atomism

The redbud drops its color consecrating the cracked ground for one hundred hours.  It's a quiet Springtime transfer, the sun's last blessing before sweltering months.  Witness this and you'll fast forward to the planting of emerald rye in October.

Today my window is open and I hear the high school marching band practicing (they sound good).  The team has a home game this Friday against a conference foe.  And my neighbor is rider-mowing his lawn after a couple weeks of rainfall.

North of my window: The Arkansas Arts Center will include two paintings of mine for their 45th Collectors Show & Sale in December.  And I've been fortunate enough to be welcomed into AQUACHROME, a contemporary watercolor exhibit at Manifest Creative Research Gallery of Cincinnati opening November 8.  

meta

Let's talk about vanishing point, the title of this blog at the top of your screen.  Vanishing point is, for me, an irrational way of looking through my environment and into the unknown.  It is a shifting of colors and shapes around one central continuum (the vanishing point is always the same point).  It is the remnants of what's left - of both life moving past me as well as life fading away beyond my grasp. 

The street lined on both sides unfolds before me now and forever.  And though I'm not really as interested in the individual buildings on each side, I am comforted by how they contain the tunnel track of space (mainstream) that we move within.  

I don't believe in, no, I'm not allowed to structure my life around the idea of painting.  And this fundamental parameter encourages me to strive for the opposite: to live with my world, to not change  or deny parts of it, but to simply see it for what it is.  The result is a dictum: paint only what you can experience along the way.

This week I am delivering work to the Beeville Art Museum.  For my first museum show I will have work occupying the entire main gallery through the end of December.  Opening reception is September 28th from 12-2pm.

john parks

I just finished a phone interview for Watercolor Artist Magazine with John Parks.  Though I tire easily when talking about the particulars of why I do this or that, I know I'm in good hands.  He is a seasoned painter and writer with a sense for connecting craft with its concept.  I look forward to the February 2014 issue.  He also saw what I see in this inkscape from last year...phew, I thought nobody would.  

Yesterday I sent a painting to the Russian Federation.  Dobryy Den.

  

And Davis Gallery of Austin is still showing my newest work with David Leonard and Daniel Burns.  There will be an artist talk on August 14th there at the gallery.  The three of us will explain everything.

John Parks also liked this one.  Thank you, John.

design without intentions

Paying attention and then not.  A flea infestation and then something not as small like the anteater at the zoo last Sunday.  The house across the street is emptied, its window is ajar and the curtain blows, and it's ordinary.  Opinions are strong about the right way to live these days.  But it's the night time that interests me and its design without intentions. 

John Hejduk and Colin Rowe, among so many of those post modernists, had a lot to say about such design.

I dreamt I was a tree in a courtyard.  Everybody was a busybody.  

Davis Gallery of Austin is part of WEST, West Austin Studio Tour, open Saturday and Sunday.  

migratory

Ruby throated hummingbirds have returned.  The first red (bloodgood) leaves open upon the bare branches of my Japanese maple.  And I still find a plastic Easter egg here and there.  All a celebration of moisture's arrival.  

An appetite for transformations.

Between Park Avenue and Harlem.  

work and play.

a tool to make a tool

A city is the runway for the flight of ambition and the descent into melancholy, a long street pounded by hopes and frustration.  It is the dynamic substance I've chosen for exploring the subtle behaviors of watercolor.  For transforming commonplace into mystery.  Because the delicate spilling of watercolor on concrete isn't a gesture of expressionism — it's human vulnerability.

Heading outward, I pack a tool inside a green bag.  Yes, it is a camera, and it is an important tool that I use to make another tool. 

Snapshots develop into paintings develop into questions.  Can painting paper communicate buoyancy?  Is this finally where time can be squandered?  

listening

My father is 76 years old.  A January boy from Manhattan.  He has become a volunteer, somebody to meet convicts newly released from years of imprisonment.  They sit across from each other in the morning, the time to go out and get.  And for my father the getting is to become a listener, though his hearing is nearly gone.

I am 40 years old.  And I am pleased to announce my first New York solo show.

 March 26-April 20 at the George Billis Gallery.