Anatomy and Art

I’m soon to be out of town for a bit, and not a lot of time for writing, so I thought that I would post some old paintings again.  Hopefully when I get back, I can get back to such endeavors.  Been missing the act of painting lately.

These are some of the figures that I’ve done over the years, and sort of the development of a particular style.

I think that maybe the starting point was when I did “Frantic” in early 2002.

Then years later it came together stronger with “Scream” in 2007.

Then I made a teeny tiny painting later in 2007 playing with the same style of line movements.

The following year I painted “The Fall” (this one was pretty big, especially after the tininess of my last effort).  You can tell that I was getting into anatomy here, because it’s less chaotic and features actual muscles where they lie.  I think this was the first piece of this style I did after starting to learn to sculpt, and it was done shortly before starting school at UIC.

Then in an effort to create a gift for my friend Scott before leaving California, I diverged from things a touch into a swirlier style while trying to paint something that was neither quite a warm tone or a cool tone (Scott really likes purple.)

And lastly, before leaving for school, I attempted to combine themes and use my more chaotic line style on a tree.  I often paint trees.  I’ll probably do another post like this of them sometime.  But I can’t say that the combination of styles quite worked.  I still keep it on my wall, and sometimes I kind of like it, but I don’t consider this one much of a success.

When I got into school, it took me a while to find time to paint again.  I got sick around the end of my 2nd semester and held up in my apartment, probably longer than was exactly reasonable, and fell right back into paint again.  The first thing I made was “Pour.”

And goodness I honestly didn’t realize that there were going to be so many of these when I started this post!  But I’m in it now, and up next is one of my, and seemingly many’s favorites, “Tom Tips His Hat.”  I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to get this one out between semesters.  Someone had told me that all the men I painted were creepy.  That combined with having studied likenesses for sculpture shortly before coming back to school, I thought I’d try painting a man who I happen to be quite fond of.  Tom Waits, being his beautiful awesome self, fit the bill perfectly.

Then, the likeness bandwagon went on, when a couple friends of mine got married.  I couldn’t go to the wedding, but I could play with their faces!  It took me forever to get this right, but I finally got Ellen and Joe down in paint.  Take that you crazy lovestruck fools!

I did a couple things in other styles, and then went to Dallas for my anaplastology internship.  When I got to the end of that time, I couldn’t wait to put paint to canvas again and painted what may be one of my favorites in really a just a period of a couple of days.  I love it when that happens.  It really doesn’t happen enough.  But that’s when I made “Illumine.”

Then back in Chicago I picked up another tiny one that I had started some time before.  It had started in a more realistic style, but I painted over all of that, moving it into more of this style and changing the colors.  Thanks to Scott, I can paint in purple now.  And I made “Feel.”

It’s not my last painting finished, but it is the last in this style.  And goodness, if you’ve made it through all of that, thank you.  That was more pieces than I’d originally thought I was getting myself into showing!

And I hope to have some new ones for you all over the next year.  It takes me so long to adapt to a move, but I can feel it coming.