Category Archives: art

Lovesick

opens at Zip 37 this Friday, the good lord willing and the creek don’t rise. I’m grateful to Mauricio Rocha for giving us a shout out in this week’s Westword. Hope you can come by and take a peek if you’re in the neighborhood.

 

Bird That Cannot Be

Oil on canvas, 20″ x 10.”

The Stranger

The Denver metro area is forecasted to receive 36 hours of snow with as much as 22 inches before it stops. It’s already started. School has been cancelled and I had to hit the grocery store this afternoon to acquire the things my teenage daughter had requested to bake a birthday cake for my mother in-law’s 90th birthday. (A rum cake with coconut frosting.)

The place was nuts. Many of the strangers jostling in the aisles had carts full to bursting with cases of soda pop and bags of chips. It seemed a strange priority to me, but what do I know?

Denver’s First Friday art walk this month is almost certainly ruined. I’m okay with that. It means I can stay here and paint while my kid bakes a cake.  I have more than 40 canvases in progress. Bringing even one to a satisfactory finish takes time, and a snow day is a prayer answered. As long as the power lines don’t get knocked out.

A couple of paintings I’ll be trying to make some progress on, below:

I’m still here

and  I have had a painting accepted into the “Guilty Pleasures” show at Spark Gallery.

The show runs through February 3- February 26.

The other painting  I submitted- I  refer to it affectionately as “Big Dick”– was rejected.

That’s okay. I wonder if he’ll ever find a home, beautiful as he is to me.

 

Heloise & Abelard

Oil on wood, 50″ x 32″.

Chasing the Desert Sky

If you’re searching for mouth watering eye candy,  check out my friend Sarah’s blog. She lives in beautiful New Mexico and  paints exquisite landscapes and still lifes that nearly quiver with breath.

 

She also sent me a link to this video below, because she thought I’d enjoy it. I did. Thanks, Sarah.

 

Getting by with a little help from my friends

As February 10, the opening date for my solo show at Zip 37  (preemptively conceived of and titled as “Lovesick”)  approached, I realized the 50 unfinished canvases in my studio were nowhere near becoming 50 finished canvases. Or even 20. Or 10.

I have been painting every day. Really. But winter is never kind to my psyche. Worrying, sleeping and moping consumes a lot of time. Progress is slow and inertia is a harsh mistress.

I never want to half-ass a new solo by hauling out older stuff, so I was in quite a dither and moaning about this to friends when it occurred to me- like the zen koan about the guy who goes out riding on his horse for the purpose of finding a horse- I have friends. (Or at least, people willing to talk to me:)  Some of those friends make art. And some of them make art about love, at least sometimes.

Et voila-  “Lovesick” will include the work of nine of my favorite Colorado artists, exploring the madness that is love. There will be paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, book arts and printmaking.

I am grateful to Penney Bidwell, Heather Doyle-Maier, Sarah Haney, Sara-Lou Klein, Lokken Liane, Claudia Roulier, Valerie Savarie and Susan Vaho for saying yes. And I am excited about this show, opening on February 10 and running until February 26 .

Nice write up in NYT on SICA & “The Sum of Their Parts”

Right here.

This show runs until February 24.

I am very grateful to Doug Ferrari for including my work in what looks to be a beautiful exhibit.

Cruel Cupid

Oil on canvas, 12″ x 12″.

Kir Royale

12″ x 12″, oil & gold leaf on canvas.

 

I so hate this time of year.

I think the winter holidays are all that keeps someone like me wanting to go on day after day in the cold darkness. I find myself with the impulse to return to church lately. It’s an insane urge that will probably be resisted, for very good reasons. But I do miss the music.