Death and the Maiden

A 30 minute portrait study done last night while teaching my Life Drawing class at MECA.

Sarah with Skull, 2008
charcoal on Rives BFK, 22" x 30"

Dream Selves

In my Monday night Mixed Media Self Portrait class at MECA this week the students did self-portraits inspired by dreams. While we were working, MECA freshman Bill Chiang (who was in the classroom with us painting a still life) meandered over to see what we were doing. He was bored with his assignment and was excited to see that we were working from our dreams. "Did you ever die in a dream?" he asked, then showed us a painting he'd recently finished about a dream in which he had died a violent death. I like seeing his alive and cheerful smiling face next to this scene of gory demise!

Edna's Birthday

My mother on her 87th birthday. I played around with the levels to create images in all fire colors - the colors of flames, charcoal, and embers...

The Scatalogical Serrano

Madonna and Child II

Heaven and Hell

Frozen Sperm

Fatal Meningitis

Klansman, Imperial Wizard

The Morgue (Homicide Stabbing)

Heroic Shit

Piss Christ

Andres Serrano

It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it...

In spring of 2003 my MECA drawing professor, Joe Begnaud, took our class on a field trip down the street to see the Portland Museum of Art Biennial. Upon entering the main gallery we were drawn immediately to Joe and James, Brett Bigbee's larger than life sized painting of his two young sons standing on a beach wearing matching black swim trunks. The photo realistic painting is rendered perfectly and painstakingly - it takes Bigbee months to finish one piece - and Joe and I spent a few awestruck moments quietly examining the canvas surface. Joe, who is also a figurative painter, broke the silence:

"Whew," he whistled. "I'm glad that Bigbee is doing this, so I don't have to."

I was reminded of Joe's remark last week when I picked up the latest issue of Art News to read about Andres Serrano's most recent show titled Shit, a series of 60 some odd large scaled photographs of human and animal feces.

Lynn Yaeger of The Village Voice writes:

You remember Serrano, the fellow who made the famous Piss Christ in 1989, which featured a crucifix submerged in urine, prompting an apoplectic Jesse Helms to lead the fight to end government funding for such projects and to declare: "Serrano is not an artist. He is a jerk."
Now, the genial renegade is back, fulfilling his desire to do, in his words, "something that would provoke even me"—namely, shooting 66 different piles of doo-doo dumped by as many animals, blown up to eight feet high and ready to hang on the walls of the Yvon Lambert Gallery beginning September 4.

I am fascinated by Serrano's dramatic and often disturbing photographs and his unflinching ability to examine all aspects of the human condition including waste and death. It's amazing to me that his photographs of these unappealing, frightening and even repulsive subjects can become images of great beauty and grace.

Deliberately Seeking Susan

I've been walkin' on the railroad...

I took my camera with me last Tuesday as I strolled along the waterfront. It was a beautiful Indian summer day here in Portland - someone told me statistics have shown that Democrats do well on sunny election days, which certainly proved true here in Maine! It was so mild, the light was sublime, and there were Susan Beauchemin paintings everywhere I looked. Here are several images from the traintracks and boatyard...

(...Sue, if you would like to paint any of these scenes, let me know - I'll send you the large files!)

Have a nice weekend, all!
:^)

It's Not a Dream

Vivid dreams the past two nights. Last night I dreamt that I could see Abraham Lincoln up close. His head was beside me and I stroked the side of his face and could feel where he had shaved.
What does this mean? I don't know, except perhaps that I felt intimately close to a figure who has simply been a distant icon up until now.
When Bush was re-elected four years ago, I disconnected emotionally. Obama's election has plugged me back in again, and feelings of passionate interest, faith, hope, trust, love and respect are rushing back into my system.