Photos of Maplewood, N.J.

West Broadway and Grand

Bliss is a blowtorch

I've begun working with the male form. The following are 10" x 8".

I'm surprised by how different they feel compared to the women I have painted.

The other day I bought a blow torch. It melts the wax much faster than the heat gun I use. It also doesn't blow the melted wax around. So I'm able to get a smoother surface. Here are two larger pieces (30" x 24") that I created using the blow torch:

A mysterious quote of Baba Muktananda's was on my mind as I worked on these last two pieces: "The whole universe you alone are."

Early morning trees

Here are a few photos I took this morning:

The usefulness of uselessness

"All art is quite useless." 

Oscar Wilde 

In the late eighties and early nineties I was a student at La Guardia High School of the Arts. My life was devoted to music. Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and Lester Young were my idols. At eighteen I began gigging with my quintet in small venues in New York City. I wrote music and played tenor saxophone with a passion; I would end a gig or practice session in physical pain and emotional exhaustion.

Jazz clubs were dropping like flies. Swing and bebop had been a vital aspect of American culture. Yet the glory years of the thirties, forties and fifties, with places like NYC's 52nd street, didn't exist anymore. The music I was playing was disconnected from the times I was living in; I was rehashing a music that had died decades before. I was tired of pouring my heart into something that felt useless. I stopped playing.

At twenty I began working at my father's illustration and animation studio, Slim Films. There I learned that illustration and information graphics serve a specific purpose and have a defined goal. It was a revelation to be doing something concretely useful. After a couple of years working as a freelance illustrator I took a job as an assistant art director at Scientific American magazine. The editors worked with a passion that was eye-opening—even as they were writing about the most obscure subjects, like a particle physics theory that had no perceived relevance in our daily lives. It was as if I were surrounded by artists and musicians.

This reignited my desire to make music. I decided to leave Scientific American and go back to Manhattan School of Music, the conservatory I had dropped out of a few years earlier. I quickly learned that I didn't have what it would take to make it as a professional musician. It seemed as if the pinnacle of success was getting into the pit band of a Broadway show. The prospect of playing the same music day in and day out was a nightmare. At the time I was earning, and enjoying, a decent living as a freelance illustrator. Once again I stopped playing.

Over the years I became relatively successful as an illustrator. Five years ago I began to hire people and transition from a freelance illustrator to the creative director of my own studio. Two and a half years ago we moved the studio from Maplewood, N.J., to New York City.

I reentered the world of the useless; I decided to devote a significant part of my time and energy to creating fine art. Creating something that is of no use is an exercise in frustration. The other day I was complaining to an artist friend about this. Shaking his head he said, "People have no idea how hard this is. It's awful. Just awful."

And then, a couple of weeks ago I downloaded an album from iTunes of Barry Harris and Charles Davis, two of the teachers I studied with years ago. At the first notes my knees buckled. Time stopped and joy welled in my heart. It didn't matter what year it was. It didn't matter that what I defined as jazz had died years ago. What mattered was that for this brief time it was alive and well in my studio as I listened and danced.

Looking forward, and the year in review

January 2012 was filled with hope as my wife and I reconciled. Yet the stress of everyday life, exacerbated by the grim reality of my recently excavated past, began to affect how I functioned in the world as a husband, father, creative director and artist. This tension culminated in April, leading to my semi-enforced two-month sabbatical. 

I reentered the world in June reenergized. By August the honeymoon withered and died. But in October I began feeling a subtle, hard-won stability. I was standing on the new foundation that I had begun cobbling together in April.

If you have followed this blog over the past two or so years, you may have noticed a change in tone since I returned from my sabbatical. I am uncomfortable with how personal my older posts are. Since getting back I've swung to the other end of the spectrum. In the service of not being too personal I have cut off much of the lifeblood and passion with which I wrote. How I can retain some of my fire without being melodramatic will be a challenge for me in 2013.

One of my intentions for 2012 was to make a larger, more realized body of work. Now that the year has come to a close I'm happy and proud of what I have made. In 2013 I will be getting the work out there. (Given that you are reading this and—hopefully—looking at the pictures, the work is of course "out there." What I mean is getting the work in an appropriate gallery.) With this intention in mind I've redesigned my art website. It will be going live sometime in January. I've also produced a 36-page booklet that I will be sending to the galleries I can imagine my work in.

Here are three of the last pieces I made in 2012:

When people see my work I want them to feel connected to their highest self. That said, I've come to the painful realization that I can't control what people think or feel. Attempting to make a person think or feel a specific way is the domain of advertising, not art. (There is a strong argument against this; just look at all the masterpieces that were commissioned by the Catholic Church during the Renaissance.) What I do have control over is my attempt to find and clarify my intentions. This carries through to how I wish to live my life in the world as a husband, father, creative director and artist.

Happy New Year!

Multiple figures

I've been working with multiple figures:

A friend of mine, artist Jim Angell, said, "You're knocking on the door" when he looked at these. In introducing more than one woman the challenges of color, composition, and movement become more apparent. I'm happy with the sensual, fleshy quality the women have. But I'm bothered with the stasis of these pictures. The figures are similar in weight, color, and size. I want my eye to continuously rove around the panel, which it doesn't do yet. 

In the third piece I like the negative space that starts in the upper left and works its way down. But the negative space in the upper right is competing with it. I decided to make another version of this piece varying the color and lightness of the figures in hope to create more depth and motion. I also incorporated a new figure in the upper right to accentuate the negative space in the left. 

I'm leaving the safer realm of one centralized figure. I'm beginning to use the entire picture plane. I'm beginning to crop. I'm making asymmetrical compositions. But unfortunately this piece is not working yet. It looks like two separate paintings welded together down the middle. And each figure needs more contrast in its size, color, and weight.

In creating these pieces I'm gaining clarity on my process. Once I've printed on the fabric and bound the thing together with encaustic the picture is finished. I haven't figured out how to go back into the piece and change it. But what I can do is make another version. Working with the computer, I can adjust the hue and darkness of each figure. I can move the figures around. Because I am using a computer during this phase of the process I'm getting lost in all the options I have at my disposal. I'm realizing that I need to give myself more time to live with the pieces before they are printed and painted.