From exhibitions

George Billis Gallery LA – January 2015

I have several recent paintings showing at the George Billis Gallery in Los Angeles from January 10 through February 14, 2015.

I find it remarkable that I was able to make any new work at all, considering how insane the last 8 months of my life has been.

It all started when we prepared our house for sale. We decided we were going to move 1,000 miles to a warmer climate. It’s no small undertaking to downsize your belongings after a decade of life in a house. With kids. While you’re still trying to make paintings. But we did it. We sold our house in a mere 3 days and then had to prepare to move. Another massive undertaking with more downsizing.

We hunted for a home, under the impression that we’d simply sell our beloved home and find its equivalent 1,000 miles away in a city we knew little about. Instead we ended up hunting for a suitable place to rent. Finding a place to rent wasn’t as hard as we thought and renting meant we could learn about our new city, make friends, relax and casually look for a home to call our own.

It didn’t happen that smoothly. Although the house we rented was great, the other tenant who lived in the ground floor suite was one of the worst possible tenants anyone could ever imagine living near. It shocked us. I’ll spare the gory details, but if there’s one thing I learned with the experience, it’s that you never, ever want to get on the bad side of an activist call girl (“luxury companion” as she referred to herself as) and her drug dealer boyfriend. It was bad. And my innocent, wonderfully naïve family had some major life lessons we didn’t ever expect would come our way.

And then we found a home. In a quiet, safe, wonderful neighbourhood. With a great big studio. And everything turned around. And we’ve made wonderful friends and found out things can be just as good as you once imagined.

So we packed up and moved from our interesting rental. Again, upending everything in our lives. Yet I managed to find time to do what I do best. Time to sit in my studio and quietly work on my quiet paintings.

The World Around Us / 48 x 24 / Oil on Canvas
The World Around Us / 48 x 24 / Oil on Canvas

 

Baggage IX / 30 x 30 / Oil on Canvas
Baggage IX / 30 x 30 / Oil on Canvas

 

painting
Six Kodaks / 18 x 36 / Oil on Canvas

 

Three Kodaks / 18 x 36 / Oil on Canvas
Three Kodaks / 18 x 36 / Oil on Canvas

 

Friends Far and Near / 30 x 30 / Oil on Canvas
Friends Far and Near / 30 x 30 / Oil on Canvas

New Realism / Bakersfield Museum of Art

It is an honor and a privilege to announce my solo exhibition, New Realism, at the Bakersfield Museum of Art, on display from September 13 – November 25, 2012.

The show features fourteen of my book themed paintings, a subject I have worked with for the past several years.

I have slowly refined the way I use books in my paintings. What were once simple props, I started paying closer attention to the actual books. Vintage primary readers are particularly interesting. With overtly optimistic and naive titles, they are a great example of the way our culture idealizes our recent history. Contrasted with early phsycoanalytical books or heavy psychology and ethics texts from the early 20th century and you have an interesting juxtaposition.

At the same time, the simple rectangular shapes, the colors and textures of the spines and pages make for endless possibilities for me as a painter to explore. The organized and tidy stack of vintage and antique books have small details in torn edges, fraying covers, dented spines, discolored pages. A jumbled pile of books, a line of books precariously leaning on one another. All set on softly lit neutral grounds and a clean white shelf.

I like the universality that books as objects present. They are symbolic. They are our combined and collected knowledge printed for posterity, all on decaying paper. We fret over losing the art of reading, the genuine experience and pleasure of a book as we invent and perfect new ways to consume the written word. iPads, Kindles, smartphones — ebooks, they are becoming commonplace and cheaper by the day. I think that as long as someone is writing something worth reading, it doesn’t really matter how you take it in.

And as long as second-hand book stores and antique shops have multitudes of books to offer, I doubt I’ll ever run out of ideas that I can transform in to paintings.

 

The exhibition features five new paintings (above)
and nine on loan from collectors (below)