More from Georgeann

The Dreamer

Blue Skirt

Never Trust the Fox

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

In Contemplation of Kline 1987

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

Freemont Bridge at Dawn

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

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

East Salmon Street from the Esplanade

2004
oil on panel
8 x 10

Burnside Bridge, from the Steel Bridge pedestrian walkway

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

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

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

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

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

The Calm at the Top

2007
oil on canvas
44 x 75

$3,500.00

contact Rake Art Gallery for purchase

Home Sweet Home

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

At Play on the Willamette

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!

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

Thirteen Stones (detail)

This is only a detail of the completed painting which I will reveal in it's entirety here after my exhibit opens in May. This updates my previous posting of this image. The complete painting is 40' wide and 72' tall.

Meteor!

Here is a picture of the meteor that was witnessed falling over Eastern Oregon last week!

I've now posted three of the four paintings that I made specifically for certain people over the last few years, and this would be the fourth, which I made last summer as a going away present for somebody who I was sorry to say goodbye to. I knew my subject matter well enough on this one that I didn't need to refer to a photograph! One of these was observed coming close to the ground here in Oregon last week and people went off in search of it's smoking crator, but apparently in didn't actually hit the ground. It was captured on video however. Oil on canvas about 15 x 20

Marquam Bridge

Another Portland bridge also about 9 x 12 oil on panel and painted at the same time in March 2004.

Borrego Springs

Another California landscape image here, once again depicting a real place sketched in oil from a photograph. This has been a curious development in my art making that has only emerged in the last four years or so. I was once philosophically opposed to work drawn from photography, and inclined to draw upon my subconcious when rendering places, seeking the feel and spirit of my subject rather than the actual look of the place. You can refer to my previous post of "The Lake" to see what I mean here. Bodies of water perched at the edges of granite shelves are common in the glacial landscape of the High Sierra, but the regularity of the composition in the painting is nowhere to be seen in the actual place. I don't know if my philosophy is going soft or if it's just lazyness in my old age, but more and more now I'm tossing off the old prejudice's and using my photographs as a tool. In this case, I wanted to make a painting of a familiar landmark as a gift for somebody who had just built a house in the Ansa-Borrego Desert, situated to view this mountain through a large picture window.

Burnside Bridge, Portland Oregon

A couple favourite Portland landmarks, The US Bankcorp Tower, nick-named "Big Pink" is Portlands second highest building, and the Burnside Bridge, viewed from the Eastside Esplanade along the Willamette River. A smaller painting at about 9 x 12 on panel