He Fell For Love

I finished this a few days ago. I decided not to use color in this painting, just ink stroked onto the xuan paper with a wolf-hair brush. The power of the line can come through better without color stealing the show. The size of the painting, 12"x 30" is conducive to the cool drama of someone falling from the sky. Portland's Steel Bridge and iconic street lamps create space. The grasping hands add emotion. The oversized cat is silly. The bee and ambulance add danger. The falling gull enhance the out of control feeling. The happy girl is what it is all about.

NUTS!?!

Nuts!?! was just completed this morning 12/6/08. It's one of those paintings I do which almost looks like an old-school Disney illustration. Of course, I want my creative output to be pithier and edgier than a commercial illustration, but the paintings take on a life of their own. I tend to anthropomorphize animals usually by giving them big, searching eyes. Don't we all want to see a bit of ourselves in any random rodent? In a painting course I took at Yale the teacher excoriated me for the illustrative quality of my work. I had just finished 3 years of studying Chinese painting and calligraphy in Taiwan and was a bit older than my Yale classmates. It was too late. I had plotted my artistic course and wouldn't be changed by some abstract expressionist.

Wet Cat = Unhappy Cat

The fading intellectual has a hose that still squirts with some force.

Wet Cat = Unhappy Cat was completed this morning 11/29/08, ink and watercolor on xuan paper