Portrait of an Artist

 30 years ago I painted a quick portrait of an artist for my mother.  Although I did not typically paint self-portraits my mother thought it looked like me.   It was done quickly and she immediately put it up on her wall where it remained until they needed to downsize as they transitioned into a smaller apartment.  She asked if I would take the picture home with me which I did.   Over the years as I would look at it I would see little problems that really began to annoy me.   I saw issues with the figure’s hands, sleeves,  and shoulders and now that I had it in my studio I could finally have my way with it.  I decided that I did not want to do anything radical like changing the posture or background in order to retain the essential integrity of the piece.  And if and when my mom saw it again she would not be offended.  So now as you see the latest version, you will notice that ‘the artist’ has not aged terribly but he did inherit a smock, a couple brushes, a derby and a little ruff collar for good measure.

Patches

We are amalgams, the results of arbitrary confluences and unexpected social interactions.   How we perceive, identify, and define ourselves is related to all of these disparate parts having been put together in a kind of social cubism.  
This is the approach I have followed in creating these three portraits called Patches.  Originally I had drawn three similar but not identical portraits from the same point of view.  Then I cut them each into small squares , mixed the squares up, and randomly reassembled the pieces to form new inventions of the portraits,  with new identities, new narratives.  
Dating back to my earliest forays into art making I have been intrigued by the portrayal of the human face, what it evokes, and how and why it is represented.   Sometimes it approximates a likeness, other times it is a mere abstraction.  It can reveal.  It can conceal.  Or with a few strokes of a pen, pencil, brush, or collage, it can capture the essence and spirit of a subject.   I believe these portraits fall somewhere in between.  

Music and Murals

There was a call to artists to submit mural  proposals at the Old Town School of Music  in Chicago and I wasted no time trying to come up with something.  But rather than try to reinvent the wheel I decided to fall back on my own images.  I had always wanted to see what they  might look like if I could cut them up and collage them back together again.  This proved to be a perfect challenge for me to hone my limited Photoshop skills.  Here are a few examples of some of my experiments.  Below is the letter that I included in my submission.  It explains the intention behind my selections.    

Music plays a key component in my life not only as musician but as a visual artist.  It is often  an indelible presence in my work.   Music uses sound to create a mood and instill an emotional  connection.   I use the figure as a point of departure.  Just as music can bend reality, I refer to the figure in less literal terms as well.   I see the  subject of the mural as another form of theater where the figures become characters in a mysterious tableau whose  meaning is left entirely  to the observers to explain,  describe, and, most important,  question.   

Extensions

Yes, I admit it.  I enjoy thumbing through my daughters' fashion magazines.  And yes, the women are very attractive.  But I have ulterior motives.  I am looking specifically for large head shots.  For these particular pieces I was interested mouths as the starting points.  Once I cut them out I let them with some paint define their new identities.   It is curious how beauty can become something else, still beautiful but different, even asexual.

Subsequently I mounted the portraits onto  paper and using pen and ink completed their transformations.

Painting and Photoshop

There was a call to come up with an image for a mural for the Old Town School of Music in Chicago.   It is a wonderful venue for music and dance.   Instead of 'reinventing the wheel' I decided to refer back to some of my paintings for inspiration, many of which featured elements of music and dance.   I've always been intrigued with idea of mixing up and combining images and was clear how to do it, until I discovered Photoshop.  It makes almost anything possible and allows for solutions that I could never have imagined or  created.  I feel as though I am somehow cheating.  Technically what I've posted is  a bit clunky.  But still,  the potential for new ideas and discoveries is infinite.  Now all I have to do is submit images and see what happens.

Walk-Abouts at the Maze

      Many years ago the owner of a high end, period furniture store and gallery stopped by my studio for a visit to determine whether he might feature a show of my work that he had hoped would complement his new furniture collection.  Although he enjoyed my work in general he decided that in the end the paintings would probably not be suited for his space.   As he was leaving the studio he noticed a painted figure hanging up in the corner.  It was a piece that I had excised out of a damaged  canvas that had been discarded.  Although I had initially dismissed the piece he said that if I could assemble more of them then maybe we could build a show around them.  It was quite a novel idea.  
       I eventually created several dozen of these figures that we installed all over the gallery in different configurations amidst the furniture.  It was like walking into a theater full of strange looking actors posing in tableau.  
      After the exhibit closed the question was what to do with the remaining pieces.  They were too big to place in file drawers and to flimsy to store upright so I decided the next best place would be to store them flat by sandwiching under our bedroom mattresses.  And that’s where they remained undisturbed for the next 20 years.
       A couple years ago having forgotten almost entirely about them I rediscoverd them when was moving my son’s bed.  Some of the pieces were in reasonably good shape but others had not aged well.  I brought them all down into my studio and began to repair, repaint, rework, and revive each one.  Then I built bases that allowed me to stand them up as freestanding pieces.  They have turned into the guests in my studio who never leave.
       Like my show at Spex the Walk-Abouts at the Maze Library, a small but very quaint branch library in Oak Park, IL, were presented with a similar challenge.  That is, there was absolutely no wall space. Exactly like Spex I could only use  narrow shelf space above the book shelves to display my work.   I could easily have installed paintings and other two-dimensional work.  But I preferred to try something a little more unconventional:   to create a presentation that played with texture and layering.   My free-standing cut-out canvas figures, the Walk-Abouts, were perfect.      Organized in clusters the of figures were transformed into tableaus of silent conversations.
      This was their first and probably only visit to the Maze.  

Art and Vision at Spex

  Spex is a spectacular spectacle store and gallery.  Because of the nature of the store, that is that its overriding mission is to present and market spectacle frames, the challenges of exhibiting art are very specific.   There is limited wall space.   I decided to take advantage of the tops of the display cases by installing a series of drawings called  Remnants.   These are assemblages of works on paper that I have secured together using string to give them an puppet-like animation.   I attached dowels to them and inserted them into wooden bases  to allow them to be free-standing.  
      On the walls I hung a series called Voyeurs which are portraits created by securing individual panels to window-like frames.  I also created a series of other portrait collages of a man wearing, what else?, spectacles.
   All of the assemblages are exercises in dissonance, and in the end, the sum of many parts.