Oil Painting in the Studio

Video in the studio painting an imaginary scene of the ocean. This is based loosely on my Savage Island series that I've been using in my art for a few years now. This is one of the more calm pictures from that series. Here are more images from the island. And here.

Beautiful Art

I recently came across a you tube video of the German artist George Baselitz that is worth a look. The video features recent work that he walks through with an interviewer. In a vast exhibition hall his deep German voice and age combined with the echoes in the hall add to a rich and intelligent ambiance. It's interesting to see how the paintings inhabit the space and charge it with a quiet intellect. Seeing paintings and a painter like this is inspiring.

Broken Home

The constructed painting of a women with raised arms is a new painting I titled 'Broken Home'. It is a painting I made especially for the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence NCADV. They held a special affair at Gallery Lenfant this past Monday and I was invited to contribute a work of art to the night. The painting is about 50in.x44in. and is made out of cut wood and oil paint.

New Studio

I've been away from the computer and art the past month as I repaired one of the main studios I work out of. I had put it off as you will see from the photos for far too long. The structure is about 50 yrs old and was an old chicken coop. It had since the 70's not had a feathered guest and in 93 I used it first as storage and then as a winter studio. Other then some drywall, electrical and insulation the structure had no major improvements since the day the chickens were roosting. That all changed this past month.

This is before demolition...

and after...

Except for anew coat of paint this is the completed exterior.

The completed interior which can serve as a space for special exhibitions...

and art studio...

Charleston, South Carolina

All paintings shown here are oil on canvas and 30x24in or 24 x20in.

Finally some paintings! I was in Charleston SC last weekend and had a chance to make some paintings on Folly Beach and at a party. The bones and seashells are from the party where I made a still life painting of local bones on display at the hosts house.

The highlight of the weekend had to be a Jon boat ride with it's Evinrude motor that kept us busy for most of the morning. A boat ride that started at 6am and ended 50 ft from the dock at 2:30pm. This boat ride had a lot of excitement and touched on every aspect of navigating in a marine environment. All of of this under the careful watch of Captain Ryan. Can't wait to do it again, Cheers mate!

Pensacola Florida

The trip to Pensacola Fl. was perfect. The beach was great except for the jelly fish that got me. Beware of the sun here it will put the zap on you between high noon and 4:00 pm. Lots of great drift wood washes up on shore here and the Gulf of Mexico has a definite primitive and extreme feel to the water and shore with heavy rip tides and marine life of all types some the biting and stinging variety. A perfect place for an artist who wants to touch on the basis of life. I can see where Julian Schnabel got lots of ideas from having grown up in Brownsville TX living on the Gulf. Very Primordial.
By way of events beyond my control I am in Va. now but am still planning to head back to Charleston SC this weekend. It will probably work out for the best since I can pick up some paints and canvas. This blog is starting to be a travel log and there should be some paintings coming from all this travel soon. Well just have to wait and see what direction this all takes me.

Memorial Day

Happy Memorial day. I spent the past weekend at the pool in Waterford Va. and a barbecue at the house. The impromptu memorial is made from my dad's flag and 2nd. Div. Marine corp uniform from WWII with Puerto Rican flag in honor of my PR friend Edme who was in town for a visit. Great time. My attention is now focused on my trip south to Pensacola Fl. (Griff, Erin and girls see you soon.) Also on the itinerary is a visit to Charleston SC and visit to my friends Amy, Ryan and Liam's beautiful house.

See you on the road!

She said it best.

I was just reading the Independent and Tracy Emin's column. We inhabit different stratospheres of the art world and her trip she describes has been further then mine in more then one way but I still feel very much the way she describes in her latest column. Both in London and back home I have had the feeling of trying to catch up with myself. All my lists of things to do both in London and back home have sort of evaporated. I think maybe a trip to Pensacola Fla. and looking at the ocean and bleached white sand could help.

Back Home - Unpacking

I was so busy in London I never got a chance to post. I was up at 8 am and in at 11pm. I'm still metaphorically unpacking the whole trip. London was overload for all things art. Art and artistic sensibilities appeared to be in every corner that you looked. I felt you really didn't need to go looking for the most current exhibit as you would find something more interesting on the way. I did for this trip visit the more established venues in London and was astonished by the depth of collections at the British Museum, National Gallery, Tate Modern. The objects I saw at the British museum of ancient antiquities was overwhelming. Amazing to see the depths of artistic creativity across the world and through time. A great tribute to the British for preserving it and making it so accesible to the public. As I unpack this trip I will add more posts about London and we will see how it affects upcoming art from my own humble endeavors.

London

I've arrived in Hackney - London and will be posting from here for the next two weeks or so.

New Animations

I've posted some new animations. The plan is to make some oil paintings out of the still shots from these animations. Maybe by June I'll have a group of these paintings finished.

Art Show

Art show photos from June 2007 that I put together on You Tube.

Takashi Murakami at Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Peter Schjeldahl has a review of the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the New Yorker mag. The article is a good critical assessment of Murakami's art from a self confessed non fan. He says,

"And such tactile enhancements as scraped or drippy surfaces and applications of gold and platinum leaf, though often pretty, unwisely evoke painters who express feelings in what they do. Cynical artists should be careful not to remind us that we like sincerity, or, indeed, that it ever occurs. Most gravely, for me, Murakami seems temperamentally averse to a cardinal obligation of artists that Warhol, Koons, and Hirst accept: the duty to seduce. But to actively woo the eye and tantalize the mind implies the possible existence of resistant viewers."

I've felt this about Murakami's work since I saw the Gagosian exhibit last fall. Murakami is either going to double down on the art as product/commerce or at this point he might see the contrast between product and art. Is there a difference? Where are the boundaries?

Embedded Video

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New Years 2008.

I was uploading some pictures of my art show from New Years 08 to my flickr account and thought I'd post a link to those here.

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More Art.

All the art work from the past winter has been uploaded to my website pacostudios Hope you enjoy.

New Art Work.

New paintings from October 07 to April 08 have been posted on my website and can be found here. In the next few days I should also have pictures of the drawings I worked on this winter also posted at my website.

How to make a painting - Part III

The painting is at a nice stopping point now. Is it finished or not? I can't decide. I'm at a point where the changes I was going to make would alter it dramatically. I think I'll let this sit for a day and see what happens. The bamboo scaffold came to me near the end of this painting and it might be a good starting point for the next painting. The Bamboo Series. Well see.

How to make a painting - Part II

Not finished yet. I'll start again tomorrow and begin to break the composition apart. So far I've just blocked things in, letting each element of color, shape, content and paint suggest the next step. Here are the results so far.
Good night.