Found these in the garage the other day. Four drawings based on found images of death row prisoners, one of which looks a bit too much like a Bacon knock-off. Next was going to be Four First Ladies of California; that’s still in the preliminary stage.
The weed whacker, or string trimmer, was invented by a man from Houston, Texas who marketed it as the Weed Eater. Four decades later, these sketches in paint are preparatory studies for what will be my second weed whacker painting, scheduled to begin soon after FedEx arrives with my new art supplies.
“The grid serves not only as emblem but also as myth. For like all myths, it deals with paradox or contradiction not by dissolving the paradox or resolving the contradiction, but by covering them over so that they seem (but only seem) to go away.”
Thanks Rosalind Krauss.
I wasn’t sure about adding color so I snapped the first shot beforehand. I’m still not sure about adding color.
Two studies for my New Landscape Paintings, both conte crayon or chalk pastel. Note the subtle white-on-white smokiness. Been thinking about doing a snow series, but haven’t seen much around recently.
Not sure if I’ll follow up on the mower, but the finished painting of the man with blower is in my gallery here.
What better way to spend a sunny spring afternoon? These are the results of my first couple weeks hamming it up on the cold-pressed.
Been copying photographs using grids and concentrating on the components of the image as if they were abstract forms; sounds fancy but really it’s the same thing we did in high school art class for a collaborative, cafeteria wall-sized portrait of Jim Morrison. Of course it’s been done and done again (see Chuck Close, Malcom Morley), but it is fun. I’d planned to use these images of John Cage (from a YouTube video) as an underpainting for something a little looser, but they were snatched from my easel and printed in the program for an upcoming performance of Cage’s Song Books.
BLAKE CARTER | GERMS 