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.

All About Surface

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)

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

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

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.