw experience of having to let go of what we think we know and are and let who we really are come to light as we try to hold on to certain aspects until they are too painful and destructive and inevitably find pure energy and happiness in the lessons life teaches us and the realizations we exist in as new and old faces and feelings become the present. When I breathed in the first breath of 2016 I finally, finally felt balanced.

2016 has already started off in a way that makes me feel that this past year was one of the most important foundation laying experiences of my life. That shit had to happen that way and no other. My mind is much more clear, yet much less fixated on specific results. I have a vision of where I want to go, I have some projects in the works, some projects in the planning stages, some recent successes under my belt and a firm and true belief that I am worth working hard toward my visions of what I hope life to become. And that is to say, I feel that I finally do love myself more than I have ever really known in the past, in a real way, not in a way based on my perception of what others think about me or want from me. A real true belief that I am worth loving and that I am still here for a reason. It has taken a lot to get here, and I have to say 2016 seems like it is going to unfold beautifully, no doubt with hardships and victories as it should, but I feel like some of the greatest actions I will have ever taken or begun are starting here. Without having had this year throw me off of the course I had really tried to force myself into and be in turn forced to let the universe channel through me into my work find myself on the path I am meant to be on the work that will be coming out in 2016 simply will not have been possible. I mean this to say that I am insanely grateful because I am in tune with my voice in a way I never fathomed I would be. It is one of the hugest blessings all said and done that I have ever been granted. The rawest most honest art and lives come from intense pain and change and the new found awakenings that they become, and I feel that the catalyst has occurred and the foundation laid. I guess one could say lift off, but I feel more like it is a consistent stride toward positive and amazing things. Thank you for being part of it all.

-John Felix Arnold III 01/01/2016

Strength in Vulnerability (The Moment of Forever)

Holiday Nostalgia

December 24, 2015 in Uncategorized

2015 is coming to a close. I am not going to do my year end post just yet, but I will say this has been an important albeit rough year with some amazingness that has appeared throughout. Rather than just write a long philosophical diatribe about the year and how we learn lessons and how love prevails and how life is never what it may seem to be for better and worse and how the world just keeps spinning and perspective and positivity can always be found, I am going to hit you with a reel of photos from this year and years past that make me smile and think and feel and hopefully make you do the same.

Since New York... I went to Ireland!...

December 06, 2015 in Uncategorized

and it is true, Ireland is absolutely beautiful... and there are beautiful dusks and castles...

and this girl is amazingly beautiful...

and fish and chips...

and end up in Dublin in a hotel with a massive bed and nap. And life is good.

And how did WE get hERE where is thiS and it feels good alBEit intense and then its calm and beautiful. its always beautiful

September 27, 2015 in Uncategorized

All photos with my pretty unclear and not so high res Iphone 4 camera. It is strange that nowadays this is even considered old looking photography. Where do we go next?

What is this all about//// life?

September 27, 2015 in Uncategorized

This Saturday, 09/12/2015 in Denver CO

September 09, 2015 in Contemporary Art, Exhibitions, Narrative Art, Painting, Uncategorized, Visual Art

Photo of the Day 07/05/2015

July 05, 2015 in Uncategorized

The Tank Rolls Forward, Careful to Not Crush the Flowers.

July 03, 2015 in Contemporary Art, Exhibitions, Narrative Art, Painting, Uncategorized, Visual Art

Hello hello... Well is it would seem that after a lot of work and a lot of digging and a lot of real reflection, time with those I love, and honest, intuitive art making I am really ready to embrace this beautiful summer we are having and the upcoming fall which will see my Black Book Gallery Project Space Solo and my Joseph Gross Gallery Solo Show which I am so so proud of. I also have a piece in the upcoming Joseph Gross Gallery Summer Group Show called "Healing Galactus". I am really into where my painting is going at the moment, unearthing darkness, embracing light, feeling through intensity and anxiety, depression and nostalgia, cerebral landscapes and emotional waves of fluidity. It all becomes the moment at each breath. I also had the amazing opportunity to hang out with one of my old Pratt Peers, ( who is also a fucking genius and will go down as one of the greatest book artists of our time) and we talked about race and cities and gentrification and reality and change and love and hate and traveling and the underlying passion and gift we have as artists in this world. If you don't know about him yet check out Ron Whimberly asap! SHOUT OUT TO YOU RON!!!! This dude kind of sent me some geood energy while we had burritos without even knowing he was opening my eyes and helping me to see big and see clearly again. I may live in Cali but when I spend time with my East Coast hustlin brethren it reminds me of what I am made of to the core and truly rejuvenates me to get back in the studio and get out of my head and my own self centered fearful thoughts of failure.

Here is a rather lengthy statement and explanation that I wrote sort of stream of consciousness in regards the this new painting.

"My work as of late has been the point of reconciling so much of this concept of self and ego. The action of digging into process and unearthing the dark and light beings of a multiplex of energies that make up "me". From here I can find my way through the world in moments where past ignorance and upheaval I once caused can become a new source of positive influence simply by being aware of the power of ego and self. We all contain a Galactus somewhere within. A world eater, an energy that is just bent on consuming "worlds" or worldly things for our own gain and to sustain our own levels of power as we grow, and this energy never comes for me from a place of truth and honest love of myself. It can be in a humble manner which is more of an absorption than a consumption to aid in the growth of ideas and evolution, or it can be in a destructive and self centered manner if that growth is unchecked and aids an ego that becomes the driving factor of a life, thus is the World Eater lost in the darkness outside of an inter dimensional portal of beingness in the painting. He is being reconciled by strokes of white and experimentation helping to fill his being with a sense of calm and embracing a different kind of power. This piece is very much about the development of the awareness of my inner Galactus and the subsequent acceptance of its existence after a series of very hard experiences that forced a new growth and acceptance in my own life. The process becomes the act of letting go and having the internal conversation necessary to be at ease with the desires and insecurities that the World Eater is spawned from and is motivated by so as to take away its blind power and dig further inward to not constantly be in the grip of that inner maelstrom. Without Galactus inside of us somewhere the world would be out of balance, but to be consumed by our need to consume worlds we become the slaves to our own fears and hunger and lose any sense of gratitude which is what for me makes life the beautiful state of being I have come to love. Be careful to not let the pendulum swing to the hunger of Galactus."-JFA III

Lastly here is the flyer for the upcoming group show! If you are in NYC go see! I am showing with Ron English yo! And my SF hometown heros Jet Martinez and Ben Venom, amongst an amazing lineup of giants I am very honored to show with.