New Work #1

Oh it's so nice to see you again. What have you been up to? Me? Oh, I had a show last winter, and started a new illustration project/book collaboration with an old friend, and started a new series of paintings. I kept working on my house. I traveled some. I kept teaching. Directed a couple of plays. Designed a couple of others. You know - the ushe.

The show went well...fine...whatever. The gallery director was difficult, but so it goes. The main objective was to create a body of work that tied up a lot of loose ends and allowed me to choose a direction to move forward with. And I think I got that taken care of.

One idea that I've been working through for a while, and that I plan to continue, has to do with portraits of toy faces. Dolls, action figures, figurines, etc. - they have a personality. I suppose it's all a little Toy Story-esque, but the time spent with a toy gives it meaning. It changes from an inanimate object into something vital. Eventually that ends though, and all that's left is history. Mementos, keepsakes, treasures - they have that tether to our past. 

Skeletor, 2013
Oil on Board
6" x 6"
This painting is of a childhood toy of mine. Skeletor was the vilian from Mattel's Masters of the Universe line. He spent his days plotting and scheming to destroy He-Man and take over the Powers of Grayskull. Not bad work if you can get it. In my hands he was an evil sorcerer conjuring Silly Putty vines to subdue his enemies, he was a potions master using discarded bottle caps and my mom's thimbles as his wares. 

But now he's not anything. He's a lump of plastic that I saved in a trunk. His usefulness is lost, and now that toy exists only as a reminder of a time when my imagination was new and there were still worlds to conquer.

Not bad work if you can get it.


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