Three oil paintings in the works

After the last post of eight images I started working on taking the sketch material into oil paintings. I have been re-purposing/painting over existing canvases that had overall repeating patterns painted on them. I have been painting the text illuminations over the patterns while still leaving pattern visible. In addition, I have been experimenting with cold wax medium that has an interesting matte transparency. I have worked on a new one each day for the previous three days. I am not yet ready to post them, they still need some time by themselves and a little bit more attention from me. I am pleased though. They will be posted in the next few days.

Persist

Finally! Turns out

I was saving these in the wrong file format. All fixed now. I did not intend to upload these all at once, but I have several hours and many frustrations into this, so they are all getting posted!


The bottom three images here are not in the order they were created.

Their titles are:"Deny Yourself," "Take Up Your Cross" and "Follow Jesus." When I take scripture like this and draw it I do not intend to be moralizing to the viewer. Remember, these are my visual meditations or votives. You as the viewer are able to peek in so to speak on what has been on my mind. These scriptures are embedded in my memory from hearing them throughout my life, often sung in church. At unusual times the words "trouble" me and desire my attention. That is when I will draw them.

Well, I did get this one to upload, but the others have to be re-imported. I am a better drawer than techie.

Internal errors

I had new images to upload but at this time there are "internal errors" and so I only was able to upload "Count Your Many Blessings." I will try again later.

"Count Your Many Blessings"

Illuminations

School is out for the summer and I hope to get the studio going . I have been doing so much work in my journal/sketchbook that I have neglected my painting. Summer and late night hours will provide a remedy. As mentioned in an earlier post, some of the works posted here will turn into oil paintings that will be posted also, if they come out better or on par with the original sketches. Also, the more I have thought about calling this work votivgraphy, I do like it, but it might be to much. The medieval monks and scribes that worked on illuminated manuscripts such as The Book of Kells inspire me. It has occurred to me that what I am doing with these texts has cross over with illuminated manuscripts. The monks and scribes, I imagine, got into meditative states as they intricately worked the texts into something more. Therefore, Illuminations might be a better name for what I am doing in these pieces.

John- The Revelator, Writer of the Seven Seals

The above is the title of a song by legendary bluesman Son House. I have been listening to blues and jazz while working on these drawings. Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, North Mississippi All Stars, John Lee Hooker, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, Thelonious Monk, and Django Reinhardt were all in rotation for the past couple days. The intuitiveness and improvisation of these artists are compelling for me. A form of visual jazz or blues is motivating me.

Leaning towards Votivgraphy

I am leaning towards calling my recent drawings Votivgraphy. Yes, I made it up, but my thinking behind this is that votive is associated with vow, offering and prayer. These drawings are votive in that they are often drawn prayer or meditation. With each day that I work on these drawings in my sketch book, I am trying to reflect on and pay closer attention to my daily experience. Words and phrases will stick with me during the course of the day, I sort of perseverate on them and this often becomes materialized in my drawings. As I draw these words or phrases they continue to work on me as I work on them. The drawings are less about being representative of the words, rather, they are the words spatialized, mapped, reflected upon and struggled with to create a unity, or a whole. This is a meditative practice made visual.

From top to bottom these four drawings have the following titles: Reflexive, Purify,

Place & Power and Nomadology.

Simultigraphy

Simultaneity or maybe votivegraphy

These are a sampling of some of my latest work. These three are from today even. For about the last month I have been working with the ideas of simultaneity. Maps simultaneously show many layers of information. The series of images I am working in are text or font based and words or phrases have been overlapped and layered. Another layer of these images is that they have been composed in a improvisational way. After the word(s) or phrase has been written/composed, a final layer to these images is how they are colored in. During this coloring in, also very improvisational and intuitive, certain "events" jump out at me from the "field". I will "move" with what is "moving." The simultaneous quality is that all these layers: the word(s), phrases, and composing merge together and are seen as a whole. The word(s) and phrases are often associated with and/are prayers or votives. In this sense, these images are visual prayers or visual meditations. These are from my sketch book and are done in pen and ink but some of these will turn into larger finished paintings. The titles of these three are: "confess," "casting anxieties," and "holy, holy, holy." Can you figure out which is which?

The blog is on. Now what? Just getting it going has taken me long enough. I envision putting my art on this site as sort of an online portfolio. Since I have a new body of work going that means I need to take some pics. That is "what." Until then...