Saturday, May 22, 2010

ELUSIVE

Elusive, oils on luaun wood, 2000

This piece was done a decade ago when I was taking a painting class at Queens College. I was a grad student in the art education department but the school only let art majors in their graduate art classes, so us art ed majors were reduced to taking undergrad classes. Regardless, it was a good class. Elusive was painted very quickly and spontaneously on a large panel. Its sister piece, Totem Shield, was painted at the same time and actually fit together. One was about movement and fleeting moments and the other about being a rock, of stability and protection. I used Totem Shield on quite a few things- the All-Terrain show promo card, as my blog logo, and as avatars and such. I have to reshoot both pieces again, but here are the two as I have them in my files.

Totem Shield (detail), oil on luaun wood, 2000

Saturday, May 15, 2010

COLLABORATIVE ART FOR AUCTION


Acrylic Paint on Canvas Board, 12" x 16" each

These two pieces were drawn by my AP Drawing class students. I painted them with acrylics on canvas board in about three hours. I asked my students to spontaneously draw whatever came to them, then pass it around to the next student. There were originally three boards but one is missing. After the period was over, I took them and briskly painted them. I made changes and painted over some things that didn't work, but most of what was drawn made it in to the final rendition in some form or another. We were watching the movie, Where the Wild Things Are while painting- not sure what affect it had on the drawings! Max and Carol sort of crept their way into the painting on the right.

Marlin Art Auction was to frame six student works for free for our event this Saturday. I dropped off six pieces, though only one was collaborative (painted by four students plus myself- didn't get a chance to shoot it). They were actually really nice about everything and were very informative about what they do. After dropping the work off, getting a brief tour of the place and speaking with them, they never gave any indication that they weren't going to frame all of them. I  found out the next day that they refused to frame the non-collaborative work because they are trying to encourage bidding wars between the parents. Well, little do they know, these students' parents aren't coming! Potential buyers will be coming from the community but most likely not from the immediate families. Marlin will auction the pieces anyway, but will not frame them. They would do a lot better driving up the price if they were in a nice frame! Hopefully, they will still accept these two new pieces and will frame them for Saturday.

ARTIST PROFILE

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West Babylon, New York, United States
I am a New York artist and graduate of the School of Visual Arts and CUNY at Queens College. I am a cartoonist/illustrator/painter. I teach art for a living and play the bass guitar for fun. If you would like to contact or commission me, you may do so at a2kmedia@gmail.com.

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