- Paintings -
If you’re wondering whether I’ve stopped painting since I moved to LA, the answer is no. I’ve just been doing one enormous landscape. I foolishly thought I could do this in a month or two, but ended up spending a year on it… I’m as done with it as I care to be but, having invested that much time in it, I feel like I should say a few things about it:
I did this painting for a few reasons, but mostly to give Natalie something beautiful for the home that we have made together. The imposing nature of these cliffs spoke to me, and the scene of Natalie approaching them evoked a profound sense of the fleeting nature of our time on earth. The implied age of the cliffs is as monumental to me as their size. The cave-like opening of course acts as an unspoken question.
I also wanted to try out different styles and subject matter and this was a conscious step away from portraiture. Most of the actual painting was done in a trial-and-error experimental manner. I reworked many portions of it repeatedly until I developed a style that I was happy with. In the end about 90% of it was painted with a single round bristle brush. The intent was to provide a continuity of form and line throughout the canvas, and thereby allow for easy movement of the eye. I wanted the entire landscape to flow like oil, and I am expecting that the entire thing will come alive under psychedelic conditions.
