dane wilson

Dusk 2011

2011-02-27T22:53:00.000-08:00

Oil on canvas 16 x 20

California Dreaming 2011

2011-02-17T23:07:00.000-08:00

oil on canvas 12 x 16

NIght Driving

2011-02-12T20:58:00.000-08:00

oil on canvas 16 x 20 2011

New work

2011-02-05T15:01:00.000-08:00

Here is the same image from my wood block print re-imagined in oil

Night Light

2011-01-26T12:04:00.000-08:00

Continuing with the imagery of a light in the dark, this 30 x 30 canvas is the execution of an idea I've been mulling over for a while now!

Cats

2010-12-27T17:50:00.000-08:00

It occasionally crosses my mind to make pictures of my pets. Here are a couple of my favorite feline room mates. Thumper and His Toys 36" x 40" was executed in acrylic and assemblage in 1983 when Thumper was a small kitten, and includes a number of objects attached to the painting that were retrieved from under the stove where he lost them. He often brought objects into the kitchen because they were much more fun to bat about on the linoleum than on the living room carpet. Thumpers Dream 1986 is 45" x 60" and combines heavy matte impasto acrylic surfaces with one of my earliest experiments with oil paint. It is one of the early transitional paintings from the symbolic icon approach of my early work, to the the naturalism that I now employ in search of a more poetic visual language. Princess Cid 2010 final version 30" x 40" is oil glazes from start to finish

Rustic Table

2010-12-25T13:29:00.000-08:00

I made this table as a Christmas present for my daughter. It is constructed from sticks of the pine lumber that I mill for the stretcher bars that I use for my paintings, laminated together to make the top, and legs fashioned from yard debris... tree trimmings rescued from the firewood pile. No marshmallow roasting for these sticks!

Princess Cid

2010-12-25T13:17:00.001-08:00

This portrait of my other daughters cat was made as a Christmas present for her.

monotype

2010-02-10T23:13:00.000-08:00

this print was in collaboration with artist friend Chris Mullins and based loosely on the birds eye view aerial perspective work

Memory In My Dreams

2010-01-27T23:24:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it seems a bit early to be posting images from this but I feel like putting this out there to mark the beginning of this project which will be keeping me occupied for a very long time so I and any who care to may look back and ponder it's humble beginnings. This is the initial sketch from a portion of the four units that will make up the upper left hand corner of an image planned out to cover five two foot square canvases high, and ten long. The image is of an historic landmark in architectural history, the four level interchange in downtown Los Angeles, an engineering triumph in it's day, and the beginning of the modern freeway system in the US

Study for Memory/Birds Eye View - progress so far

2010-01-21T23:59:00.000-08:00

Toe Island 2001

2009-12-27T17:33:00.000-08:00

This image was inspired by the flooding of the Willamette River in 1996. The stretcher I used was built in 1995 at a time when I had no place to work, and it hung in the outbuilding on my property as a spirit guide and inspiration during the transformation of that space into what is now my painting studio.
Toe Island is a tiny sand bar in the Willamette River on the south west side of Ross Island. During the flooding in 1996, the shrubs were all submerged for a prolonged period of time and surprisingly survived the strong current, but were all bent downstream in the wake of the flood. This was the story I wanted to tell here, but the silhouetted trees in the foreground became the inspiration for the bar code paintings that formed the basis for the Andy Warhol Barcode Project five years later. I recently visited the friend in California who owns this painting, and was able to photograph it successfully for the first time.

Wood block re visited

2009-11-22T15:26:00.000-08:00

A couple proofs of an image of California savanna woodblock print, with color hand rolled onto a monotype plate and over printed to create second image

From the model

2009-06-17T21:44:00.001-07:00

Some more drawing selections

A Birds Eye View

2009-05-16T00:01:00.001-07:00

20 x 20
oil on canvas

figurative work 2009

2009-05-15T00:02:00.000-07:00

I have been attending an open life drawing class for five weeks now. It has been 28 years since I have done work from a live model, and during that time period I have rarely visited figurative elements in my work, so I have to admit that in the beginning, while rendering competent work during these sessions, i was not quite happy with my approach, and therefore not quite happy with my results. I have finally settled in and loosened up enough to grasp at the kind of drawings that I really want to play around with. Here is the first of what I hope will become a new body of work.

The Watermelon Girl 2009

2009-04-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

Well, What can be said? I began work on this in June 2008, but it didn't really take 10 months to paint... I really spent six months meditating in a cave without food or water. Well, I finally emerged to finish this grand essay, and I will tell anybody who wants to know that I am very happy with the results! Hope you feel the wait was a worth while one!

2009
oil on canvas
60 x 50

Georgeann Wilson, Still Life!

2009-03-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

Here is a new direction for Georgeann. About 30 x 30, oil on canvas

More from Georgeann

2009-03-19T20:49:00.000-07:00

The Dreamer

Blue Skirt

Sabbatical Over

2009-03-16T00:11:00.000-07:00

I have resumed work on the Watermelon Girl tonight and will post the finished work probably in a few weeks. In the meantime here is recent work by my studio partner and wife of 29 years, Georgeann.

It is said that the Moon is made of Green Cheese, 1983

2009-02-01T00:13:00.000-08:00

This painting is my donation to the Cascade Aids Projects annual Gala art auction. I have used this grand event with mixed results in recent years to find some exposure for works from my portfolio archives that I think contains certain redeeming qualities, but which have never been publicly exhibited, and also are not likely to find exhibition opportunities elsewhere in my lifetime. This painting began life as a strictly non-objective construct. I came to recognise certain representational elements later...the red bands as the cording on military band unifofrms and the white disk as a moon shape in a night sky. Lately it has come to read rather ominously to me, as a view out from a concrete bunker at night. The title given here is new, created for the entry form for the auction. I felt a need to lighten things up a bit!

Georgeann Wilson

2008-12-20T20:16:00.000-08:00

The Sky, The Land, and The Talking Sticks

2008-12-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm still on a bit of a sabbatical so here is another archive work of interest, from around 1982

Mark Montoya - some serious doodling!

2008-11-05T12:22:00.000-08:00

While my skatboard work is not included in the current showing at Artery in North Portland, This image painted on three skateboard decks by friend and co-worker Mark Montoya is. A former grafitti artist and constant doodler, this showing in conjunction with the ARTISTS FROM BEAUTIFUL LOSERS exhibit represents Marks first public showing of his work. In addition to Mark's mixes media painting instalations, I am showing selected work from my recent drawing project Flow, and other current and former Katayama Framing employees Beau Gordon, Chris Mullins, Peter Murdoch and Vanessa Stockard are also on display.

Update! Marks boards remain on display at Artery and the recent exhibition of skateboard photography was covered by Skateboarder magazine Marks boards got some coverage at this site as well! http://www.skateboardermag.com/skateboarder-photos-videos/photos/flash/seen-of-change-art-show-portland/index.html

Artery is at
4114 N. Vancouver Ave
Portland, OR 97217

skateboard deck

2008-11-03T22:54:00.000-08:00

This skateboard deck was manufactured by my friend Scott Moore from Subsonic Skateboards and I put this landscape of tree trunks sihlouetted against a gold leaf background onto it. Check out the Subsonic skateboard link. I also have some drawing from the work on paper "Flow" on view at "Artery" in North Portland, in conjunction with a show of work by artists featured in the "Beautiful Losers" documentary film. Featured there is skateboard artwork by another Portland colleague, Mark Montoya

The Tempest

2008-10-14T20:27:00.001-07:00

Well, a bit of a stretch here to call this one poetic, but it is one of my pioneering pieces in the narrative vein so I will label it here to group it together with the other poetic narrative works. It's absurd humor and in your face crudness in the execution have always made this one a handful for many people to appreciate, and also made it one of my favourites! It features twin towers. I had seen the twin towers in Manhattan, and there are also a pair of towers in Century City in Los Angeles where I lived at the time. The towers in this painting aren't specific archcetectural features, I simply found the visual effect of identical twin scyscrapers a compelling visual and used them here to represent the harshness and isolation of the urban landscape. There is alot going on here with the factory puffing smog into the red sky and the artificial mountain in the backyard of the suburban house (think Disneyland) I suppose the Greek diety is going to blow it all away so that we can start anew? I worked on the study more as an independant doodle and saw all this as I contemplated what it might have been, and so found the path for the large painting you see here.

The Tempest
1983 acrylic on canvas
64 x 40

study
1982 acrylic, charcoal and collage on board
16 3/4 x 12 1/2

Update Watermelon Girl

2008-10-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

Here is this painting as it stands so far. I haven't been working on it for awhile with too many other priorities distracting me from this calling, but i should be back at it soon

Never Trust the Fox

2008-09-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

left panel
15 x 60

right panel
15 x 60

I can run I can I can. This is another painting that got bound up in my decade+ hiatus. During a brief time where I had a small studio in a single car garage at an apartment where I lived in 1991, I was able to work on three paintings. The right panel of this diptych was freshly begun when I stopped work and moved to new digs, where I was unable to manage a satisfactory work space. The dimensions of the canvas had been specific to cover the ugly backside of some kitchen cabinetry that faced out into the living room of that apartment. My oldest daughter was three when I stopped working on it. It was a well defined rough sketch at the time, and used it for decor on the walls of various bedrooms that my daughters shared throughout the next ten years or so. It was however far from a finished work. When I resumed work in 2002, I was met with serious protests from my girls, who had grown up with the unfinished painting as a part of their lives, and didn't appreciate the changes that it began to undergo. Free from the original constraints of covering the ugly cabinet work in a long forgotten apartment, I began to re think this project and decided to develop it further as a diptych with text elements, similar to the word paintings I had done in previous decades. In addition, I am now in the process of fabricating an ornate gilded picture frame with the title " Never Trust The Fox"carved onto it as a decorative element and a part of the conceptual foundation of the piece. The panels go together as a long, horizontal mirror image with the text on the left and the folk art styled image on the right

Oil on canvas
15 x 120
1991/2002/frame in progress

0 Degrees 155w

2008-09-17T23:34:00.000-07:00

Or otherwise known as The Sea Monster Painting.
There is an array of NOAA weather buoy's across both hemispheres in the Pacific Ocean that track weather conditions, water temperatures, and currents, in order to learn about and predict the El Nino events that cause such havoc in the global climate from time to time. The title of this painting is the latitude and longitude of the center buoy in that array. This would be sort of an allegorical painting I suppose but that is an awfully big word for me and I don't suppose I really know what it means! Really though, I wanted to tell a story about mans historical fear of the unknown and longstanding effort to tame the natural world and thus be safe. This painting is partners with the Drowned Man on many levels. I will leave it to the viewer to figure it all out. I will say that the sea monster himself is a hybrid of a fifteenth century nautical map monster and a manga styled dragon which I did to please my young daughter who was passionate about that kind of artwork at the time that I began this work. She has moved on in her aesthetic appreciations, but this large scale painting remains very popular with young children, especially ten year old boys!

2006
oil on canvas
72 x 84

Looking Out of the Bay

2008-09-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

And here is the final painting. Too large to either put into my storage space, or to bring with me when I cleared it out and moved my artwork here to Portland, it has had a place on a large wall in my family's home in Huntington Beach California since it's completion in 1987

The Bay
Oil and 22k gold leaf on canvas
120 x 60

Looking Out of the Bay study

2008-09-07T21:41:00.000-07:00

This painting served as the study for my final grand painting of 1987. Essentially a sketch in oil paint executed in techniques more closely related to my work with acrylic. It is about 25 x 30

In Contemplation of Kline 1987

2008-09-03T00:37:00.000-07:00

Franz Kline "Nijinsky"

This six foot square canvas is the result of two divergent parts of my life coming together in a somewhat random fashion. This was a bit like my pondering the visual relationship between sihlouetted trees and UPC codes which then led me to translate Andy Warhols 32 soup cans into 998 trees alongside a river in the Bar Code Project. In this case, my work as a picture framer in Los Angeles in 1987 brought me in close contact with the Museum of Contemporary Art's collection of Franze Kline paintings which had been recently donated and were being prepared for the museums innagural exhibit at the new downtown location. I had a black telescope eye goldfish of significant size and finnage at the time, and whilst studying my fish as I wound down from my job I discovered a close relationship visually between my fish and the paintings I had been working with. See for yourself!

Note: As I'm reviewing this post I have discovered a surprisingly detailed resemblance between the right third of my work and the composition in the Kline painting that I found to illustrate my narrative here. This is pure coincidence but serves to illustrate my point quite nicely. I did my work from sketches taken from life, and only became familiar with Klines "Nijinski" during the google image search for this article!

1987
oil and enamel on canvas
72 x 72
Kline photo courtesy of timeout.com

The Realm 1987

2008-08-30T00:15:00.001-07:00

This large work, (60" x 72"), from February of 1987 was the high water mark from my early years striving to find my path as an artist and still stands in my mind as my most masterful work of art. The product of years devoted to learning the craft of painting, and my epiphany regarding the poetic possibilities of picture making and story telling through my artwork, I saw this painting in my mind as a complete vision and knew exactly how I wanted to execute it. Due to it's size and complexity both in composition and glazing layers, it took me close to two weeks to complete, even though I worked quickly with a clear vision and almost no need for revising. This was and is a rare experience for me when I work, as my general approach to making art is to first get something started, and then follow a path of experimentation and revision until my growing understanding of the work allows me to see the correct path to hone and fine tune the image to it's own true nature. This can actually be a very frustrating process for me, and with large work it is usually the case that I have to let it lie fallow for weeks at a time in order to get a sense of what either works, or doesn't work, so that I can go forward and work effectively. In painting "The Realm" I never experienced doubt or frustration, only exhilaration at having every brush stroke, wipe, and drip work out for me exactly the way I had hoped it would. Ironically, I was at the threshold of a long hiatus. By the end of summer my studio and paint supplies would be in storage. It took me until 2002 to get it all back.

The Realm
oil on canvas
60 x 72

The Drowned Man 1986

2008-08-22T20:42:00.000-07:00

This painting from 1986 was the beginning of my current approach to making pictures. I had made some technical discoveries in terms of working in oil paints, and applied them to a narrative imagery in a way that was totally new for me. I think of these works as poetic narratives. Though I am reluctant to put that kind of label on my own work and it is really for others to decide if my work can be called "poetic", outside of any public discussion of my work, this label has served me in private to define the quality of these paintings within the context of my own portfolio. For most of the last six years I have primarily relied on landscape paintings to re-establish my skills with the brush, use of colors, and the tactile qualities of the paints and mediums. Occasionally I have dipped into the narrative realm and cross-bred the landscape work with conceptual ideas and my poetic narrative ideals, but my current drive and interest is to launch full bore into the wacky world of story telling with pictures. The Watermelon Girl is part of this. Stay tuned!

1986
oil on canvas
67 3/8 x 37

Drawings from the Southern Range of Light

2008-08-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

Over New Army Pass at 12,000+ feet to Sky Blue Lake. Some selections from my sketch book.

Gone to California

2008-07-23T17:12:00.000-07:00

Time to hang out with friends, re-charge my battery and collect some new inspirations. Back in August

Frame Update (Watermelon Girl later!)

2008-07-17T20:31:00.000-07:00

Done with this.

As A Framer...

2008-07-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

So, this is still a busy time and I haven't worked on my painting for awhile, but since I do mention in my profile that I make beautiful picture frames, I've decided to share a bit of the work that I offer to collectors and other artists in the Northwest as a fine craftsman in the service of Katayama Framing in Portland Oregon.
This finely crafted woodwork is soon to be Water guilded in 12K gold for a 50 x 50 inch beveled mirror. You can go to the website www.katayamaframing.com to see other examples of work and services that I and many other fine staff people do for the art community here in Portland and beyond!

Picket Fence

2008-07-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been putting up a friend in my studio for a week and therefore have not had an opportunity to work on my Watermelon girl so I will continue here with another of my word based series from 1980. Finally the complexity of the real landscape of Santa Barbara county had crept into my work, and though this painting is primarily conceptual in nature, I was beginning to have fun with the representation of real things.

1980
acrylic and painted wood
35 x 45

Santa Barbara Landscape 1979

2008-07-06T23:17:00.000-07:00

In league with my word based work from this time, I strove to use assemblage to connect my subject matter here to the real world in as many ways as I could think of at the time. I collected sand and flotsam from the Santa Barbara shoreline, leaves twigs and dirt from inland areas and used cotton fluff and cellophane for things like water and clouds since I couldn't get the real thing. This picture was badly stored for many years and much of the original collage work was lost, including the cellophane and cotton stuffing. I restored this work in 2004 from an old photograph, with materials collected here in Portland

50 x 60
Mixed media on canvas
1979

Santa Barbara 1979

2008-07-01T23:32:00.001-07:00

Santa Barbara Landscape #2 Horizon Line

Continuing with word work, I did this early in my 17 month stay in Santa barbara. Huntington Beach had given relatively simple landforms with a basic straight line horizon and only trees and the walls of the subdivisions to break this up. This was especially true in the case of the ocean. The mountains around Santa Barbara come in close to the city and the ocean, and rise up all around crisp and clear. This complexity crept into this painting a bit but I did not yet have enough experience with this perspective for it to fully intrude into my painting. It might have been a more successful painting had I made it four months earlier, in the presence of a truely dominating horizon, looming through a hazy atmosphere.

Acrylic on two stretched canvass'
63 x 28

Watermelon Girl 7/1/08

2008-07-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

He, He He!!!

Watermelon Girl 6/28/08

2008-06-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

Continuing to update this work in progress. It's a bit scary right now but don't declair me a madman just yet!!

oil on canvas
50 x 60

Hang Glider Painting 1980

2008-06-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

A pair of wedge shaped canvass' put together to form this 2' x 8' wedge. It is an illustration of the rate of descent of the two basic types of hang gliders in use in 1980. Paragliding had yet to be invented1

Watermelon Girl 6/25/08

2008-06-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

Watermelon Girl continues...............

More Word Painting from the Archives

2008-06-24T22:24:00.000-07:00

GAME PLAN (Ping Pong Green) 1978
Using paint color from a can called "Ping Pong Green" which was really the inspiration for this piece, I constructed stretchers that created a window into the canvas where I ran a small section of ping pong table netting for this painting abvout games and rules and strategy in competition.

40 x 48
rubberized playing table paint, acrylic and spray paint on canvas
1979

Watermelon Girl 6/22/08

2008-06-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

Now she's coming along!

oil on canvas in progress
60 x 50

Gimmik Painting 1979

2008-06-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

Title says it all!
This image doesn't adequatly show the rotation of the dayglow paint color flags attached to an electric clock motor that rotate every 15 seconds or so.
Other gimickery includes painting on the reverse side of multiple layers of plexiglass with irredescent paints, and of course the phonetic spelling of the word gimmick itself (though perhaps I should have used only one M in that case) At the time of this piece I had a philosophical opposition to any kind of illusion in my work as well and included a nod towards perspective as another gimmick in this piece. As a final gesture to throw this piece over the top, I signed it in the lower right corner "Art" Sadly the electric motor no longer works. I do not know if that can be restored

Road Test 1979

2008-06-20T20:39:00.000-07:00

Second of several paintngs that explored language, the first being the previously posted "Surface Painting" These involved single point conceptual ideas with every possible link that I could think of wrapped into the excution. Road Test was a study of the asphalt and how it's used and what I actually found there. The canvas is stretched on bars in the shape of a road in perspective with related text and items actually found in the street fixed to the canvas, including dirt.

Watermelon Girl 6/16/08

2008-06-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

A new work just begun. Just sticks so far! I share my studio with my artist wife, Georgeann. Those are her canvass' on the wall in the background.

50 x 60
no oil or canvas yet!

Magic 8 Ball Fortune Telling Game, and Santiam Classic Fancy Cut Green Beans

2008-06-16T00:16:00.000-07:00

The idea here was a burned out stand of trees

45 x 50
oil on canvas
2007

Brian Eno : Before and After Science

2008-06-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

ground

Creating an image of a clear cut forest and living here in the Northwest proved to be an educational experience for me. I envisioned a painting of a road cutting through my UPC trees and was half finished before even taking on the idea of what the background ought to be. I thought first of painting in a forest backdrop into which the bar code trees would simply melt, but soon realised that in the real world here in Northwestern Oregon there is a setting where it is quite common for a treeline to flank both sides of the roadway in an otherwise barren landscape. This is how the land has been traditionally clearcut here, stripped of all vegetation except along the sides of the roads, so that the tourists passing through don't get too upset by the devastation, and go home to write their congressman with environmental concearns. While I was simply seeking a logical visual solution for the background of my painting, I stumbled upon a politically charged image, and many viewers of this painting were more interested in my political stance than in my compositional concerns. In the end the painting was purchased by a collector who was most interested in it's connection to Brian Eno's record from 1978, which had provided me with both a bar code for the composition of my lovely stand of trees, and the seemingly random set of numbers across the bottom of the composition.

45 x 60
oil on canvas
2006

Beggar Dog Bisquits!!

2008-06-14T00:36:00.000-07:00

Well, in the beginning at least, my crafting of landscapes from the compositional outlines presented from UPC codes seemed to evoke a sense of humor and absurdity in my work and in this piece I strove to pursue that to a kind of extreme. My favourite restaurent in Los Angeles was a mexican food establishment famous for its hip late night clientele, brown sauce that I was warned to avoid, and dangerous margueritas. They also had a wonderful collection of paintings of Mexican villages rendered on black velvet and little electric lights lighting up all the tiny cottages represented therein. With this painting I tried to capture some of that over the top yet sincere kitsch that I found in those paintings. Abandoning my usual bag of tricks in the pursuit of the perfect brush stroke, I went shopping at the local Michaels craft store, and the nearby fabric store for a full pallete of iredescent fabrics, puff balls, sequins, plastic pearls and puffy paint, and working on a beautifully stretched piece of black velvet with gold metal leaf, this image was born. My friend Vanessa did not approve! Perhaps one day she will reconsider.

The Portrait Of Door E (In Grey)

2008-06-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

Another example of my early object based pieces. A bad pun I'm afraid. I enjoy putting these out there. Hope I'm not the only one!

1978
acrylic on canvas with brass letter "E" and knob
32 x 80

Freemont Bridge at Dawn

2008-06-09T20:05:00.000-07:00

Here is my final work so far involving the archetecture of infrastructure in the city of Portland. I realized that I've finished up with the series of paintings that I did for the Buckman School Art Show and Sell, but along the lines of the Show and Sell, this painting was made specifically for a fundraiser - a failed attempt by the Portland Art Center (PAC), to raise enough extra cash to keep it's doors open. The show was called "PDX Panels" The Art Center passed out 300 30 x 30 plywood panels to area artists to work with however they wanted. I followed the basic formula that I used for the Show and Sell, choosing to work from a photo of a familiar Portland landmark. I gave myself no time limitation for this painting, and therefore allowed myself to give it a more polished finish and plenty of artistic license in the sky, which was purely creative fabrication. A friend noted the similarity in the sky to Munch's painting "The Scream" Not intentional, but perhaps subconciously, my knowlege of art history leaks into my work occaisonally?

2007
oil on plywood
30 x 30

Under I-5

2008-06-07T20:21:00.000-07:00

The archetecture of the freeway structure on the east side approach to the Marquam Bridge created some interesting compositional elements. This view is looking north from somewhere near Salmon Street on the east bank of the Willamette River.

8 x 10
oil on panel
2004

The Man in the Malt 1977

2008-06-06T23:27:00.000-07:00

This is where it all started. As a teenager in the 1970's painting held a less than prestigious place in my conciousness. I learned about what was cool from my peers in high school. This would have been airbrushed artwork on the sides of vans and post hippie album artwork by illustrators like Roger Dean and his numerous psudo surreal album covers and caligraphy for the prog-rock band Yes. I also learned that Dali was cool but neither me nor my friends knew anything about any other surrealists, or art history. The only other major modern artist who's name was familiar to me was Pablo Picasso, and he was not understood, and therefore reviled among my peer group and family members. I had little interest in art as I knew it then. Through an inspired painting teacher at the age of 17 who gave us a taste of the history of modernism through painting exercises in the style of the modern masters, from Monet and Impressionism, through Picasso and abstraction, I learned the language of paint and found that I was powerfully drawn to learn to speak it. One and a half years later I had learned enough to concieve and execute this painting which was completed in the first week of January, 1977. This was my first major work of art and the beginning of my self awarness as an artist. The assignment was open ended exploratoin into photo realism, as the final for a life painting class. My subject was my close friend, life long companion in the High Sierra, and spirit guide, Don Flaherty, who had shocked us all in 1975 or 1976 by, for health reasons, eliminating sugar and processed foods from his diet. I chose this painting as a humerous and ironic way to do his portrait. I learned much about the spirit in painting and the magic of the touch of the brush to the canvas, and about color and form and contrast in the following 31 years, but I've never made a better work of art!

oil on canvas
48 x 72

Steel Bridge, Portland OR

2008-06-06T18:10:00.000-07:00

2004
oil on panel
9 x 12

East Salmon Street from the Esplanade

2008-06-05T18:54:00.001-07:00

2004
oil on panel
8 x 10

Burnside Bridge, from the Steel Bridge pedestrian walkway

2008-06-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

This one is owned by my friend Scott Moore. He was an organizer of the Buckman School Art Show and Sell and we made a trade. I got one of his skateboards. Check out his site, it's the Subsonic Skateboard link!

Also, check back to the May 5 post for the full installation view of the Alpine Lake Triptych!

ciao

Downtown Portland

2008-06-02T23:19:00.000-07:00

This view from just south of Riverplace and the Hawthorn Bridge is no longer possible as a high rise condominium has gone up in the spot where I stood to take the photograph from which this sketch was painted. The boardwalk at Riverplace is one of my favourite places to hang out with a beer or glass of red wine on warm sunny Portland Summer afternoons.

2004
oil on panel
10 x 20

Fire Hydrant

2008-05-31T23:20:00.000-07:00

An interesting subject I thought. From the Waterfront series for the Buckman School. At the end of the day shooting photographs from which to select imagery for my series of two hour oil sketches, I'd focused enough on the archetecture of bridges and the light in the sky and reflecting on the water of the Willamette, and pointed my camera at this object as an unlikely subject for a painting.

2004
oil on panel
8 x 10

Portland Bridges

2008-05-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

This oil on masonite sketch looks south on the Willamette River at the Morrison, Hawthorn, and Marquam bridges.

2004
oil on panel
8 x 10

East Side Esplanade

2008-05-29T17:57:00.000-07:00

Returning to the group of paintings that I did for the Buckman Elementary School Art Sale, this was on of the better ones in my opinion but I failed to get a picture of it so I asked it's current owner to email me an image. It's a small file so doesn't enlarge so well but you can get the gist here.

10 x 12
oil on panel

Watermelon Girl

2008-05-21T20:14:00.000-07:00

In 1981 I found this oddment leaning against a trash can waiting for the weekly pickup by a house in Sunset Beach in California. Tissue paper collage and likely made by a child, something about it captured my imagination and though as a work of art it probably deserved the landfill, there was potential in it's subject and composition. I saved it, and with white paint I developed some contrast between the subject and it's background, gave it a title and called it my own! Twenty seven years later I now plan to use it as a study and work it out as a large painting in oil on canvas. Stay tuned for updates!

18 x 24
collage and mixed media on found art panel
1982/original date and artist unknown

Herb

2008-05-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

Before I met any of the people here in my neighborhood where I live and work, I met this character, a good natured lab named Herb. As he was getting on in dog years I realised that I wanted to document him in his domain while I still had the chance, so I made this spirit trap to remember him by. His home was on our street where he developed relationships with all the neighbors, and monitored the coming and going of all who had buisness on our street. It was common on winter nights, when I came home from work after dark, for Herb to be standing in the middle of the street in my headlights lit up like an apparition in the dark. This is how I will always remember him. Rest in peace old fella.

oil on canvas
48 x 45

$1,200 through Rake Art Gallery

The Archives

2008-05-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

2003 "Frozen Lale", 1985 "The Lake", 1990 "Spring Thaw"

Image courtesy of Shawn Long Photography

cantact Rake Art for purchasing information

Calm at the Top and company

2008-05-13T20:08:00.000-07:00

Images courtesy of Shawn Long Photography

Purchasing information through Rake Art Gallery

The Scroll, 6' of 220!

2008-05-11T19:00:00.000-07:00

Here is the scroll in it's case at Rake Art Gallery. On the wall behind the case are high resolution digital prints scanned from the original drawing, and printed on high quality museum rag paper in an edition of 25 for each image. Larger prints are 74" x 14" and the smaller prints are 46" x 14"

Images courtesy of Shawn Long Photography

contact Rake for purchasing information

Installation view of The Rock Garden

2008-05-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

Image courtesy of Shawn Long Photography

Purchasing information through Rake Art Gallery

Excerpts from Flow

2008-05-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

Around 210 feet

from The Rock Garden

Around 220 feet, The End!

Selections from the Rock Garden

2008-05-08T23:09:00.000-07:00

In August 2007, with the drawing "Flow" 2/3 complete, I did a series of 16 rock portraits in a sketch book while backpacking in Humphries Basin in the John Muir Wilderness in Fresno County. All of these portraits were transcribed into the scroll as part of its final 20' grand finale. In addition, a few of these portraits were incorporated into the paintings that were completed for the exhibit as well.

(appears in "Calm at the Top")

(appears in "Rock Still Life")

ink and graphite on paper
image size 5 x 7
framed size 9 x 11
Archival framing from Katayama Framing in Portland Oregon
dark finished walnut frame by Marcial del Cid of Aloha Oregon
8 ply museum rag mat, and UV filtering glass

$350.00 each

contact Rake Art Gallery for purchasing information

The Reflecting Pool

2008-05-06T21:02:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from "Flow" at aproximately 200'

Freshly completed in late April and now hanging at Rake, this painting displays the full range of my representational and conceptual cross-polination. The rock composition appeared first as innocuous background in a photo taken by a friend, at the Kern River along it's forested lower elevation shore on the western slope of the High Sierra. I interpreteed these river boulders into a section of the 200' scroll, giving them a new setting and scale as rock hopping stones in my alpine stream. For this painting, I re-interpreted them yet again as stones breaking the surface in the shallows along the shore of an alpine lake in "The Reflecting Pool"

2008
oil on canvas
72 x 45
$3,500.00
contact Rake Art for purchasing information

Alpine Lake Triptych

2008-05-05T18:43:00.000-07:00

Detail of one of the three canvases that form this triptych of nearly identical paintings.

Installation photographs by Shawn Long

2008
25 x 40
oil on canvas

available individually from Rake Art Gallery

$1,200.00

A Pair of Pairs, The New View!

2008-05-03T21:05:00.000-07:00

Rock and Reflection
35 x 35
oil on canves 2002
1 of 2

Still Life Rocks
35 x 35
oil on canvas 2008
1 of 2

These images, mostly painted this past January were executed as a pair of diptychs where the canvases in each represented nearly identical images. As the work was being arranged for installation, I realized that by placing the two different images together and stacked vertically with the "Rock Still Life" painting as the lower image, I had a new diptych configuration that utilized the two separate images to create a single scene. Happy accident and lucky discovery. The pair of pairs worked as a very effective installation.

available individually for $1,200.00
contact Rake Art for purchase

Thirteen Stones

2008-05-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is Thirteen Stones in it''s entirety.

40 X 65
oil on canvas
2008

$3,500.00

contact Rake art Gallery for purchasing information

The Frozen Lake

2008-04-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

The alpine story begins here.. Many of the high lakes in the Sierra Nevadas remain frozen over until mid to late summer, depending on how heavy the snowfall was the previous winter. Frigid looking scenes like this unfold before the traveler on warm afternoons when the order of the day is a sweat soaked t-shirt and short pants. Snow melt from the high elevations feed streams and creeks all through the summer and provide sight and sounds wherever you travel, as well as an occaisional difficult water crossing through stiff currents and over slippery rocks.

45 x 45
oil on canvas
2003

$1,500.00

contact the Rake Art Gallery for purchasing information

Spring Thaw

2008-04-26T15:20:00.000-07:00

In the beginning, there were 10 stretcher bars constructed in 1988 of various sizes that were to be painted illustrations for a narrative surrounding the life cycle of a single leaf on a tree in the woods, through the complete seasonal cycle. Tree in winter was the first painting, begun in 1988 but put away due to the impracticality of trying to work with messy and toxic mediums in the living quarters of an inqusitive toddler. In 1990, and living in a different apartment where I had a single car garage to work in as a studio, I made an attempt to complete the Winter Tree painting, and moved on to this canvas. This work shows the same scene, but is focused on the rocks and stream close and to the left of the trees lower trunk, where the early spring thaw has allowed a small stream to flow again. I only lived at that apartment long enough to complete these two paintings, and as mentioned in my earlier post, I reworked the original painting yet again when I began working in my current studio here in Portland. I never returned to my narrative series about the leaf on the tree, and used the remaining stretchers for the other work that I made beginning in 2002 when my current studio became usable. These two canvases are a reminder of that ambitious project, and this image is a direct forerunner to my current interest in depicting the streams and lake shorelines of the alpine environs of the mountains that mean so much to me.

1990
oil on canvas
44 x 31

$1,200.00

contact Rake Art Gallery for purchase information

Tree in Winter

2008-04-25T19:18:00.000-07:00

This was a project begun in 1988 with a toddler in the house and no good area to work in, re-visited in 1990, and finally completed in 2003. At one time there had been a bird hopping through the snow.

40 x 45
oil on canvas
$1,200.00 un framed + shipping
since Rake art gallery is no longer in buisness, this work can be purchased directly from the artist

The Calm at the Top

2008-04-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

2007
oil on canvas
44 x 75

$3,500.00

contact Rake Art Gallery for purchase

Home Sweet Home

2008-04-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

This late Winter scene in Downtown Portland looks west up Salmon Street from Waterfront Park during a break between storms. It was a clear crisp Sunday morning in early March as I recall. The woman who bought this painting from the Buchman School Art Sale told me that she worked in Koin Tower, the tall brick red building on the left side of the street.

"Salmon Street"
2004 oil on canvas
36 x 45

More Flow!

2008-04-15T23:47:00.000-07:00

Holy crap! presentation of this drawing is a major engineering and planning nightmare. With the installation date only 11 days away I have images to have printed and framed and the display case to build and finish, paintings to complete and more to frame, and the video installation is in the hands of others and I can only pray that it all comes off professional and on time! Enjoy another section from the 200' scroll while I go pull out my hair!

At Play on the Willamette

2008-04-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

Still on art made for the Buckman School art sale, and still on paintings that are in Dubai, this one was a Christmas Present for my nephew Alex year before last. I plan to use this photo as a study for a large scale painting soon. I do love painting water!

2004 oil on panel, 8 x 14

Painting found!

2008-04-13T23:15:00.000-07:00

One of my paintings for the Buckman School Art Sale four years ago slipped through the cracks when I did my photo documentation of them in March '04. There were 12 small paintings on panel, and one large painting on canvas. Since people at the art sale didn't seem to be interested much in paintings, or two dimensional art in general for that matter, most of my efforts went out as christmas and birthday presents to family members over the course of the following year. I discovered this one three weeks ago in my sisters home in Dubai, and took the opportunity to get a photo of it before I left. It is now included in my portfolio for the first time. Don't know how I missed it since it was one of my favourites from the series. This view is from the east side Esplanade along the Willamette River in Portland looking across the river at central Downtown Portland.

8 x 10
oil on panel, 2004

Painting Interrupted - "The Opposite Shore" 1987/2003

2008-04-08T20:04:00.000-07:00

Started in 1987, this painting got packed up and placed in a storage unit in Southern California, along with the rest of my artwork, supplies and tools. There it lay fallow for sixteen years. When I collected my art from storage and brought it home to Portland in 2003, the grey sky, some green underpainting, and a rough sketch in indigo linework was all that existed here. I had recently completed seven paintings on canvas that I'd stretched onto bars made in 1988. Once I got the feel of my paint craft back again, I returned to this canvas, which was charged with meaning for me as the symbol of my separation, and my return as well, from my former life as an artist. This painting contains the root imagery for the drawing "Flow" as well as the drawings and paintings that will form the supporting cast in my upcoming exhibition in May, where it will be seen for the first time.

oil on canvas 25 x 35

Flow

2008-04-07T18:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been away for a week and jet lagged for another so haven't posted much in a while. Now that I'm back in the saddle I'm trying to prepare various artworks for exhibition at the end of the month. Much of the focus now is on the display of a 200' scroll of paper with a drawing of an alpine stream on it's length. Here are a couple excerpts from this work.

"Flow" at 70 feet

"Flow" at 185 feet

Blondie 2003

2008-04-03T21:42:00.001-07:00

In 2003, shortly after my return from hiatus, I painted this portrait of my wonderful pooch Blondie, a high maintenence labrador mutt what goes all gloomie if she doesn't get a walk every day!

oil on canvas 26 x 48

Thumper

2008-03-31T17:58:00.000-07:00

"Thumpers Dream" 1986
oil and acrylic on canvas 40 x 23

"Thumper and His Toys" 1983
When he was a kitten he liked to bring things into the kitchen and bat them about on the smooth lineoleum. Eventually they would end up under the stove. In this portrait I collected and assembled some of these objects about him on the canvas.
mixed media on canvas 36 x 48

Paul Landacre 1893 - 1963

2008-03-21T23:12:00.000-07:00

"Sultry Day" 1937

Well, here is an image from an artist whose work was pivitol in bringing me into the fold of representational and poetic imagery. At the time, I was working through a process of creating paintings that were scuptural objects and intended as spirit traps. In Paul Landacre I found imagery that evoked a kind of mystical connection to the landscape of the Southern California of the 1930's and 40's and the powerful images created by his medium of black ink and wood block printing spoke richly of a grand landscape in spite of the intimate size of the actual image. I saw an extensive collection of his work in 1983, which was a very productive year for my own work. As I look back on my work through that period I can see that my work was to be deeply effected by what I discovered at that show. It took a couple years to assimilate this new language and my production in 1984 was at an ebb wile I strugled to reconcile what I was doing with my work, and what I now wanted from it. I found my new path in 1985 and my inspiration blossomed while I focused on perfecting a new craft, in the use of oil paints. Then in 1987, my 15 year hiatus began.

This beautiful scene shows Landacre's wife and cat in their Los Angeles home at a moment of blissful tranquility. In the background, the hills radiate with the heat of a summer afternoon. The only other artist I know of to capture this so beautifully, is the author John Steinbeck

The Putting Green

2008-03-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

Continuing with artwork based on polite sports for upper class Englishman, this painting comes from 1981. A large scale, shapped canvas, painted in acrylic, it's about 6' across with a hole in the middle of it. This is one of the numerous "object" paintings crafted during my early years. This was a family line that died out in favor of first, painting that was part of my search into the primitive aesthetic roots of image making and written language, and then my true calling; poetic narrative and landscape paintings.

This may be purchased for $2.200.00 through Rake Art Gallery

Tennis Anyone? 2

2008-03-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

As I said, the tennis ball made it into the serial assignment. We were to make four paintings, and were free to find our own subject and approach to the assignment, Divergent thinker that I am, I made two large square canvases and completed the four painting requirement by putting two separate square images on a single large panel, (actually an un-used sliding closet door from my parents house complete with it's aluminum frame and nylon wheels)
This painting is also from 1977, is 78 x 42 and the tennis ball is rendered in oil paint while the rest of the painting is in enamel. The figure in this series of paintings came from a newspaper photograph of a fireman climbing over a chain link fence during the course of his duties and I placed him in a new setting. Neither of the paintings on canvas have survived.

Tennis Anyone?

2008-03-15T00:46:00.001-07:00

Well, going deep into the archives again! From the same period in early 1977 as "All About Surface" I came up with this solution to an assignment to work with light. A painting in triplicate! I don't know what became of these and had forgotten that they existed until I found a slide image of them and scanned it to disk to include in my portfolio. Sorry about the dust scanned with the slide, it's all I have and I doubt that these paintings exist anymore! I don't recall most of my thought processes behind this exercise but the tennis balls made their way into an assignment to create a series of paintings later that semester. What interests me about it now is that it is essentially three identical paintings, which is what I happen to be working on right now. After many years of creating landscapes from subconcious recollections, I have recently begun to accept photographs occaisonally as source material for painted images. For my cucrrent triptych I refered o a photograph for my starting point, but the really interesting part of the process is duplicating the loose brushwork from the initial painted interpretation of the photo, onto the subsequent canvases without using the photograph at all. The end result is very similar but the mental process is quite different (and frustrating to a large extent but the discipline seems to be worthwhile as the finished product is developing into a fairly interesting set of paintings!)

Mount Goddard

2008-03-12T23:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm enjoying the process of looking through my archives and digging up my painting roots to share here. Here is my earliest painting reference to those California mountains I so love. In 1974 when I was 17 years old, I ascended Mount Goddard in the Ionian Basin near Kings Canyon. The view from on top was nothing less than astonishing and a permanent and powerful impression was made. At that time I knew nothing about art and had never made a painting before, but that was about to change. Two and a half years later, I knew very little about art, and not much about painting, but I knew that being an artist was what I was, and that I would be painting for he rest of my life. Here was a language that I understood naturally, and could speak, and this was a new and exhilerating experience for me. This was one of my earliest pieces, and I was grappling with the concept of abstraction. I wondered, if you render perfectly an abstract image from your environment, is the resulting product realism or abstraction?
This 48" x 48" painting in enamel on canvas is an enlargement of a portion of a topographical map of the area surrounding Mount Goddard. I find the relationship between this painting and Andy Warhols soup can paintings very interesting. I was a few months perhaps away from learning who Warhol was, and almost 30 years away from understanding his work.
Andy Warhol was a minimalist.
I don't know if my painting is abstraction or realism.

Andy Warhol Bar Code Project, - 32 Cans Of Campbells Soup!

2008-03-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

Each 15 x 23 canvas details a bar code with fir trees representing a particular flavor of Campbells soup. The actual flavor and position corresponds with the flavors and positions from Warhols original soup can paintings from 1962 as they are currently displayed at the Museum of Modern Art. Two flavors are discontinued and he section of the UPC code in those paintings that identifies the specific product is left blank, appearing as a break in the tree line. The individual paintings go together to form a continuous image 61 feet long.

oil on individual canvases, available as a complete set through Rake Art Gallery

Realising that the uneven lighting in the gallery space makes this image a bit hard to read, here are a couple detail images

I Bought Andy Warhol

2008-03-05T20:38:00.000-08:00

In 2007 I completed a series of canvases that had Andy Warhol as a conceptual subject for landscape paintings with trees arranged in patterns according to UPC codes from product labels that related to Warhol in one way or another. I refer to this endeavor as "The Andy Warhol Bar Code Project" and it's main presentation was a 32 piece instalation of paintings based on the 32 flavors of Campbells Soup from Andy's first exhibit in 1962. In addition, I painted a triptych of larce canvases using bar codes from books related to him. This I call "The Philosophical Triptych - Reflections of the Philosophy of Andy Warhol" Warhols own book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, forms the connective tissue that binds the three paintings in this series. All three paintings have reflections of trees in a body of water and the common thread in the triptych is the trees in the reflections, all composed from the UPC code from Andy's book. The actual trees in each painting however come from different books. This is the center panel. It is a 72" square and features the bar code from Richard Polsky's humerous and revealing look behind the scenes of the international art market, "I Bought Andy Warhol". I have nicknamed it "Andy's Island"

This painting is featured in the current issue of Oregon Home Magazine

http://www.oregonhomemagazine.com/articles/portfolio/scan-this-the-art-of-the-barcode.html

I Shot Andy Warhol

2008-03-05T20:28:00.000-08:00

This, the second image from the Philosophical Triptych Borrows the UPC code from the published screenplay from the mid 90's film of the same title about the assination attempt on Andy Warhol in 1968 by an angry aquaintence, Valerie Solanis. In this painting, unlike all of my previous images utilizing bar codes, the code is read in the negative space between the trees rather than in the dark tree trunks. The reason for this is directly related to the image in the third canvas

The S.C.U.M. Manifesto

2008-03-05T20:16:00.000-08:00

Part three of the Philosophical triptych. The UPC code here is from the book authored by Valerie Solanis. It is the same landscape as "I Shot Andy Warhol" and as is the case in "I Shot Andy Warhol", the barcode reads in the negative space between the trees. S.C.U.M. stands for "Society For Cutting Men" and by using negetive space for the UPC code in these paintings, I was able to present the bar code for Valeries hate diatribe as flames.

This is the only painting still available from the triptych. It is 72" x 20" and is framed in a 3/4" 22k water gilded reveal picture frame with beautifully finished natural wood sides and can be purchased through Rake Art Gallery for $2,000.00. plus shipping. Free Delivery within the Portland metro area.

All About Surface

2008-03-04T23:35:00.001-08:00

In the late 1970's I worked with conceptual ideas and a minimalist non objective aesthetic, and for my own amusement and also that of my audience, I created art objects that were intended to be humerous, working with visual plays on words and language, or puns. The beginning of my journey towards landscape was a graffiti style representation of the outline of a hill. These images were perhaps more representational than I knew or intended - coastal Orange County where I grew up, Huntington Beach specifically, is flat with few features, and is often hazy so that distant landforms appeared only as flat hazy silhouettes. My outlined hill forms were in fact fairly accurate representations of both Saddleback Mountain, and Catalina Island, the only landforms that I was really familiar with in my daily life.

This painting from 1977 was intended to tell everything I could think of to say about surface, and took the form of both graffiti and a chalkboard. It is acrylic modeling paste on canvas painted with black chalkboard paint, with a window opening into a green chalkboard panel with definitions of surface and graffiti images drawn in colored chalk. Here you will find one of my earliest landscape images.

It is 48" x 48"

Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining (Storm Over The Island)

2008-03-04T23:20:00.000-08:00

By 1982, my graffiti style landscape forms were evolving into a primitive form of naturalism. I was subconciously becoming tied to my observations of the natural world. This painting was intended to be a simple flat shape of a long hill in a non-representational context but I had been commuting along the coast during winter storms while I had been working on it. I was extremely frustrated with this picture until I had turned it into an island in a storm. Though the shape is different in real life, this is what Catalina Island looked like during the week that I found resolution in this image.

96" x 15" acrylic, powdered pigment and silver enamel on raw canvas NFS