2008 "Blood on My Jacket"

"Blood on My Jacket" 30 inches x 40 inches, oil and nails After a friend of mine had an accident on his motorcylce, I found the name for this painting. I was in the process of making it for him. We spent 7 hours in ER waiting to see if he was okay and I kept up with his black leather jacket and other stuff. It dawned on me when I saw the blood on his jacket that it was the same blood color he had asked me to put in this painting I was making for him. Thankfully he was fine and only suffered scraps, bruises, and a slight concussion. To GrandMaster M...!

Closeup - You'll notice the nails in the black background. Also I sliced into the canvas (Fontaine style) and painted the back of the canvas red so it was show through. I wanted a shine for the black so I used oil to achieve that affect, instead of using acrylics.

2008 "Pink Om"

"Pink Om" 24 x 30 acrylic, oil, spray paint, and bent nails I did this painting for myself. I may go back and add a few more things but for now I like it.

2008 "Blood and Diamonds"

"Blood and Diamonds" 24 x 30 acrylics, glass, and pumice gel I did this for a neigbor of mine who loves art. I got really lucky with this one because after I gave it to her, she let me know she collected pieces of glass and loved the fact I added glass in this (a broken candle votive).

A closeup of the glass ontop of the pumice gel that I used in the painting. When the votive broke, some colors were clear so it worked well with the amber color.

2007 "Arctic Meltdown"

"Arctic Meltdown" 24 x 30 oils, December 2007

I did this painting for my brother and sister-in-law. She had a lot of blues and browns in her bedroom. I enjoyed doing this one because I added alot of texture to each area. I think it brought the colors out really nicely.

"Arctic Meltdown" 24 x 30 oils, December 2007 I took a picture of my sister hanging the painting up in my brother and sister-in-law's bedroom to see where they'd like to place it. The taupe walls really work well with the other colors. Blue isn't a color that is in my palette so I was a little nervous about doing this one.

2007 "Drifting"

Drifting 28 x 30 inches acrylics, black gesso and nails Nov. 2007
Another painting for a friend. He had an accident with his car the reason I'm calling this one Drifting. I can't give more details than that really. Let's just say the story is really funny. I laughed for 5 minutes when he told it to me, and swore it has to go into one of my stories I may write. :P
I love this painting just cause I got nails in it. When I added the large black horizontal lines with the black gesso, I was able to use tweezers to place or carefully squeeze the nails dipped in paint into the wet paint.
This is another painting using the Om symbol. For more info, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum I did one for myself that has this symbol.

Closeup photo of the Drifting painting. You can see the red lines that are red nails. I actually used some of nails without paint on the left side. It gives an effect for the red lines like they are dancing off the canvas or into a curb.

2007 "Lost Horizon"

"Lost Horizon" June 2007 (20" x 48") consists of an undercoat of latex paint, spray paint, and acrylics with oils added later. I took the "White Noise" painting and colored it in.

I really like this painting because it's geometrical design and it's not, the lines of latex underneath the triangles cause a disturbing effect of your wanting to stay in the lines but the squiggles drag you outside the lines. I thought of also naming this "Controlled Chaos."
Currently with making paintings and giving them to some of my friends, I've elected with this one to keep it at home. It's hanging in my living room (a tough room to get wall space in since my hubby has a say as to what goes in there).

2007 "Crunchy Peanut Butter"

Crunchy Peanut Butter/Untitled 18 x 20 acrylics, pumice gel, beads from a stress ball (Jun. 2007)
For another friend of mine I work with, I created this painting which is rather quirky for my palette of colors. He gave me a bag of beads from a broken stress ball and asked me to do something with it. I always love a challenge :)
Oh yes and he did like the painting, especially the versatility. He can hang it in any direction he likes.

2007 "Greenhouse Effect"

"Greenhouse Effect" 24 x 30 oils, March 2007

This square painting is for my sister. She asked for me to include a green so I had to name the painting after that color. It took about 7 times to mix a green I thought would work. She asked for a nice Avocado green. After doing this painting, I've decided to do a group of 4 for myself and may take them to work. I have a rather blank wall in my office that needs some color. I'm thinking about experimenting with the lines of the squares, having them blend into each other maybe, and/or creating more texture within each square.

2007 "Broken Affirmation"

"Broken Affirmation" 48 x 20 Spray paint and Latex on 3 panels - March 2007
This painting is three panels with a symbol turned in three directions. It's the symbol for the word Om which is sanskrit for solemn affirmation and respectful assent, sometimes translated as"yes, verily, so be it." Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum
It's black spray paint for the Om, turned three ways. Brown, red, and white latex paint dripped and drizzled on each panel. I am dedicating this to my sister-in-law, Tracy who passed away Feb. 11 at 43.

2007 "Lady with No Head Dancing"

"Lady with No Head Dancing" - Oct. 2006
24 x 48 acrylic, oil with newspaper as texture

I made this 24 x 48 inches acrylic/oil painting this weekend for Laura. She wanted greens and purple in it for sure. She loves the chaos of lines of paint going all over the place. I painted two other paintings a few weeks ago before I got something she wanted to hang on her wall. It's hard to see how the green of the whale's tail glisten but that's just the camera. I added high gloss to increase the shine in some parts. The texture you may see (especially in the tail) is newspapers smashed into the gesso. In person, this is a really interesting painting and luckily Laura likes it! so #2 and #3 are done now. On to the fourth painting.

Update 10/18 - I gave Laura her painting today and it got alot of speculation at work, from what it's meaning may be to how cool it looks on the red walls we have at work in the Graphics Deptartment hall. She renamed it to a much better name, "Woman with No Head Dancing" since I told her I had pictured a lady dancing with her head thrown back before the whale idea came up.

Update 10/29 - Laura told me the other day that's she's gonna keep the painting just as it is. Her husband had thought of a few ideas to modify it. So thusfar, it stays as is above their couch in their apartment. What's been so fun about creating this painting is the conversation it's brought forth. Laura commented how she enjoyed hearing the speculation about its meaning. It got a lot of discussion that day.

Update 3/1/07 - I'm taking Laura's painting to my art class today (Painting and Critique at the Modern). At her apartment, she has it hanging above her couch in the living room and said it's the best conversational piece. People who arrive always ask why she has a whale painting. She loves that because as I told agreed, it's a lady dancing that we see in the painting. But to each his own. We'll see what the group at class thinks about it too.

2007 "White Noise"

"White Noise" 24 x 48 Black Gesso, White Gesso, White Latex, Black Spray paint (Feb. 2007)
The photo of this is not that good. I need to re-take it. It's black dots on the base with white drippings of paint over that and then black spray paint misted over it. This white painting I like somewhat especially when you can faintly see the black spots behind the drippings. And because I found a new fun technique of spraying spray paint on wet latex paint to see what it will hold. I may do this again with more color.
I have to come up with it having some meaning for my painting class. My teacher has this thing about abstract painting needing to mean something, yeah right, so I think it'll refer to the lack of silence in the world. Our not being able to sit still and just think without some form of activity controlling our minds, TV, internet, video games, etc....
I

2007 "Poppies"

Poppies 24 x 30 oil, latex and acrylic with pumice (Jan. 2007)
I made this for my painting class that I'm taking at a local museum. I took this with the EJ #3 to class. The top left is purple with pumice smeared into it. I dripped some white latex on the bottom half of the black. This looked like stars under a bridge to my teacher.

2006 "Red Velvet Square"

Red Velvet Square, 24 x 30 inches.

OilsAfter seeing the painting I did for Alyssa, Pink Rain Forest, Cindy asked I do one for her too. She wanted darks reds, browns and some lavendars. I created a blood red square at the bottom left to anchor the painting. I added more red paint on it to give it a design of small triangles all over it. Only one other red square is on the canvas. Two small red squares are at the bottom right and top right but I added burnt umber on top of the Alizarin crimson color to give it a very dark burgundy or velvet color. You can see just a little of the red coming through on the edges.

2006 "Merlot"

"Merlot" 24 x 30 oils, acrylics

Oct. 2006 - Jessica asked for something in purple and gray for her new house. This is a 24 x 30 inches acrylics with a oil wash on top. The gray undercoat really lets these colors pop out. I used three colors of purple in the top and bottom squares.

2006 "Pink Rain Forest"

Sept. 2006 - Pink Rain Forest (24 x 30 inches) oils

This painting is a step away from what I've normally been doing. It's more bouncy and entergetic. I had a friend who asked me to paint something for her and to use Fall colors. I started throwing around ideas but didn't want to do anything too insane so I pulled back on the design and let the colors be the force of playing with your eyes.

2005 "Untitled"

Untitled, 2005

14 x 11 inches, oils with rocks

Ever have one of those things you'd like to do again but you can't remember just how to go about it? Well that's what this painting is. I worked several times on this one. It's really a test canvas with many other versions underneath. I can't recall how many :) Somehow when I put the mauve color on the bottom, the others colors just fell into place on top. I'd really like to do a larger version of this sometime. It's my first oil painting when I started to play with the art supplies my sister and I got from my mom's collection. Mom painted for several years before she passed away last year in July. I always think of her when I paint now.

2005 "Harvest Moon"

Harvest Moon, Feb. 2005

16 x 20 inches acrylics with molding paste

I started out playing with textures and molding paste last year. I did an underlay coat of acrylic, I think white or pale yellow. Then added washes gray and rust color. The golden sun sets at the top left. You can see the streaks of molding paste coming through. For some reason when I look at this picture, I always think of a refreshing cool Fall day.

In 2007, I gave this painting to Linda.

2004 "Smiling Skull"

Smiling Skull

size 12 x 24 inches, Acrylics with Latex textures Dec. 2004

What's fun about this painting is that it took three times or so before I got the canvas to produce something I liked. This started out bright yellow and light green, a real Easter fun picture and then it went straight to...well you get the idea. Notice the ribs and texture on the painting. That's from adding lines of latex paint that dried before I added more acrylic paint on. I hope to do more face type paintings like this one in the future.

I took this to my Spring 2007 painting class. It's a painting and critique class where you bring a few paintings each week to show and the class reviews. I defended this painting as being a "Memento Moir" which is the latin phrase for "Remember that you are mortal," "Remember that you will die." I didn't really need to defend the painting as I had been told the class before to be prepared to do because the teacher liked it. But it did get me to thinking that most of why I like skulls and imagery from the Day of the Dead festival is because seeing symbols of one's mortality is a good motivational factor. "Seize the Day" and I say wrestle it to the ground :D

For more info on "Memento Moir", go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori

2004 "Adam"

Adam - 16 x 20 inches Nov. 2004, Acrylics with molding paste.

I didn't realize I still had a photo of this painting that I did in 2004. It's the mate to the Eve painting. I'm still using blacks in this painting and swipes of motion, nothing really defined. I'm trying to improve on that and get away from using straight black. I've read that real artists don't use black, but instead dark greens, purples or blues that seem to look black.

2004 "EJ #3"

EJ #3 (36 x 24 inches) Nov. 2004

I mixed in the rocks with molding paste, black acrylic paint with high gloss to add shine. It ended up looking like black glass on a road, black asphalt. The idea for this one came from a painting of Jackson Polluck's that my Mom and I saw at a modern museum. He had used rocks in the painting.