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MAKING REIGN Making Reign is a video assembled by my nephew Ben Fraser, documenting the 8 month process of completeing Reign, my 7 x 6 foot canvas, and most ambitious painting to date. |
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JAVELINA Javelina came about from my desire to paint the skull of this desert pig whose habitat includes the Sonoran desert in AZ. I have a friend to whom this desert and it’s inhabitants, both past and present, are very near to her heart, and she approached me about doing a painting using imagery conjured up from this region. Fast forward to a visit to Steve Kestral’s home in a beautiful canyon west of Fort Collins. Steve is a wonderful sculptor, and an astute observer of nature. He came across this javelina skull on one of his forays into the high desert backcountry. Knowing my fascination with bones and skulls, he allowed me to borrow it, and I took it home to think about how best to present such an unusual object in a painting. My wife and I spent a month in Scotland many summers ago and bought home this beautiful three paneled captains mirror, constructed in such a way as to be stable on the rolling decks of a ship at sea. It has appeared in several paintings over the years, and seemed the perfect vehicle for displaying this fascinating piece of anatomy from numerous angles and perspectives. |
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LEMON FALL One of my favorite paintings is called Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber by Juan Sanchez Cotan, a 16th century Spanish artist I greatly admire who has influenced me along with countless other artists. Because of its compositional and elusive mystery this painting is considered by many to be one of the greatest still-lifes ever created. I love the effect of the square within a square which frames the curve made by carefully placed fruit and vegetables hung from strings. For all its impact, it is a very minimal work. A few years ago I had a little fun referencing Dutch painters of the 15th century, such as Willem Kalf and Pieter Claesz who used a partially peeled lemon as a motif in their still lifes. Painters of today still use this luscious visual conceit. I decided to exaggerate the effect by extending the lemon peel to extreme lengths, keeping the eye moving and creating a kind of surreal tension. Taking things a step further, I envisioned a large painting which would include numerous peeled lemons of different lengths composed to incorporate an organic catenary curve, residing in a mysterious dark niche a la Cotan. Instead of fruit hanging from a string, this fruit was the string. I did a number of pre-studies leading up to the large painting, including a small color study in oil and two large drawings which worked out the mechanics of the top and the bottom section. While in the pre-study stage, a viewer commented that the piece brought to mind falling water, hence the title Lemon Fall.
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