Toe Island 2001

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.

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

The idea here was a burned out stand of trees

45 x 50
oil on canvas
2007

Brian Eno : Before and After Science

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!!

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.

More stories about soup cans

I was lucky to be able to take notes from the original work in person before beginning work on my version of this installation of Andy Warhol Soup Cans from The Museum of Modern Art NYC. These were the original paintings from Warhols freshman exhibition at Irving Blums Ferris Gallery in Santa Monica California. They caused quite a stir but the show was a failure in terms of sales. This turned out quite well for Mr. Blum, who eventually sold this set of paintings for $15,000,000.00. None of my paintings sold at first either!

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

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

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

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

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.

UPC code Guiness Draft

This Painting from 2005 was the beginning of what became the Andy Warhol Bar Code Project. The first of several landscape paintings where I duplicated the arrangement of the bars from various UPC codes as trees in silhouette against water, and in one case against the backdrop of a clear cut forest. This work culminated last year with the Bar Code Project, an installation of 32 paintings representing all 32 flavors of Campbells soup from Warhols 1962 exhibition at Irving Blums Ferris Gallery in Santa Monica California.

In this painting I was playing around with the idea of twilight, and trees in silhouette against a body of water. In this 40" x 14" work in oil on canvas the sky and water are represented by 12k gold leaf. This causes the painting to change dramatically with changing light conditions.

This work is framed in a custom hand finished reveal frame and is available for purchase through Rake Art Gallery for $1,500.00