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Stingrays

StingraysI just recently unearthed this photo of one of my all-time favorites of my own paintings, “Stingrays.” It’s roughly 2’x3′ and loaded with surreal features like crop circles, a shipwreck, cave paintings, and aquatic wildlife flying through the sky. I rarely frame paintings, but I made this bulky, textured red and black frame to contrast with the pastel, dreamy feel of the overall painting.

 

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Prismatic Sky Burial

Prismatic Sky Burial is a painting depicting the odd beauty of a vulture; nature’s cleanup crew. The prismatic glistening of black feathers is caused by micro structural features as they interact with sunlight.  The term “sky burial” comes from the Tibetan buddhist practice of allowing vultures to feed on the dead, returning physical matter to the great cyclical oneness of nature.

Textured and metallic acrylic on 12 x 24″ wood panel. $300.00 USD

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Wood Block Sculptures

Raw Blocks

Raw Materials: Pallet wood.


“A closed mind is like a closed book; just a block of wood.” -Ancient Chinese Proverb


I made this ongoing series of wood block scultpures in light of this proverb and also (no pun intended, really) to get through a creative block. I designed these wood block sculptures with respect to the negative space between the blocks and really enjoyed the process of sanding individual pieces and shaping the overall finished work into something I was excited to paint and finish. I experimented with a lot of different ways of painting the pieces and finishing them. Some have paintings on the inside of them and some have hidden, unexpected details.

They were intended to mimic stained glass; the way the leading and glass interplay with each other as foreground and background, I set the glued-on wood blocks to interplay with the space around and between each other. I also enjoy the metaphorical idea that individual pieces make up the whole.

In doing these painted sculptures, I was searching for a new method of self-expression/information sharing. The prospect of fitting more surface area into a painting could mean more information shared. There is a large amount of personal memories encased in these pieces. I remember some of the songs or podcast I was listening to at the moment I was sanding a certain part, or a life event that was going on when I was layering washes of paint to achieve a certain look. All of this is very cerebral and only relevant to me. The majority of these pieces were made as a means of meditation.

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Channel One Magazine: Issue #1

Channel One Magazine came from the age of toner, sharpies and white out.

In 1997, I worked at a local copy center and I had recently finished with graphic design school. My head was full of a collage of subjects I aspired to use for creative expression: creative writing, illustration, photography, and desktop publishing. I was really into fringe culture and the arts community of Winston-Salem, specifically people who frequented the original Morning Dew Coffee Shop on Burke Street, run by Steve and Ginny. It was a small community of the downtown area’s creative people and a place where I found myself spending a lot of time as I traded one past life for a newer one. I wanted to be a part of that community and help promote it. All of this translated into starting a zine; a cultural phenomenon that for the most part, has been replaced by the modern day blog.

I’ve scanned the original folded, pasted, and taped-together master copy pages I used to make the first issue. I appreciate the contributions of all who were involved in making it happen and I hope it will be well-received by them as the time capsule it is.

“Cat Got Your Tongue?” Painting

I painted this one for my brother as a gift. It’s the punchline to one of our favorite childhood cartoons, “Symphony in Slang” directed by Tex Avery. Below is the original cartoon:

catgottongue

Symphony in Slang

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Art-o-mat® Machines

I was honored to help design and paint these two Art-o-mat® machines. Art-o-mat® machines are retired cigarette vending machines that have been converted to vend art. There are over 100 active machines in various locations throughout the country. For more info, visit artomat.org.

 

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Robot Invasion! Painting Series – Episode 1: Gear Logic Blueprints

robotposterThe Robot Invasion was a series of painting exhibitions that took place in Winston-Salem, NC, Queens, NY, and Chapel Hill, NC from 2004-2007. Each show was composed of about twenty paintings of vintage toy robots along with a few others thrown in for variety that generally still worked with the theme.

Shortly after becoming a super fan of Robert Anton Wilson, I found a book that Wilson wrote the preface to, called “Angel Tech” written by Antero Alli. In the book, Alli used robots as a metaphor to illustrate how the mind can be changed and reprogrammed at will. This book found it’s way to me at a crucial time; a time/place that Wilson referred to in Prometheus Rising as “Chapel Perilous.” Astrologically speaking, it was a time that I would later come to recognize as my Saturn Return.

All at once, I was unexpectedly laid off from my job, girlfriend dumped me, and I found refuge in a small apartment downtown. A string of disastrous “firsts” happened to me all at once and I was alone, angry, confused, and hurt. During this time, I felt I had to switch to crisis mode to do all the things that had to be done, like finding an apartment, filing for unemployment and looking for new work. In the process, I put painting on the back burner for a while. It was sadder still for me to realize that I’d already had painting back-burnered for several years. If there was a stove with three rows of burners on it, painting would have been on the extreme back row.

Through the process of filing for unemployment and updating my resumé, I began soul-searching and thinking about the some of the larger questions in life (you know the ones). I didn’t necessarily come up with any answers, but made the decision that “I am an artist and I should be painting.”

The vast majority of the chasm between “putting painting on the back burner” and starting to paint again had been filled with the renewed enthusiasm and zeal for getting back to work on paintings, but I still had to decide what I would paint. Deciding on a subject allowed me to focus on the act of painting and explore techniques more freely. I chose to paint robots, continuing with the metaphors I read about in “Angel Tech,” and also in appreciation for this and other books that had inspired me to begin work on myself. Finally, I found myself in a head space where I could relax, and I began to work on paintings again.

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Meditations on Candle Light

This series of paintings was based on meditations on candle light. I painted them during a particularly dark time in my life; I had absorbed massive amounts of negative energy from multiple sources and needed to metabolize it in solitude. I decided to paint myself out of the darkness using elements that some early surrealist painters used to illustrate light sources; design elements like directional rays, points, and areas of concentrated brush strokes.

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Scientific Pomeranian Gear at the Parallax Arts Gift Shop

Now available in the Parallax Arts Gift Shop! T-shirts, mugs, pint glasses, stickers, and tote bags sporting the Scientific Pomeranian! It’s a doggie headset connected to a body mounted speaker for bigger barks …the perfect combination of lovable fluffiness and high technology.

http://www.cafepress.com/parallaxarts

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Triad Horticulture Club Signage

I had the pleasure of making this rustic signage for my friends at Triad Horticulture Club in early 2015. The client and I both liked the idea of using materials from the surrounding area, so the sign was made mostly with pallet wood collected from the grounds around the business. I built the main frame for the sign out of purchased, pressure-treated wood for factor-of-safety and wind shear concerns. The face of the sign was made with pallet wood, which is expected to weather and fade over time for added effect. I managed to document the project from concept artwork to finished sign.