Blog Archives

6/30/2020

Long Live the Rose Underpainting

🚧UNDERPAINTING IN PROGRESS🚧
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Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one even cared. Tupac Shakur
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✌🏻.
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When you don’t know how to paint roses but @stephanbullard wants to see some roses, you friggin figure it out.
I’ve been doing flower studies for a few weeks. Sketches in pencil, pen, oil paint. And I also did a lot of not-flower painting studies. It’s called learning by the indirect method. Look it up. 😂🥀
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I can’t wait to see this one.
🦁
30x40” acrylic underpainting, oil paint to follow
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6/28/2020

And then the wolves showed up

On the easel today. I had absolutely trashed this portrait a few weeks ago. I wasnt sure if she was going in the trash or just painted over entirely. I’m just following the wolves that showed up again in my studio today🐺. But didn’t you just paint that?
You know...The idea of pop music is not to tell the same story but to tell the story again in a new and interesting way. We dont buy these albums (or download, stream whatever ) saying “oh there’s someone singing about love, no body else is doing that.” People have being singing about love for 500 years. The man who does my tattoos is also a very talented blues musician (with heavy metal leanings☺️)he believes every song is a love song. It’s the idea of making it different so that you hear, maybe, until now, no one has ever actually gotten it right. .
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✌🏻.
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Oil on canvas 18x24”
(I’m not saying I’ve gotten it right. This has a long way to go.)
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6/26/2020

The First Painting I Ever Sold

Feed the Good Wolf, oil on canvas 16x20". Finished. Sold.
Oil on canvas 16x20”. .
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When you let people see you at your worst, you don’t have to wear the mask so much.
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✌🏻.
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Feed the good wolf.

Someone on instagram messaged me asking how much this painting was. I didn't know I was selling my work at the time and I didn't have a clue about pricing so I said...850? And they said Great!... and it's been a heck of a ride since.

6/25/2020

Sarah, or, How Fox Like Me Started

⚠️STUDY IN PROGRESS⚠️
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The first time tigers invaded my studio I knew I was up for a challenge. Likewise, trying to paint Sarah’s wild and not-easily-tamed curly hair. .
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🤣
I’ll figure this out.
Oil on canvas 18x24”
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-- Looking back on this in 2022 as I transfer my IG posts to this blog I'm smiling knowing I never did "figure this out" infact, i painted a fox face right on top of her and it would become the painting "Fox Like Me"

6/24/2020

Laurel portrait

The only thing I know is that if I get to my studio, that means I’m alive today. RF
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WIPs
Oil on board 12x16 “and oil on canvas 3’x4’
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Studio vibes today🖤🤓
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6/23/2020

Little Miss O

🖤portrait of little miss Oakley; photo ref by her mother @somerrunner .
Hope begins in the dark.
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Finished.
Oil on board 12x16”
For dad.

6/22/2020

Shutterbug II progress

⚠️WORK IN PROGRESS⚠️
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Surrealists say revolution always occurs at night, not day. In dream, not in the conscious life. They appreciated the power of dreams to make us see the world differently. How many women sit infant of a mirror dreaming of glorious looks for themself?
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“Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots and movie stars.” - Dorothea Tanning
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It’s not that I don’t like movie stars, just keep your eye on your own dreams and your own visions.
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✌🏻.
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Oil on canvas 3x4’
Portrait of my sister @somerrunner, ref photo @ryanthrower 📸

6/22/2020

Oakley sketch

Almost done
Photo ref of my niece by @somerrunner .
Little Miss Oakley
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✌🏻.
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Quick little sketch oil on board for Dad.

6/21/2020

Old Fashioned / Shutterbug I

⚠️WORK IN PROGRESS⚠️
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I never think of painting as old fashioned. In a way, TV and video and are old fashioned. As long as something has been around a year it’s old fashioned. Painting is as valid as any other art form. It’s what you bring to the easel that matters, not necessarily the form you choose to express your ideas in. For me, painting is completely alive and kicking and up for wrestling with. I don’t want to prescribe what people should or shouldn’t think about them.
If they want to think about something personal that’s fine, if they want to think about something old-fashioned and poetic, that’s fine, too.
...Is poetic always old-fashioned?
Hope not.🙈
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Oil on canvas 24x36’

6/20/2020

Out of the Blue Phase

⚠️WORK IN PROGRESS⚠️
Self portrait, ref photo by the amazing @somerrunner 🖤📸
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“Let the blue sky meet the blue sea and all is blue for a time.”FB
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Local color is the essence of the thing before it can be influenced by anything around it. .
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Picasso you can have your thunder back. For better or worse, I’m pushing myself to use color, any color, just no blue. I’ve avoided using them because I didn’t know how, and after living with blue portraits for most of quarantine, I’ve decided that’s complete crap.
All these portraits have been over painted this week. I’ve learned so much in 5 days and will to continue to get uncomfy every single day until these are done. And even then...
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✌🏻.
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Oil on canvas 24x36”

6/19/2020

Shutterbug II

⚠️WORK IN PROGRESS⚠️
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Portrait of @somerrunner doing her thing.
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Continuing to develop my own visual language. The same way a pianist speaks piano, I paint the paintings, she shoots the shots. .
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✌🏻.
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Oil on canvas 3x4’, ref photo @ryanthrower .
Always find time for whatever makes you feel happy to be alive.

6/16/2020

Wherever the Sun Goes

"Wherever the Sun Goes"
Acrylic and metallic nickel/copper/bronze on canvas
36x48"

There is nothing about a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
Small but approachable, they will take you wherever the sun goes.🌤.
And everyone deserves a little sunshine, dammit.

“You’ve got to remember, you’re allowed to feel it
and
you’re allowed to lose it,” she reminded herself.
... whatever you’re feeling, you gotta know, is an appropriate response to this world.

"When you come out of the grips of depression there is an incredible relief, not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again and the shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker... But as survivors. Survivors who don't get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake up to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. I hope to one day see a sea of people who understand the secret battle, and a celebrate the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like.”- Jenny Lawson
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To all who walk the dark path and to those who walk in the sunshine but hold out a hand in the darkness to travel beside us: brighter days are coming.

6/13/2020

Shutterbug

⚠️WORK IN PROGRESS⚠️
.photo reference by @randhleese
In photography and in life, always look for the light - if you don’t see it, bring it. John Waite
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This is a painting of a girl who spent the last 10 years in the kind of darkness a darkroom knows nothing about.
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The full story:
It’s been said that you can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.
This portrait was taken in 2006 and I hadn’t seen it in probably 13 years. I’ve never seen a more accurate portrait of my twin sister @somerrunner.📸
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I never saw much of my sister when we were growing up, half her face was behind the view finder or she was busy in the garage that she converted into a dark room.
She became nationally acclaimed for her photography in high school, I remember flying to New York so she could accept her Gold Key award on stage at Carnegie Hall.
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She went on to graduate University of Washington’s BFA in Photography program. Photography was her A plan, physical therapy was the “safety” B plan. However, she didn’t make it out of art school unscathed. The various wounds from art school were deep enough to make her put down the camera entirely as soon as she got her diploma.
I watched as she swiftly went on to get a doctorate in Physical Therapy and a career in the field soon after.
Not until a few months ago did she find her way back behind the lens, after 10 years.
Ten godd*mn years.

I cannot tell you how sad I am for all the photos she never took in the past 10 years.

lt took me 6 hours to dig up this portrait, even reaching out to the ex-boyfriend who took it to find. It was exactly how I remembered it.
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TL;DR:
Always find the time for whatever makes you feel happy to be alive.

Oil on canvas (acrylic under painting still quite present!) 24x36”

6/12/2020

Kill your darlings

18x18” oil on board
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There’s this idea in art that centers around “killing your darlings’. Basically, this means you can totally destroy a painting by falling in love with a corner of it and struggling to keep it, failing to see that corner has somehow taught you a lesson and you can actually move on now.
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As life goes on what I see in my work is that you tend to see the last couple days of work and whether that painting was 3 days or 3 months in the making, I can’t keep any one thing; it’s a constant dance of energy and movement that all has to work together, something I painted 3 weeks ago will never work with what I’m doing today. .
I find the day to day changes a painting goes through quite interesting and while some people might balk at putting unfinished work out into the world as work in progress posts, I have come to love seeing other’s process instead of just the end result. .
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✌🏻.
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As much as I wasn’t happy with this one, it’s a pretty dang honest reflection of this baseline restlessness I carry around at all times. So For now he will stay out of the trash...

6/9/2020

With Clawmarks

Oil on board 18x18”
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Everything I ever let go of has claw marks.

6/7/2020

Remember when

Remember When. 24x36. Private collection Oil on canvas.
Reference photo circa 2006 by @somerrunner 🖤
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The whales do not sing because they have an answer, they sing because they have a song.
Gregory Colbert
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✌🏻.
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Oil on canvas 36x24”
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Remember when I posted this last week and I mentioned there was a large element left to paint 😹🐳.

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YOUR CART

Long Live the Rose Underpainting

And then the wolves showed up

The First Painting I Ever Sold

Sarah, or, How Fox Like Me Started

Laurel portrait

Little Miss O

Shutterbug II progress

Oakley sketch

Old Fashioned / Shutterbug I

Out of the Blue Phase

Shutterbug II

Wherever the Sun Goes

"Wherever the Sun Goes"
Acrylic and metallic nickel/copper/bronze on canvas
36x48"

Shutterbug

Kill your darlings

With Clawmarks

Remember when

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"Wherever the Sun Goes"Acrylic and metallic nickel/copper/bronze on canvas36x48"

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Join my newsletter

"Wherever the Sun Goes"
Acrylic and metallic nickel/copper/bronze on canvas
36x48"