Early Work

I call this "Dresser Person." Thanks to Jesse for sending me a photo of this painting I did, oh, probably around 1972. And thanks to my mom for letting me paint on the backs of dressers, which is why this piece is preserved and also may have something to do with why I have the creative freedom I do. She actually let me paint on the walls too. Parents, I recommend this policy.

NAKED: Art on Raw Surfaces event

This event to promote figurative art was organized by Studio Art Direct and was held at the offices of the American Institute of Architects, at NW 11th and Flanders, on Thursday June 5. It was like other First Thursday gallery receptions, only with actual live artists (Bill Park, Sidonie Caron, and me) drawing an actual live model (Julie Webb). The show includes one painting reproduced many times using giclee (inkjet) printing on many different surfaces. It also now includes many of the 25+ drawings produced by each of the artists during the three-hour reception, and these drawings are for sale. The photograph above shows some of these drawings as they were at the end of the evening. Mine are in the middle.

Demos and Studies

Art Media (my second home) asked me to do an in-store demo to tout the virtues of Multimedia Artboard, one of my favorite painting supports. This painting of Waikiki is on gessoed MMAB and consists of layers of watercolor, which can be picked up when it's dry. Some of the following images are from that demo, and others are in-class demonstrations or just me messing around.


This one is oil on board, about 9x12. I was trying to get the feeling of light reflecting on the floor and the different warm and cool whites.


I had a board which I'd painted with wall paint a long time ago. I was actually working on another painting when I saw the angle of my head in the mirror. This is oil paint, laid on with a brush and then scraped with a knife.

This is from last year, when David and I traded modeling for each other. He is a still-life painter whose work is just beautiful.

A study of Sasha. Trying to move into heavier paint in the light areas and keep the nice values from my "drawing."


Three Little Oranges and a shaft of sunlight. I loved the blue of this table...I've since painted it green.

This started out as one of the demo boards at Art Media (acrylic on MA) and continued in class to show how to put the background in after and use it to carve out and refine the shape of the figure.

This one's a classroom demo, acrylic on toned MA. These lamps stand in the corner of the classroom, and in this painting they seem to be playing out some human interaction.
This one I did in class to show how to go in real loose at the beginning, using your reference objects for inspiration and creating the color and composition you want, rather than intending to accurately copy the reality you see.

This is from a sketchbook image I did at (I think) White Sands beach in Hawaii. It was done to demonstrate how watercolor works on unprimed MA.

Learning is a Journey of Discovery

Captain Strong Primary School in Battle Ground, Washington

This mural was completed in January with the help of the 770 students and 100 staff at CSPS. About half of the students were at different schools last year and many teachers were transferred too because of school closures and changes, making this year a time of transition for everyone at Captain Strong. Principal Diana Harris wanted a project that would bring the school together as a community so she invited me to orchestrate the painting of a mural. It was a huge success, bringing everyone together and creating lots of enthusiasm as well as a beautiful finished work of art.

The beginning of the transformation



After

Butterfly life cycle

Circle time




Students and staff used Q-tips to make thousands of dots




The cougar is the school's mascot




Recess was a popular theme in students' concept drawings

See more photos of this mural

See The Columbian's online article about the mural

Roots to Grow, Wings to Fly

Illahee Elementary School in Camas, Washington



This is the third of the elementary school murals. The first one was about twelve years ago at Fisher's Landing Elementary in Vancouver. They wanted a professional-looking mural and they also wanted all the schoolchildren to participate in its creation. My solution was this:

• The school decides on a theme
• All the children do drawings of what they'd like to see in the mural, based on the theme
• I design the mural based on the children's concepts
• I transfer the outlines to the wall and block in base colors
• Each child paints using a Q-tip, one dot at a time, to fill in more colors
• I paint detail areas such as faces and lettering.
• A month after completion, the mural is clear-coated for protection.

It was a great experience for everyone at Fisher's Landing--the children were excited to be working on a project this big, the faculty and staff also participated by painting dots and supporting the entire process, and the finished mural looks fantastic.

This mural at Illahee is nine feet tall and eighty feet long and was completed in April 2007. It took a little over a month.

More photos of this mural

Recording the Process

Fraser had these two blue square canvases and so there was nothing for it but to paint pictures on them, one of Frase and one of Naomi. These were both done in Australia in May 2007. Notice how I accurately depicted Fraser's steely-eyed intensity. Each of these paintings took about two hours, including breaks and making sandwiches.

During the first one of Naomi I took a few photos during the process, and then on Frase's we set up the camera on a tripod and took a lot more photos and he made it into a video.

Then in July I was in California and wanted to do one of my brother Jesse. He had the idea of photographing every single brushstroke. We set up the tripod right behind me and he held the remote shutter release. After every brushstroke I ducked and he took a picture. It made me even more deliberate about every brushstroke than I usually am. At the beginning of the video you can see sunlight moving across the canvas (we're sitting under the balcony at Valley Forge Drive).

Turkish Hammam Mural

The finished mural.

My client, SK, had been on a trip to Morrocco several years ago and on this trip went to a women's hammam, which is a sort of spa where women gather to talk and bathe. She loved it and wanted to decorate her (fairly large) bathroom to recall the experience. She didn't have any photos from her visit so she described it to me and showed me some pictures in books.

This is the initial sketch.

Here is the final Photoshop comp. I initially put the Valpincon bather in as a placeholder until I found a model, but SK liked the homage to Ingres because he had been so interested in the eastern culture. So we left her in.

Priming the canvas. I used a twelve-foot length of 60-inch wide cotton canvas from Art Media, and Utrecht gesso that is so thick you could stand a crowbar up in it.

The canvas would be installed on two adjacent walls but I decided to do it all in one piece. I built a temporary wall in my studio and clamped and stapled the canvas to it. I meant to take lots of in-progress photos but forgot, so I have pnly this one and the finished painting, ta daa.

Detail showing the far right section, on the return wall.

This project took four months from the initial meeting to the installation and touch-up.
Next project: my fourth elementary-school mural, this one in Battle Ground, Washington.