Dusk 2011

Oil on canvas 16 x 20

California Dreaming 2011

oil on canvas 12 x 16

NIght Driving

oil on canvas 16 x 20 2011

New work

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

Night Light

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

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

Princess Cid

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

Memory In My Dreams

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

A Birds Eye View

20 x 20
oil on canvas

The Watermelon Girl 2009

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!

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

More from Georgeann

The Dreamer

Blue Skirt

Sabbatical Over

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.

0 Degrees 155w

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

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

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

The Realm 1987

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

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

Watermelon Girl 7/1/08

He, He He!!!