Art School Portfolio Two  1983-1997

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Imploding Kleenex (mixed media on canvas)

Imploding Kleenex (1983)

Oil, acrylic, acrylic gel, and metallic paint were used in the production of this canvas.

 

Artist and Effort

I painted more at my mother’s kitchen table than I did in the studio space given to me by the university. I was a fiercely private person who did not relish the judgment of prying eyes. Moreover, I did not want to leave my art supplies in an unsecured location.

artist and effort

artist and effort

 

Doppler Shifts (oil and acrylic on canvas)

Doppler Shifts (1983)

The title of this painting had something to do with Doppler Shifts. I was taking astronomy classes at this time, which Imploding Kleenex and this painting reflect. There was also the influence of the Voyager space probes, so images of Saturn and Jupiter are scattered in the backgrounds of both paintings.

 

Modernist Inspired

An Upstart From The Get-go: Once I had impressed my teachers at Memphis State University (now The University of Memphis) that I could paint a conventional still-life, I set about never painting a work of conventional realism again. As I describe it in Icarus Transfigured: “His undergraduate work was a hodgepodge of approaches, which reflected what he was exposed to in his art history survey courses. He cross-pollinated styles and epochs, first by reverse-engineering passages lifted from Dali, Caravaggio, and Ingres, and then combining this knowledge, in Dadaist assemblages, with Pollack’s dripped paint technique and Oldenburg-inspired cloth sculpture.”

Tabling Halloween Pangs (oil on canvas)

Tabling Halloween Pangs (1983)

This is one of few canvases I painted on college premises. This venture began its life with a still-life set up in a painting class. Still-lifes would play a major role in how I generated ideas for paintings over the next two decades.

 

Nuclear Hygiene (mixed media on canvas)

Nuclear Hygiene (1983)

I combined oil, acrylic, cloth sculpture, and found objects in this Pollackesque painting. (If you look carefully, you may spot a used toothbrush.) This work was inspired by Dali’s psychedelic painting Tuna Catch.

 

Untitled Watercolor (watercolor on paper)

Untitled Watercolor (1983)

This was a watercolor based on still-life, and was loosely inspired by Bauhaus artists Kandinsky and Klee, as were other watercolors I made at this time.

 

Lab Animals on Vacation (mixed media on canvas)

Lab Animals on Vacation (1983)

Klee and Dubuffet are my inspirations here. This work resembles an encaustic painting, and was created by applying wax and oil over a textured surface of acrylic and modeling paste.

Cloth Sculpture Paintings

I made a number of painting-sculpture mashups, often decorated with acrylic and enamel paint. One, featuring a photo-realist badminton racket with a sliced shuttlecock added to it, slipped through my net without me obtaining a decent slide of it. I sold that painting, which is always a rare accomplishment.

The Non-Conforming Main Course (acrylic and found object on canvas)

Non-Confroming Main Course (1983)

Another mixed media painting from a busy year. This is cloth sculpture (a la Oldenburg) with modified found objects (a la Synthetic Cubism). Synthetic Cubism introduced collage elements to painting, and it was one of many techniques I incorporated into my creative process.

 

Non-Confroming Main Course (detail)

Non-Confroming Main Course (detail)

Left to My Own Devices: The nature of art schools lead many to believe that they are closed-mind societies, but this was more true when art movements were knock-down, drag-out fights in the early Twentieth century. My art professors had their tastes, and spoke disparagingly of certain famous artists, but you could take or leave their opinions. Memphis State University was a commuter college that, coming at the end of the Modernist era, was pre post-ism; and consequently I was left to pursue my own interests. It was not until I entered graduate school that I encounter a school of thought and its disciples.

 

X Painting (oil, acrylic and found object on canvas)

X Painting (1984)

This painting is sculptural in a different sense. Another painting along these lines featured a cloth Wrigley Spearmint Gum wrapper. However, X Painting photographed better, so made for a better slide.

A few of these abstract experiments included materials being applied to their surfaces, such as aluminum foil, bubble wrap, or silicon caulking. (Silicon was used here.) I even created one painting using illustration board set in a wood frame so I could place a spinning motor in it. That painting similarly failed to create a good slide.

 

Telegraphing One's Intentions (mixed media on canvas)

Telegraphing One’s Intentions (1984)

More oil, acrylic, cloth sculpture and modified found objects. Professor Larry Edwards told me in a critique that I used the color red violet too frequently. Upon realizing this, I have used the color sparingly since.

 

Telegraphing One's Intentions (detail)

Telegraphing One’s Intentions (detail)

 

His Vigil Having Lapsed (mixed media on canvas)

His Vigil Having Lapsed (1984)

Originally I thought I had destroyed this canvas with all my other cloth sculpture paintings, but I may have sold this one.

 

Figurative Hybrids and Noteable Class Projects

Snares of The Self-Taught Painter: My main regret as an artist is that, because of my insistence on imagination, I did not allow myself to be influenced by representational artists, especially as representational painting was (generally) what I did. Resultantly, I was unable to apply gained know-how in this area retroactively on so much unschooled early work. I do not shrink from sharing this work with you, since my mistakes, and lessons learned, have benefited my painting students greatly.

Muzak Nude Study

Muzak Nude study (1983)

A mixed media drawing on paper.

 

Muzak Nude (mixed media on canvas)

Muzak Nude (1983)

Cloth sculpture and modified found object are employed in a figurative setting (developed in the previous drawing). Oil and acrylic paint are the primary media.

Snares of Anatomy: Because I did not have access to live models during my undergraduate studio work, I had to envision female anatomy and retrofit it imperfectly from catalog and magazine photos. It was doubly difficult to perdict lighting effects and the geometry of drapery folds over these volumetric forms. In lacking expertise in these interpretations, I wisely withdrew from ambitious figure painting upon entering graduate school.

 

The Other Worldly Nude (mixed media on canvas)

The Other Worldly Nude (1984)

The materials used here were identical to Muzak Nude.

 

The Other Worldly Nude (mixed media on canvas)

The Other Worldly Nude (detail)

With paintings from this period, I was either cutting through the canvas or sewing things into it. The LP record on the drip-paint Victrola was fashioned from cloth sculpture. Playing off Cubism, it comes out toward the viewer at a right angle. The tennis ball in the dog’s mouth is an actual tennis ball.

 

Whispers, Isabella? (oil and acrylic on canvas)

Whispers, Isabella? (1984)

 

Nature confusing Optical Art for Nature (acrylic on paper)

Nature confusing Optical Art for Nature (1983)

This is a parody on Victor Vasarely’s claim that Optical Art (Op Art) was nature painting. Colors are here paired by color theory, reflecting information gained from my color theory classes. This work is acrylic on heavy Arches paper from 1983.

 

Mayan Fly Devouring Fly

Mayan Fly Devouring Fly (1984)

This is a soapstone craving from a sculpture class.

 

Untitled Graphite

Untitled (1984)

Executed with pencil and powdered graphite on illustration board. This class exercise evoked the gridwork of Piet Mondrian.

Destruction of Some Works: Young artists tend to create large ambitious pieces. These works become headaches where photographing, shipping, and storage is concerned. In my case (and I do not think I am unusual for doing this), I destroyed early works where I could not properly store them. Moreover, I came to regard these pieces as eyesores when compared to later, better work. Many paintings were destroyed in Memphis after graduate school because of their three-dimensional elements. This aspect made them bulky once they were removed from their stretchers, so they did not return with me to Bloomington, IN.

 

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