New painting

I mentioned in my last post that I had three new images here is one.

Untitled Fear II, 26″x36″ oil on synthetic canvas. I apparently called it Fear II in the exhibition at MOCAJ though.

 

Forever and a go

Wow I just realized that I had not posted in months. That’s bad even for me. So a quick catch up.

1. I’ve been teaching a lot, three classes which is less than my usual four but one is a new class with a  steep learning curve. Nothing I can’t handle but it has taken up much time.

2. I’m running the University of North Florida Gallery of Art. I’ve been organizing the schedule for the next year and helping to open a new gallery on campus. It’s fun work, but time consuming.

3. I’ve been working. I finished three paintings in the last few months, I’ll post images in coming posts, but three is a big number for me in as sort a time as three months.

4. I’ve been exhibiting. Three exhibitions, one at Seton Hall University, one at the Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art and the Brevard Museum of Art. The show at Brevard is going to travel, I’ll let you know locations when I have them.

I’m tired just thinking about it.

 

Influences

I’ve been able to work in the studio pretty much everyday this past week. I’ve been finishing up a piece and getting started on another piece. Between that and putting together the UNF Gallery schedule for the next year I’ve been busy. I’m pretty excited about both of my pieces and I’m very excited about the upcoming schedule.

Toward the end of my Rome trip, my department chair, Dr. Debra Murphy, asked me if I had seen anything in Rome that was going to influence my work as I moved forward. I wasn’t sure how to answer the question because I was pretty overwhelmed by what I had seen. Now that I’m a few weeks out one image has come forward in my mind, the Ara Pacis. I’ve been caught up in the frieze parts in particular. I also happened to run across Vincent Desiderio’s Sleep image. So I’m thinking big on my next image, bigger than I’ve ever worked before but have always wanted to work. It will fill up my studio but I’m itching to get started.

 

Rome

Like I said in my previous post. I just got back from Rome, Italy. I was there for a month and had a great time. In addition to being able to teach in front of the Pantheon and the Vatican I went to the Venice Biennial, visited Florence, saw lots and lots of incredible artwork and had my fair share of some great food. I had intended on posting regularly while I was there, mostly about the watercolor I was teaching for the first time. In the end I hated teaching watercolor and wasn’t enthusiastic about talking about it. I’ll give my impressions about the Biennial and some other stuff in a future post but I did want to post the one image I finished over there. I did lots of drawings, filled up a new sketchbook but this is the one piece that was a complete image.

gouache, pen, parchment, olive oil and wine on paper. 11"x15" 2009.

 

Back to it.

So I’m pretty bad at this and I’m behind. In my defense I’ve been busy. I recently returned from a month trip teaching study abroad in Rome. Not a real excuse but I’m going to get back at it. I will, tomorrow.

 

Two in a row.

I just received and acceptance letter for a second show, two in two days.
It is for the Lilliput exhibition at the Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University.
They chose one of the two I submitted, Echo. I’m feeling good about myself today. I spent some productive time in the studio this morning. I’m nearing completion on a piece that looks good if I do say so myself.

echo

 

Finally

I received my first acceptance for the year. The Take Out invitational at the Brevard Museum of Art in Melbourne, Florida. I posted the images of the piece I sent in a few posts down. Feels good to finally have a show under my belt for the year. I’ll call it a good start to the exhibition schedule. Any chance to show in a museum I’ll take. Florida Museums have been good to me. Brevard, Tampa and I’ll be in a faculty show at MOCA Jacksonville later this year.

 

Goings on.

I’ve been on a tear the last few days, painting, drawing, prepping for the study abroad trip I’m teaching this summer and sending out for exhibitions.
The exhibitions have really been my focus 10 or so in two days. Most of them are pretty straight forward but I had two of note I wanted to mention here. The first was for a Drawing exhibition in Denver at Abecedarian Gallery. This was my first ever completely digital submission. Their requirements were simple, put together a submission, compress it and email it to a ftp site. No postage, no CDs or paperwork. I know this is the way things will go in the future and I’m happy for it, easy and cheap.
Th second was The Infantree Gallery, or on their gallery blog Nothing really special about their exhibition either but I was really impressed with the gallery. It was put together by three graphic designers and from what I read on their site they are doing things right. I loved their mission statement.

 

Exhibitions

Now that the school year is over and I have finally caught up on all the paperwork that follows the semester I’ve been able to start applying for exhibitions. I’ve always been streaky about this process. I try to be organized about it but in the end I usually have a flurry of applications that go out at the same time and then a lull in my activity.

I’m teaching the study abroad studio classes for UNF this summer so I’ll be out of commission in this regard so this seems to be even more pressing than usual.

I’ve sent out four or five of these things in the last two days but two of them were for unusual shows that yielded some new work for me.

The first was a show called Take Out at the Brevard Art Museum. The requirements for this show required the use of a Chinese take out box. I thought it would be fun so here is my piece that came out of that process.

I also entered some work in a show called Lilliput at Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University that had the maximum size requirement of 1.5 inches. So below are the two 1″x1.5″ pieces I entered.

echo

 

A new image I finished last week. Long Leaf X, oil on canvas.

LongLeaf X, 2009, oil on canvas