drawings

New ink drawings done in the past few months.

Scrolls

Another two long drawings I did. Inspired by Japanese painting.

Catholic boys confess their sins.

These pieces started out as just an itch I couldn't get rid of unless I drew them. In a way I guess they're about my high school experience: an all-male environment; raw stoicism mixed with unchecked teenage angst; idealized perspectives of God and women. They are more symbolic than literal. The shirts, faces, hands, postures, and haloes are all imbued with their own meanings.

New work coming soon!

Sometime in the near future I'll be posting pictures of new art. Sorry for the big delay between posts. Been very busy trying to get a portfolio of a cohesive body of work together. Expect new ink drawings as well as some bizarre depictions of what it was like being a high school student in an all boys school. Also, wish me luck on submitting work to New American Paintings Southern Art issue.

new ink drawings

(Sorry about the picture quality.)

I've found that the harder I work on these the less interesting they are. It's about experiencing a moment, and then when the moment is over, all that's left is the marks made on the page. It might be a form of painting "masturbation", in that the real magic happens while the piece is being made- but the fact is that the viewer is invited to share in their own little moment. I like that.

story

I miss writing!

Still-Life

Cut-out construction paper shapes
triangles, crooked rectangles, chewed circles,
laid out on plastic placemats, the kind with dinosaurs and kitty cats.
If ever there was a still-life . . .
Sitting in his favorite branch of the fig tree, the boy wonders if there
might be something else he should be doing,
anything fig wood and vine could be giving him
but isn't. Velvet viscous green leaves shading his face
from sky so blue He wonders about blue. Wonders
why his brain sees blue, wonders about the prism in the atmosphere,
and wonders CAN I BE LIGHT? To be the answer to the riddle:
What can touch you, and yet never be held? The thought sticks,
sticks thought, sticking sticks. Touching gardens,
touching shingles, and in certain moments maybe the strap of a brassiere,
touching traffic, touching couples who are angry and couples who have children.
Beneath the shade of the fig tree, the boy wonders, cracked
light reaching into the tiny corners of his face. Then a warm wind drifts-
And the girl comes and sits in her father's empty study. She lays on the rug
underneath the window. Who knows what she's thinking-
she's chosen for the moment to be an action rather than a person. Sunlight pouring
in the window and onto her body, her moment, is all she is,
just a moment. Windows warming the cold house in the snow,
and if you were in the room with her you might not see her at all, if
only because of the light. Cracked wood winter shed
and a box of collected seashells leaning in the garage.
If ever there was a still life.

more sketches

The last two are cropped to show only half the image.