From Jungle to Jungle

1981, acrylic on illustration board, 20 x 30 inches, (top part is cut off)

Another 30 Year post for your retro pleasure. This is my 5th painting. ( you can see the first four in my May 2011 post ) As my first four paintings were done while finishing high school, this painting was done in a summer limbo period before an unknown future of not going back to school and not having a job. One can see some obvious influences such as a Frazetta, Whelan or Boris setting and the use of a Kull or Krull figure from a comic magazine Bizarre Adventures #26. I thought at the time I had quite an original idea with the juxtaposition of the two different worlds, a theme that would be prevalent in many future work. Wait a sec, It already has been prevelant in my previous three paintings. Funny. I remember feeling really at home painting the buildings without any reference, but I was stumped by how to paint the vegetation. To this day I still really like this one, though I cringe a little bit for the swipes of reference. Hey, I was only 17. I am amazed that I kept track of how long it took me to paint the different parts of the painting and how long I spent on preliminary drawings etc. In total, 63 hours.    

C.A.R.T in Baltimore Sun

Here is an article in the Baltimore Sun about the C.A.R.T exhibit currently on at Current Space Gallery in Baltimore. .....and they used one of my pictures for the article!

TABLE SPACE

Every day I have a billion things to do....or is it that I have a billion things to do and I just do as much of it as I can every day? Anyway, I was reading the morning paper and I came across this image (bottom) which somehow grabbed me and made me look and look. The squares, the color, the divisions...I saw beautiful geometric form, and thought I needed to explore this and create a piece of art. 

Normally I would have torn out the image and kept it on my desk and put it on my list of things to do. Then eventually it may have turned out to be not so important to do as I have so many other apparently important things to get done. And Like a dream that was relevant and fantastic when you first woke up, eventually fades into nothing as you go through your day.  But this time, I said, "Look Robert, you know it's not going to take you long to do it in Illustrator, so just do it now! Besides, you've been procrastinating on your real work all week now anyways, so here's your spot." That's what I said.  And this is what turned out. (above) I was pretty excited about it. Hope you like it too.

  

Robert Venosa Visionary

January 21, 1936 - August 9, 2011

It was with a saddened heart to learn of the passing of one of the true greatest visionary artists of this time, Robert Venosa. 

Just as I was being turned on as a surrealist artist, Robert Venosa had already accomplished an incredible journey of the soul and mind. He was one of the few figurative artists that I was seeing in a magazine called Omni. Venosa along with Henricott, Helnwein, Fuchs and Dali, really made a switch in my mind in viewing our body placement in the metaphysical world. Robert has and will always be a beacon light post on my journey of enlightenment.

  

REAL POLLICKS

My friend Ken Gregory has been working on some candy projects lately and since he was in the process, he offered to help me out in making some real POLLICKS lollipops. He had already made a mold for the base white candy part, so all we had to do now was make up 4 separate batches of candy. WOW I was amazed at how simple it was to dribble on the hard candy and how quickly they looked just like my fake Pollicks. These edible masterpieces will not be available anytime soon for the consumable masses, but check out my painted Pollicks Lollipops available now. They come with an old-school popsicle-styled silk-screened wrapper. Nakfactorium!