more images dudes

some new jammers

A new year is upon us.

Happy new years friends.
I hope that 2008 will be a year of chill and change, it's in the wind. 2007 was a grindy year for the world.
I'm going to pray a lot more in 2008 and focus a lot more on God, my wife, and Magnolia. I think that I grinded too much in 2007.
I want to adventure a lot more in 2008.
I want to learn a lot more about science in 2008, preferably field biology, and maybe field recording. That seems interesting. But I probably won't, I'll probably just paint instead. But I want to.

Brother Chris' eatery

sorry for the lack of art posts lately for the 2 or 3 of you who check. i've been busy working but nothing is done yet. i also have been on a kick of reading contemporary biographies lately. i just finished the glass castle by jeannette walls, which was amazing, and am now reading into the wild. i don't usually read these sorts of books but yeeeah, i'm glad i have been. good stories of eccentric lives.
also i just put up some paintings at my buddy chris roman's resteraunt in newport last week. he just moved from new york where he was a fancy pants chef at his fancy pants resteraunt and he moved here and bought bay burger at the fun zone and fancified it. the food is awesome and the interior is nice with alot of dark wood, and BAM, it's nicer now with a bunch of my paintings in it. have lunch there, and go across and take a bay tour with my best pal Earl at the balboa boat company, it's very entertaining and it's the newport boat parade right now.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Volunteered Slavery

YES!!!!

Mosaic-Norman McLaren (1965) - Joni 2 k-po®

this is fun stuff. all of his films are really interesting. give them a look.

tough stuff

benjamin, stella, vasserly, isserman, and karl again

What a day.

I am doing this lecture about "hard edge painting" for the OCMA, and in doing research for it I have been discovering why I love the work of these older cats so much. Benjamin, Feitelson, Hammersly, Lundeberg, and McLaughlin are so good because of the way they made. Their practices were such good models of childlike observation and exploration. So cool and Californian and unpretentious and non 2007 fame seeker bullshit. Good models of plugging away at what you love to do. Their paintings are so fucking engaging and have not lost steam over the last 50 years. Their not heavy, political, or artsy, they are just awesome and celebratory.
Dave Hickey has the most articulate and interesting things to say about the work as far as criticism goes. Go see the Benjamin show at Louis Stern and the Birth of the Cool at OCMA if you want a dose of solid awesome painting.
This research led me to Louis Stern today where the fantastic Marie Chambers loaded me up with books and a chance to see some AWESOME objects which was so, so gracious and cool of her. With being in the OCMA auction a few months ago with painters whom I love and should not be on the same walls as, like Mary Heilmann and Kim Fisher, the Christopher Knight article, getting to hang the Benjamin show at the CMA earler this year, Paintings Edge this summer, and seeing the Brice Marden show at SFMOMA with my dad and Steve Comba to whom I owe much, finishing my mfa, having a studio by the beach and getting to paint every day, getting to do this lecture, teaching art classes at a college, and today w/ the Marie day, I think that my head will explode if anything more awesome art wise happens next year.
I love exploring.
Thank you God.

Paintings

more adventures for the peepers.

Huge day at Seal

These pictures don't do the day much justice but Seal Beach was really big yesterday. It was consistently 15-18 feet. Like a big wuss I stayed on the sand with Bird, Earl, Jen, and dad and watched the action. There was some great surfing, and some nastiness as with the tide the waves were breaking on the sand.

Jer singing to Bird, and a leaf that pierced a solid wood wall.

Paintings

i got back a bunch of paintings today. My work lately has been getting back to like little kid visual adventures. It's been really fun. I have a loose system that sets up the framework for the piece but then good ol' intuition takes over. The numeric value of the phrase "I love my Lord" has been the architecture. Not so much on the framed collage stuff of late, but the actual paintings that I have been doning. The phrase "It's o.k." has been showing up again and again too, more of a self convincing than a public message I suppose. I use Bauhaus text since it is the good design and art sense of self that usually needs the convincing.