A poster for Gillian Welch...

I was so honored to do a poster for them, love them! I'd been listening to their album for a week in my car, when I got the call to create a poster for their concert here in Bozeman. Kind of a wierd coincidence, but I was happy to do it.

August Art Opening at the Tartoo Gallery....

These paintings are the result of some long, hot hours working this summer. They are all oil on canvas, which is a new move for me. Generally, I use more materials in a painting, but lately I've been feeling that oils are plenty good as a material on their own, and the colors they can produce are so vivid and rich that I no longer want to search for a medium. I have many more ideas that I would have liked to have gotten painted, but it's always good have some ideas stockpiled for a rainy day. (photos courtesy of the Tartoo Gallery.)

Summer Studio 2011

Here's a shot of the inside of my studio for this past summer. I enjoyed the fresh air and natural light. The best thing about working in this particular space was that it solved a long time problem for me. There was pegboard already installed on one of the walls and I used that surface to hang the paintings while I worked on them, which completely eliminated the need for an easel. Personally, I've always hated easels. They're expensive, they take up too much space, and the ones that are affordable are wobbly and unstable. Pegboard is adjustable, cheap, and plenty secure to hang any size painting on. FYI, I suggest putting peg board in your studio.

Blank Canvas

I often have canvas that is still in it's plastic packaging for a year or more. School keeps me too busy to paint outside of the summer break. I was lucky enough to have two months or so this summer to work on paintings for the show in Tart, so these got to come out of their packaging and become supports for my ideas. It's hard to look at them for nine months, waiting that long to try out new ideas.

The beauty that is color...

It had been eight months since I'd seen these, and they'd sat in a stainless steel bucket for the winter. When I dumped them out, all those feelings of excitement came rushing back. I love the smell of the tubes of oil paint. It's an old smell, and it's like I've smelled it for hundreds of years myself. It's one of the most familiar memories I have in life. I felt like I couldn't get to work soon enough. I forced myself to show them some love, and cleaned each one of them, throwing away the ones that had dried beyond use. Color is such a mesmerizing thing to me, and seeing them all helter skelter together on my little blue table made me feel like I could pick any one of them and it would inspire an entire series of paintings.