untitled

Big Afternoon, 2008. oil on panel 7 x 8




People often ask me how I come up with my titles for my work. And to be honest I sometimes wonder where the names come from because often the works seems to name themselves.

I have done, well, let's just say a lot of paintings and drawings of the San Joaquin Valley. I used to have titles like Flying Over the Valley, Flying Over the Valley II, Flying Over the Valley III, Flying Over the Valley VI. You get the point. I thought the names were just fine since its about the work, not the title. But when I first met my wife she told me that my titles were so boring that I couldn't help but improve them dramatically if I just used a little imagination. She encouraged me to use the working titles that I usually came up with when creating a piece. I had always felt that they were not serious enough to use as finished titles, and maybe gave too much away in terms of what I was thinking when I was making the painting. I soon realized it didn't really matter and it became fun to be more creative with my titles.


Titles sometimes come before I start a painting and the work is built around that title. Other times they come to me as I am working on a piece. If you came to my studio you would see titles graffitied all over the walls because they come to me at odd times. I never know where a good title will come from: the paper, a magazine, a book, a movie, the radio, or a conversation. I have learned to always have my ears open.


You would think that I would run out of titles for at some point, but I doubt it. As you can see I'm still "flying over the valley".

Not just a pretty picture

Every Afternoon, 2007. oil on panel 7 x 8

Here is another of my paintings from my Afternoon Sky series. In the summer the clouds build up on hot days in the afternoons and then the upper winds flatten the tops of the clouds off. It happens nearly everyday. I enjoy the luxury of seeing the same type of things on a repeated basis. It gives me deeper understanding of the landscape and the environment I live in. It is more than just a snapshot of a place, rather it is something that I hope is more truly and deeply felt.

Like a Mad Man

That's about It, 2008. oil on panel, 6 x 7

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I've been painting a lot these first few weeks of this year. I'm mostly doing smaller paintings which is nice because I can quickly just get a batch of new ideas down on the panel and out of my head. Probably some will work their way into larger paintings. At the same time these are not studies, per say. Its just easier to try new things on a smaller scale first to see if my new ideas work in paint. If any larger works come from these, they won't really resemble these painting at all, except in some of the color combination that will be used. Some of my most recent (stuff from this past week, I'll post them when they are dry) are quite surprising, I don't know to make of them yet. So, I'll have to wait and see what they look like next week when I get back to my studio.

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I can hardly wait.

Quote It

Early Evening, 2008. oil on panel 7 x 8

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With every painting comes a very complicated layer of memory.

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- Stuart Shils

another pastel

Soft Light, 2007. pastel on paper 9 x 12

Here is a pastel from late last year. I am really interested in the color of the evening sky when it transitions from yellow on the horizon to blue above. As we all know blue and yellow make green and while green does appear in our skies more often that people think, but it doesn't always, and it's fun to explore how to make the transition from the one color to the other without making green. In this piece when I mixed the light yellow and the light blue together it made the grayish color in the middle. It was an unexpected solution to the blue/yellow set up.

That's one reason that makes working in another media interesting and fun, because you can find unexpected answers to questions that you have been asking for years when you switch to a different media. That in turn affects how you solve the problem in your primary media.

Enjoy.

Turlock Centennial Exhibtion

Canal Reflections, 2005. oil on canvas, 30 x 40

Study-The old Home Ranch, 2007. oil on panel, 20 x 22

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These two paintings are included in an exhibition celebrating the one hundred year anniversary for the city of Turlock. The show is titled Turlock: Past & Present. My work obviously fits the present part of the show. I was asked to submit work that featured canals because of the importance that they have played in the development of our region. So, these two works fit the bill perfectly. The first piece is inspired by the large canals east of town, no particular place, just memories from when I used to ride the canals on my bike. The second painting is the study for the last large commission I did for 2007 (I'll post the commission soon). It features an actual piece of ground southeast of Turlock and has what is called the high-line canal that runs next the collector's property.