Red Region Inferno

I have been a painter for my entire life.
My work has mostly been in oils through the 80′s and 90′s until I switched to acrylics in the late 90′s.
A brush and canvas are my tools.

Watercolors have never gotten along with me though.
They just don’t do what I want. Classes, friends who only work in the medium, books, etc… have done me no good.
I learned all the tricks. I hate tricks though. Watercolor doesn’t allow for freedom of expression like oils and acrylics do.

Erotic art is the toughest market in art I think. The collectors are limited.
Not everyone feels comfortable displaying such things on their walls, no matter how much they may personally love it.
I’ve done figurative work since I was a small child, but I have never done erotic paintings.
I don’t know the market or the people in the erotic art world. For some reason though I decided to start meddling around with it though.
Since I don’t know the scene, and have no expectations to live up to in the world of erotic art I decided to do a watercolor for my first experimentation.

Here it is.

Watercolor on paper and it is just ten inches wide.
Working small with paint is also not my thing. A twenty four inch canvas is about my average/small, and I am usually working at double that.

Yes, I have stepped outside of my painting comfort zones.
Watercolor, erotic subject matter, and keeping it small.
I am not sure what to think of the outcome.
For a first endeavor it is o.k. I guess.
Shall I do more?
I’m not sure.
Maybe a few acrylic works are needed in this small size before again attempting the use of watercolors.
Maybe some larger (and looser) watercolors are needed before attempting another small work in this restrictive medium.
We shall see.

As for the erotic art market I will look into that as well.
Unlike many who play with paints… I can not afford the luxury of painting JUST for fun.
I am simply to flaky to hold down a real job.
My source of income is art. I have a family to support.
Art that I cannot sell is not an option for me and I refuse to paint lame ass landscapes just to make ends meat.
So… I am excited to delve into something new, but also anxious at the prospect of failure.

Maybe fate will deal me some good cards on this one.

Upward to tranquility…
is obviously a painting inspired by the yoga pose Upward Facing Dog.
“urdhva mukha svanasana”

Upward To Tranquility

This pose stretches the chest, lungs, abdomen, and back.
It will free you to breathe… thus the tittle of the painting.

High up, free from bothersome demands where the air is clean and fresh we open ourselves and allow ourselves to truly breathe.

I have actually done this pose high up on a mountain a few times, but in general I practice it on a mat in my living room.
If my mind can become clear enough I still am able to find that tranquil place I long for.

Upward facing dog is not only good for the chest, lungs, abdomen, and back.
It also stimulates your internal organs and offers relief from depression.
Many  yoga practitioners claim that this pose offers relief from asthma also… and they very well may be right.
Personally however I think that if it does help with asthma it is simply because when in this pose and breathing correctly it expands the lungs and chest so much that it may actually clean out the lungs a bit – ‘so to speak’.

So… I hope you enjoy my painting and it inspires you to not only get into this very beneficial pose, but also to seek your own tranquility.

“away she goes”

That is the title of this painting.

away she goes

It is a small painting , just 13 inches wide, and I did it with acrylics.

I painted it in 2005.

and… That’s all I have to say about that.

Sometimes I find women to be completely void of all emotion.
A straight razor too seems void of all emotion in the exact same way to me.
So sharp, so perfect, able to cut so smoothly that you can’t even feel any pain, yet at the same time cut so deep that the wound may be your undoing.

This painting remains untitled.
I never could put a name to it.

The girl who inspired it is no longer a girl. She is a woman.
My memory of her will always be of her as just a girl though.
When I knew her she was young. I met her when she was about 19 or 20 and new her for just a few years.
I have seen her, and what she grew up to be over the years and she is so very different and yet the same.

This painting represents her back then.

It is sad and spooky how fucked up a girl can get by the time she is reaching her late teen years.
By the time I met this gal she had already become a zombie doll.
Pretty, jaded, angry, and hurtful to everyone around her.
She was mostly hurtful to herself however.
I tried to help her become a little less self destructive.
My own youth limited my ability to do so and I failed.
She went  down her very destructive path and ended up reaching some low places I am surprised she lived through.

She did survive though.

Now she is a completely fake person who pretends to be a stereotypical PTA type mommy.
Her smile while amongst the other PTA mommies is a painted on thing that immediately turns to a hard line of boredom and hate when she turns around so they can not see.

She hates her life.
She hates her past.
She hates that her youthful beauty has faded.
She hates not being in control.
She hates her 2 ex husbands that have to write checks for child support each month.
She hates being a mother to children with deadbeat fathers, and most of all hates knowing that she can’t undo her past mistakes.

All of these hates manifest themselves into cool and calculated plots to hurt everyone around her.

She is a cruel person.
She was cruel at 19 and has only sharpened the blade over the years.
Those that try to befriend her and get sucked into to her fake persona eventually find themselves under her blade.
She is a destroyer of lives.
Nobody is allowed to live a happy life if she is not allowed.

As an adult she takes her time and finds just the perfect way to destroy.
She will wait years if she must to get into a position to completely annihilate your life.

When young she would strike at first chance.

Ah… The patience one develops as they mature.

Ever go to a strong man competition?
If you havn’t… you should.
The flip cars, lift cars, press huge logs, throw kegs, and lift monster sized stones.
They do it fast too.
It is all about lifting, pushing, pulling, carrying the hugest things possible and usually in a semi race type of manner.

One of my favorite events is the tire flip.
Multi hundred pound tires flipped in a race.
Usually two competitors race side by side.
It is awesome.

I actually had a national tire flip champion model for me to do this painting.
We met up at  his gym and we went outside and he flipped tires.
He also did some atlas stones and some log pressing and some dead lifts… but the tire flip was what I was after.

A couple weeks back I posted a drawing I called “Sacrificed “
that I pulled from a sketch pad I had filled up during a bad portion of my life.

The sketch was not the end though… It inspired a painting.
It deserved to be a painting.
Only paintings can really last.

I called this painting “Sacrifice of a soul mate.”

It was I who had been sacrificed so I thought.

I was in a lot of pain.

I did the drawing on 2003 and the painting in 2004.
It has now been over 7 years since my old life completely ended and it has been 6 since I painted this image.
Over those years I have changed my views.
Certainly I was cast aside and destroyed by a woman I had lived for close to 20 years.
There is no doubt I died in many ways and I will never be the type of person I once was.
One can not burn on the alter and rise back up whole.

The real sacrifice however was not me.
She sacrificed herself.

I had changed.
She had changed.
The end had come.

She did everything she could to hurt and destroy the lives of everyone she held close.
Nobody who cared for her was spared.

She hurt me most only because I was the closest.
I was the one who had shared her entire life.

The bridges she burned down could never be repaired.
She lost everyone and everything she had ever know.

She assumed (wrongly) that I who was a very strong willed megalomaniac sort of man would recover from it and rise up to be what she had always thought I could be.
To be richer, more famous, happier, and fulfilled… without her.
She did not realize how so much of what I had accomplished was for her.
To impress her and make her proud of me.
She didn’t really understand.

It was a self sacrifice.

Nobody was hurt as badly as she.

Even our son… who became bitter and leery of women forever was not hurt as badly as she hurt herself.

So now when I look at this painting I see it differently.
What I felt before remains, but now I see her pain. I see her torment and how she must live with her mistakes forever.
I feel sorry for her and wish I could help.
I wish there was something I could say.

There is nothing.

The deeds have been done.

What is done can never  be undone.

“No such thing as angels”
That is something I used to say a lot.

Under The Full Moon

One of my small quick paintings done in that “let the paint guide you type style”.
Or in other words… just start painting and see what happens.
The original painting is under 12 inches wide.
That is small for me. I usually hit canvas at least 3 times that size, but oddly it is these little paintings that come from nowhere that I often end up liking most.

Painting can be a release for the soul.

Often when I paint my method is to dump a color that catches me  onto a plate… smear it around a bit with a brush and then just let the brush play across the canvas until it lets me know what it wants to do.

I let the painting create itself. I release control and try to let it happen on it’s own.
It is a type of meditation.
Clear the mind, surrender, and flow……

Iris

This painting I call “Iris” is just such a painting.
It happened. It was –  for a certain portion of my life all that existed.
It’s creation was a reflexion of my subconscious and inner being.

These types of paintings are often my favorites.
They have a loose quality about them that refuses any sort of judgement.
They are therapy and what they reveal helps me learn about who and what I really am.

This one was a small painting (just 14 inches across) and it was done in a kitchen when a midnight snack just couldn’t settle me enough to sleep.

Skull F%#$

Yep… that is the title. Or maybe I should say- one of the titles.
Another working title I had was Fuck Face.
I had  a bad week.
No… A bad month.
“Hell”…. I felt at the moment it was a bad life.

We all go through those times.
At least I was capable of creating something beautiful while venting this time.

Skull Fuck ~ AKA ~ Fuck Face

I guess it is kinda like what would have come about if another artist peeked into my mind and tried to paint a still life from what he saw inside.

Sure the primary subject is a skull that resembles a set of red-ish purple balls with a very phallic looking tongue sticking out.
Sure that tongue is a bit tied (though loosely) with some vine-ish floral that resemble someones vagina a bit and the whole thing is set within a colorful array of light and dark shit tones… but still – I made it pretty.
Life was pretty.
It was bright.
It held beauty.
Even when it was hell.

Is there something to be learned from this creation of mine?
Yep… though I didn’t know it at the time.

I was painting angry, and I was painting sad.
When I finally finished this painting I really hated it.
“Fucking Ugly”
Then some time past… and I saw the beauty in it again.
Just like life.

Now – Rather than something ugly and full of lies… I see something colorful and erotic.
The dark exists, and so does the light.
Nothing changes much in life except our perception of it.

What is good or bad is often only how we perceive it.

Let us all keep our eyes… and our minds open.

There is a Spanish proverb that reads:
“Where there is love, there is pain.”

Is there any greater truth?

To quote William Shakespeare:
“The courses of true love never did run smooth.”

Yes, indeed… love hurts.
We have all felt that side of love at one point or another I think.
Like fire however… we are drawn back to it.
We seek love, need love, pray for love, and because we know it’s dangers..
we fear it.

This painting was part of my Red Region series.
It was done with a predominate red theme and draws it’s style from the world of tattooing.

The Love Hurts painting from the tattoo art inspired Red Region paintings series.

This painting (Like all the first Red Region paintings) was done with acrylics on canvas.

The funny part is that while painting this I had a fit of nostalgia and broke out my Hair Of The Dog cd and played it pretty much the entire time I was painting.

Here are the lyrics… Go ahead and sing out loud.
Life is always better when we sing.
So don’t hold back!

Love hurts, Love scars, Love wounds and mars
Any heart not tough or strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain
Love is like a cloud, it holds a lot of rain
Love hurts, Ooo-oo Love hurts

I’m young, I know, But even so
I know a thing or two – I learned from you
I really learned a lot, really learned a lot
Love is like a flame It burns you when it’s hot
Love hurts, Ooo-oo Love hurts

Some fools think of happiness, blissfulness, togetherness
Some fools fool themselves, I guess
They’re not foolin’ me
I know it isn’t true I know it isn’t true
Love is just a lie made to make you blue
Love hurts, Ooo-oo Love hurts

(Insert some sweet guitar here)
I know it isn’t true I know it isn’t true
Love is just a lie made to make you blue
Love hurts, Ooo-oo Love hurts

Yep… Nazareth rocked it with that album!