Man Sitting with Cats progress

These are the first two passes of the Sitting Man with Cats. See original drawings here and here. I'm approaching it as a diptych, both acrylic on canvas, 30 x 36 in. each. My goals with these are: to describe the figures more efficiently with fewer brush strokes, and to increase the range of what I can do with acrylics (i.e. thinner washes to thicker areas, use of different mediums, etc.).

Georgia & Luckies

Another update from the Japan series. I decided to remove the Japanese characters and zoom in on the can and cigarettes, cropping them in the process. This one is totally graphic. In fact, I'm painting this with the same insane precision used in Murakami's studio: flawless flat color built up with many layers of the same acrylic color, leaving no brush marks, no gradations, painting "within the lines" and exactly up to the line. It's as if the painting is an exact replica of the same done as vector art. The end result should appear as if it were produced by a machine.

Painting like this is kind of a break from the more painterly work I've got going, but I'm beginning to question if it's worth it. For one thing, I'm doing it on stretched canvas instead of canvas mounted on a rigid support, and the gesso ground is not as smooth as it should be to achieve true flatness. And I've cut corners in certain ways from the get-go, which all kind of negates the process itself. For another thing, this is Murakami's method, not mine, so it's not in my best interest to keep on with it unless I think of a way to improve on it or make it my own. Ultimately, these reasons make it hard to justify continuing with such an anal and time-consuming process of painting. I'll have to think of where I can go from here with this.

Stove Progress

Here is the start of the actual stove painting. By using a 31 x 41 inch canvas, I've cropped some of the left side of the original drawing. I'm kind of thinking that was a mistake, but we'll see how it turns out in the end. I started out with a more graphic approach trying to mimic the linear feel of the drawing, but am now loosely blocking in areas of color with a big brush and really thin, wet acrylic paint. I'm letting it drip the way it wants to a little too. Not abandoning a total graphic approach; more like a balance between loose and graphic.

Japan Things

In an earlier posting I mentioned that some work in this new series will incorporate Japanese subject matter. The man walking with cats below has some of that, but here is the start of a direction I'd like to try in which the subject matter is less surreal and more purely Japan, or at least a nod toward some everyday objects that informed my experience of Japan. I don't have original photos for reference, only these drawings from life I recorded in my journal at the time (ca. 2002-2003). I'm hoping the paintings that follow will in some way capture something that could be called "contemporary", though at this point I'm not sure what form that will take. At the moment my goal is to avoid painterly realism and push for more creative use of color and graphic approaches.



The free-standing kerosene stove/space heater makes winter in Japan bearable. With the exception of the northern parts of the country, most homes and schools in Japan are not centrally heated so people rely on these stoves to heat rooms. This one is not as new and fancy as the ones people keep in their homes, but it's what we had in the high school classrooms where I taught. This image is evidence of where I spent much of my time between classes. The heat and mesmerizing red glow were in effect like a campfire on a cold night. Oh, and it's pretty handy for keeping tea water hot too.



The characters at the top read "Asagohan", which means breakfast in Japanese. I used be a heavy smoker and coffee drinker. During much of my twenties, that would be my "breakfast". On one particular morning I was out of real coffee. The house I lived in was in a rural part of Osaka and the only "store" out my door that didn't constitute a trip to get to was a cold drink vending machine that stood guard at the foot of the drive that led to the house. This is where I got the Georgia can coffee, not quite a substitute for the real stuff but I developed a taste for it anyway. The text "How many more years?..." is me trying to come to terms with the knowledge of the risks that would worsen over time if I didn't get control over bad habits. The answer is that it took 3 more years. I quit both cigarettes and coffee in 2005.