I've been gone for a while, car trouble, the vomits, etc. I missed you blog. And all my mysterious readers that the hit counter tells me about! Email me, I miss you folks! You can use the email through blogger or nitsrik.com, both work real good. I've been talking to a few folks who found the blog, and it has been so lovely to talk painting again. This is one of the drawings I've been laboring over, though it is shot badly, in incandescent light. Why does my camera have a light setting for everything but incandescent light? Fluorescent it has got, tungsten of course, outdoor, etc... but no incandescent light? Am I dumb? Maybe someone can tell me, explain the digital camera mystery to me. Anyway, this post to be reposted tomorrow with a better photo and details. But I missed my blog. Missed it a ton.
So, um, the drawing. I have been so obsessed with the idea of multiple that I think I've lost my way. But I love this drawing, perhaps for losing my way. The flags are from the United Nations immediately following WWII, you will note a bunch of them are out of date or quirky. I set the project in motion and followed it out to what was its preordained conclusion, and now it feels like an exercise in lunacy. The whole operatic heaping of cliches may have overtaken self-effacement, but to what end? I can paint cliches, paint cliches into icons, heap them, multiply them, twist them into space, and then imply some sort of impossible accumulation, in order to critique excess? Does the multiple imply horror as it implies industry in capitalist economies? Is it what I consider beautiful?
This has already left my studio, and I miss it, but I forgot to post it to the blog a few weeks ago, so as I'm working on a few things I thought I would post it now. It was a gift, so I made it kind. I'm interested in the formal play of these deer, as if the echo of the shape is important somehow. My friend Arthur did a great post on visual rhymes on his blog, check it out here. It just got me thinking about my reasons for doubling and copying. Anyway, this drawing is tamer than some of the things I'm working on now! In the works: pin ups topping cornucopias, new moral messaging as campaign slogan, chopped up figures, all the presidents heads, more political cartoon as still life fruit salad. See you soon.
