Jess on Couch II

Jess on Couch II, 24 x 20, oil on canvas 2008

'gonna see if I can manipulate this a little bit into a stencil image and play with the checker pattern on her dress.

Well I never did get around to changing this painting, and now it has been sold.

Don't Tread On Me and others...an experiment in progress

Engagement (early stages) 17" x 14" November 2008

Lately, I have been thinking about images that are more direct and less personal. Maybe try to remove some of the ambiguity that occurs so often in my painting. Anyway, since I have always relied heavily on strong contrasts and working with shape, and I use letter stencils and hand-drawn stencils in some of my paintings, I thought, "why not?"

I don't know if these stenciled images will be combined into a larger piece or be developed separately. The disruption that occurs with the girl and the swastika is probably too much. The only reason that I used the swastika in the first place was that the girl in the original image looked so Germanic and the whole South African/ Afrikaner, Dutch, diamond industrial complex was just too tempting and too ironic to make the symbol anything else. Maybe it was all of those movies with hot blondes and Nazi uniforms...maybe I can blame it on Mel Brooks. Maybe it reminds me of the young women in my classes with huge engagement rings and their haughty, slightly fascist overtones. A dollar sign would be too obvious and (according to my wife) it isn't that easy to read anyway.

Don't Tread on Me (in progress) 9" x 12" November 2008

Just beginning to goof around and work out some ideas for a new series. The idea of "Don't Tread on Me" has been in my head since the election. I would like to delve a lot deeper into this theme and definitely add at least one or two colors and some text here.