Artomatic 2017!

i am looking forward to Artomatic 2017, DC's amazing semi-random arts festival.

approximately 700 visual artists, and many musicians and performing artists, will take over an old office building in Crystal City, Virginia (part of Arlington next to National Airport).

this year i am putting together a Liberty series, inspired by some signs i made for the Women's March. Here are some of those signs:

twitter art exhibit

just sent in my entry for the Twitter Art Exhibit.
it's an annual fundraiser using postcard-sized art.

it is an oil painting on cardboard. i scanned in another of my paintings and used it to laser etch the color off of the base painting.

genie is out of the bottle

this recent painting started with a squiggly line. i then worked with it and let it emerge. there was no plan until about midway through i started seeing some images and patterns in it. i wonder if there is anything that you see in it.

here is a rough time lapse of it as it developed:

because the very first, dark squiggle was the anchor for the painting, i added a strand of electro luminescent (EL) wire that can be turned on or off to accentuate that curve.

Footprints - Artomatic 2015

This is a photo of my completed space at Artomatic 2015. It is not just about Rhinos, although I use them to emphasize something broader. I will go into more discussion about its meaning in a near-future post.

The two paintings on either side are "bookends" -- a mother and child. The mother in the lead, the child trotting along after. The piece that is second from the left is entitled "Footprints" and is the focal point of the installation -- there is only a bit of one rhino in it, as other parts of nature vie for attention. It is detailed and complicated and deserves its own discussion. The piece to the right of it is "The Abyss" and also contains a rhino, though a bit more abstractly. The rhino in this piece looks into the abyss and is acting as a canary in a coal mine. The piece to the right of The Abyss is my first piece of art to contain an Arduino. A sensor lets the Arduino know when to make the eye sparkle. I learned a lot by doing this and am looking forward to continue to combine technology and art as a way to allow paintings to be more interactive.

If you take a photo of any of my work, please post it on social media with the hashtag #SaveRhinos. 

I hope you can visit Artomatic. It contains the work of 500+ visual artists (2D and 3D), plus many performing artists. There are also workshops and other activities. Meet the Artists night is the next major event and will take place on November 14. Check the calendar for more activities. 

Footprints - at Artomatic 2015 (preliminary)

Artomatic 2015 opens tomorrow. I decided to expand my rhinoceros series into the broader theme of the human impact on the earth. We all leave footprints -- what will you leave behind?  What will you tread upon?

This is the first time I will be showing an Arduino-enabled painting. It is not technologically sophisticated, but I think it adds a sparkle. I plan to do more of this in the near future, to create art that interacts with the viewer, its environment, or both.

Here are some teaser photos of some of my pieces. I will post a photo of my entire space once the show has opened.

It starts with a fresh coat of paint: 

This is a work-in-progress photo of a section of my flagship piece, Footprints:

And a couple more photos of bits and pieces of some of my pieces: 

 I hope you can visit Artomatic and see thousands of works of art by hundreds of artists.

a bigger picture

this mixed media piece of mine was in the show  A Bigger Picture at the fairfax art league gallery.
mixed media (oil, acrylic, pumice, sand, stucco).

and here is how i got it there and back:

rhino commision completed and delivered

after many months, the 68"x36" rhino commission is done (mixed media: oil, acrylic, pumice, brick, slate).

here's a comparison of the initial sketch and the final painting: