A Recent Commission

July 18, 2018

Not long ago a great artist, business man, and friend commissioned me to create "literally whatever you want" as was explained by him. We share a love of anime and manga, a love of expressive painting and art that evokes narrative, feeling, and permits us to explore time and our own emotional content as tied to memory and to the way that certain pieces of our upbringings help us to channel our present and communicate with others. He is a painter as am I, but our languages aesthetically are very different, yet we find so much depth and connection in one another's language. So it was an honor to paint this for him with the freedom to just go in on it. I wanted to craft something that spoke to our mutual love of certain manga, to our mutual reality of facing adversity and through acceptance, hard work, dedication, surrender, passion, persistence, and the duality of chaos and thus finding the space to be still through the journey we call life. This is piece is very special too me. It is so personal and then upon it's delivery my friend Kent who commissioned said to me, "This painting is everything to me." Sometimes we have moments in this cosmic puzzle that really shed light on the fact that existence is so far beyond what we see and think on a daily basis. I am working on editing some better shots of this piece but here are images of this diptych for you to see. It is two panels, both 3'x4', house paint, spray paint, acrylic paint, tempera, pencil, oil pastel, acrylic lacquer, and more. 2018

That Old New Shit.

January 01, 2018

I am working on my site a bit currently. I have been digging through some old images from my portfolio archives in search for a series of shots from a show I did in 2014 titled Pilgrimage. I have really also needed them to set up a series for some applications for residencies and funding I am in the process of working to attain good favor into. Along my quest for this powerful goal, I ran into some high res images of some work that I thought I had unfortunately lost all of in a drive crash ages ago. Much to my happiness and surprise, after trying to reformat some god awful images that were extremely low res (from before websites like Squarespace resized your images in the programming and you had to save depending on screen size and at a viewable 72 dpi), I stumbled upon two images I had long forgotten that I myself had shot (not thinking I was a good enough shot at the time) and was able to color correct them and relive some of the energy and power that came with that time in my life.

They are both from the Findings series from 2014. Relics of the World of Unstoppable Tomorrow, from that distant future past where the humans reconcile their survival after the reset of civilization due to our inability to control creations of war that we ourselves created under the guise of control. Classic storyline, but pertinent in my mind to my personal view of how our obsession as a race with speeding up our technological advances without thinking of the outcomes, or realizing we repeat the same mistakes of control over and over. Needless to say, these pieces are some of my favorites. One of them was shown at Fecal Face Dot Gallery for a show that Rachel Ralph curated right before an epic road trip I went on as part of my Superchief Gallery NYC solo show "The Scourge". Good times.

As I write this we are hurtling faster and faster to the brink of nuclear war and I feel that this work, no coincidence, is more pertinent than ever in my life. Even more relevant that in the 1980s when I though Regan and Bush were going to take us to the Promise Land Eating Cheeseburgers and Dying As Our Skin Melted Off. Uplifting times. Here is to the New Year... My Big New Years Update is coming soon. Hold onto your hats already!

These works are both from the Findings series... Both around 26"x28 or 30". I love the cuts and shaping. They are Acrylic Lacquer, Spray Paint, and Graphite on Found Wood Assemblage Panels, 2014. Both sold immediately upon their releases.