I have been anti-internet lately, not getting back to people via email, neglecting this blog and refusing to sign onto myspace for almost two months. I think I just needed a break, I get a lot of email and messages and keeping up with it drives me crazy (currently 300+ messages flagged to reply to going back to 2005). I know it's bad of me, I love the fact that people want to share their work or ask for advice, I appreciate it and think it's awesome but I just can't keep up these days. So I'm trying to at least update this beasty once in a while. My last post was over a month ago.

Here's what's been happening....


New artwork for a charity auction organized by the infamous Gary Baseman. We painted into vintage paint-by-numbers.


A new painting called "Magic in the Forest" for Limited Addiction gallery in Denver, CO. I've been working on a lot of new ideas based on these clouds. I think the style could make an interesting graff mural....


Working on my next show in september at Jonathan Levine gallery. Hitting a bit of artists' block but that's normal for me between shows and I know I'll pull through soon.


A design I did for my friend Jon Schiller's helmet. He's races rally cars.

Jon got ahold of my camera and took some studio shots...






Went to Shaunna Peterson's house to pick up some art...

A CD cover she was working on.



Awesome Marylyn Manson sock puppet Shaunna made in college. And the rear:



I can't for the life of me remember what these toys are called... bomblings? Grenadites? I'm too lazy to look it up. This is Shaunna's portrayal.

Aaron Mason came over to paint the other day, working on his piece for "Kicks"- a shoe show at Black Iris in Fontana. He was painting on his brother's military boots that he wore in Iraq.




Here's some photos from the show a few nights ago...

Aaron's finished piece.


Jason Gallo's shoes..


My homie and graf writer buddy Maxx checking out someone's shoe art.


Maxx's Vans.


Carved wooden shoes. Not sure of the artist...



Regino Gonzales (on right) is in town from New York City. He's also known as RG and we've known each other for a long time. He used to live here in the I.E. but moved to NY to attend SVA. He's an excellent and talented painter and I think you'll be hearing about him more in the next couple years as he starts to show in more galleries. Sorry other guy, can't remember your name...


Regino's Addidas.

Back on the home front...

Shannon loves books.


We went to Gymboree for the Valentine's day party..


One of my newest interests is checking out the birds in our yard. I could do a whole blog about the birdwatching but it would probably bore everyone to death. Except Chris Ryniak who has mentioned spotting different bird species in his own blog. Everyone else would die of boredom and stop reading. So I'll just post a couple things..

We have a woodpecker (a Nuttal's Woodpecker I believe) that lives in our tree. sometimes he chases the other birds away from the feeder I put up.

He's made holes like this one all over the tree.

Jennifer got two finch socks for her birthday. The birds were lining up to eat, they went through the whole sock of seeds in a day and a half! Pretty neat being able to see them up so close, and Shannon loves it.

We've also had the following in our backyard: California Towhee, Scrub Jay, Rufous Towhee, Audubon's Warbler, House Finch, California Thrasher, Bewick's Wren, Western Bluebirds, Starlings, and a Kestral lives nearby and uses the tall junipers as a lookout. I'm always trying to get good pictures but they are too fast and I'm not sneaky enough.

One more image to leave you with. Say hello to Timkaren...

Trip to the Norton Simon



Last week my friend Aaron Mason and I went to do a little art watching at one of the nicest lil' art museums in Southern California. The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena is smallish but has some real beautiful work hanging in it's halls. I studied there a lot during my art school years, so I know all the paintings pretty well. They still give me ideas and inspiration, despite seeing them so many times. I've been going through a little bit of artists' block, and sometimes all it takes to get out of the funk is to see some work hanging in museums or galleries.

I don't remember all the artists' names, but I tried to take pictures of some of my favorite pieces. There is an awesome feature on the museum's web site that lets you zoom in on the paintings, so if you really want to check things out, go to http://www.nortonsimon.org/

Aaron checking out a gothic version of Adam and Eve.


This is a painting by Matthias Stom, a student (?) of Carravaggio. My photo just doesn't do it justice. By the way, sorry for the blurry pictures- no flashes allowed.


A Rembrandt self portrait. I like that some of his paintings were very tight and some were very loose. I believe (and I may be wrong) that his work loosened up as he got older.


Aaron checking out a painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. It was originally mounted on the ceiling in a French palace.



A portrait by Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. I love the way she painted the eyes. This artist's story is very interesting as she was a successful female in a male dominated profession. She was the royal portraitist to Marie-Antoinette and the French royal family. One of my favorite pieces at the museum.


I think it's cool that back in the 17th Century hiring an artist to paint some ass was acceptable as long as there was some biblical story involved. It's a nice painting but it sorta comes off as pornographic in an old fashioned way, amirite? The Norton Simon website doesn't have this image in their collections page, I wonder why? Are they slightly ashamed?

Art changed with the invention of the camera and artists started experimenting with how color and light worked in their paintings. This was the beginning of a big change in all the arts, which is still in some ways flowing into our contemporaries. The museum seems to change drastically with the work the Impressionists were doing. Most of these paintings are about the color and light and texture, which my camera just didn't capture. Here are a few that turned out...


Van Gogh's mother. I love this painting. The colors are so strange and vibrant, and you can see the affection he had for her in his brush strokes.


The texture on this Van Gogh is crazy. Looks like he used whole tubes of paint squirted out onto the canvas.





Amedeo Modigliani's death mask. Do they still make these? Modigliani is one of my favorite painters.


Diego Rivera. This has always been one of my favorites.


Picasso to me has always been hit or miss. I either love it or am not too into it. I've always liked this one, something about the colors make me feel good.

The museum also has a few nice Kandinsky's that my camera didn't get good shots of. There is a Henri Rousseau that's pretty cool. And some Paul Klee work. And an Ed Ruscha. Good stuff. They had a photography show downstairs that looked pretty good. No photos cause photos of photos= bad photos. They also have a good Southeast Asian sculpture collection (once again, photos of these turned out bad).

We'll see if this trip helps the artist's block....

Bunch of boring stuff to write about...

It snowed yesterday in Riverside. I've been here since 1985 and it's never snowed, it came as a shock to see small flakes falling down in our yard. I thought it was pollen then realized, no way, it’s snowing! It gets cold here in the winter (for southern CA) but dang, never would have thought I'd see snow! Jennifer, Shannon and I went in the backyard and tried to catch the snowflakes but they melted as soon as it touched our hands. Supposed to be super cold again tonight and the frost can damage plants and crops so I picked a bunch of avocados. Our tree has been producing some damn good ‘cados lately. It’s all about the guacamole...



Shaunna, Mike and Dylan came over last week and the babies had a bath together. These will be good photos to embarrass them with when they’re older...



Bought some new books the other day- Albert Reyes- I love this guy’s stuff, Jim Houser- will be showing alongside him at JLG in NYC Sept 2007, “Dear New Girl”- a book with tons of art from some of my art heroes- Kevin Christy, Taylor McKimmens, Jason Holley, the Clayton Brothers, etc. and American Hair Metal- a look at the glam rockers of the late 80’s. That’s aaaahwsome dude! I remember my friend Jacob and I were really into some of this stuff, Poison, Motley Crue, GnR, I guess when I think about it, we liked the better bands. We hated Stryper, thought they were lame.





BLK/MRKT is having it’s BMG Artists’ Annual show tonight. I got to see alot of the work earlier in the week when I dropped off my piece. I really like what Amir Fallah (creator of Beautiful/Decay mag) is doing, and there’s a lot of other fresh pieces in the show. I really like the direction they’re taking at BLK/MRKT. I forgot my camera that day but here’s an image of my new piece that will be in the show, “Fall Energy Waves”.



Here's some more from BLK/MRKT... Amir Fallah:



David Ellis:



Kinsey:



Robert Hardgrave:



Lucy McLauchlan:




Went by the Mu Pan and Esther Pearl Watson show at La Luz de Jesus. At first I thought it’d be a strange duo but somehow the paintings work pretty good together. They’re both telling stories with their work- Mu Pan’s are epic stories of life and death, Esther Pearl Watson’s are memories of her father’s UFO fascination. I really enjoyed both artists visions. I met Mu Pan a couple years ago at Fuse gallery NYC. He’s a cool guy and good friends with Regino Gonzales, an old homie from the I.E.

Esther Pearl Watson:




Mu Pan:




Also went by Art Center yesterday and Mike Bertino had work up on the front gallery wall. Pretty nice...




A couple months ago Jonathan Levine and Mark Murphy came out for a studio visit. he has uploaded some of the videos onto Youtube. Who knew there was a Ron Jeremy-Jonathan Levine connection?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1tGLAIhMWs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI-LyhfkOv4

After my show in November the stress level dropped a bit and I started playing a little Warcraft late at night. From an artistic point of view, I love the candy coated colors, I mean, look at the pretty sky color. They can do some cool stuff with videogame graphics these days. I grew up with Atari, Sega and Nintendo so seeing what they can do nowadays trips me out. I almost went into entertainment design in college, would have been fun working on games...



Next entry- the Norton Simon Museum...

This is a post of all the blogs I check out when I have time (which hasn't been often lately!) There are more but I lost some of my bookmarks. Lemme know if you come across a good art blog...

David Choe

Souther and Saelee

Eric Nakamura from Giant Robot

Sam Flores

Coop

Martha Rich

Chris Ryniak

James Jean

Kozyndan

Tomer and Asaf

The Plundering

The Chung

Jamie O'Shea's Supertouch

Crown Dozen

Fecal Face

Art Blogging LA

The Hundreds

Upper Playground

The holidays are finally over (not that I’m complaining about em’, they just can take a toll). Back to business as usual. Here's what I've been up to.

A couple friends and I went out to see some L.A. shows last week. Aaron Mason, Jason Gallo and I ventured into Los Angeles on the hunt for art.


First we went out to Lucius Hudson in Gardena. These are the guys I get my canvases and panels from. If you order anything from them, make sure to mention my name. It was pretty cool, Horacio the owner gave us a tour of the facilities. (I forgot my camera and wish I had of taken some pictures).

After that we went to go check out the Chris Mars show over at Billy Shire Gallery in Culver City. I’d actually somehow never been to Billy Shire since it opened (last year??) and it turned out to be a really nice open space. They had some good books there too (I picked up a nice Ron Mueck catalog, the guys work is insane).








Chris’s work is scary and fascinating, and I haven’t had a lot of chances to see it in person. It was a strong show, tons of pieces to look at, he must paint everyday which is awesome. There’s always a special place in my heart for the Mars familia. Chris and his wife Sally were the first people to buy one of my paintings. This was back in 2001 and they bought it through La Luz de Jesus Gallery (owned by Billy Shire).

After that we swung by BLK/MRKT to see if any of my work was still up (Jason didn’t make the opening). We got to see a few things but it was sorta sad for me seeing the paintings being wrapped up and shipped out. I’m always like, damn, that’s the last time I’m going to see these pieces in the flesh.

Our last stop was at the Forum Gallery to see the Odd Nerdrum show. I’ve never seen his work in person and it’s beautiful. He paints in the techniques of the old masters, layering transparent oils to get luminous flesh tones. The photos don’t do these paintings justice at all. They have to be seen by the naked eye. I particularly like how he loses the edge on his paintings and then finds them again. Awesome stuff.





There were a couple more shows we wanted to check out (Camille Rose Garcia, etc.) but we ran out of time and got stuck in L.A. holiday shopping traffic. Not fun. Took us almost 3 hours to get back to the I.E.

And as for Xmas, here is proof that tattoos have become waaay mainstream. A toy tattoo gun. As if Miami Ink wasn’t enough. It was fun though, nothing wrong with drawing on everyone. I even got a "Shannon" tattoo from my nephew.