summer of 2008

That summer was really good for my painting actually. I was able to hunker down and just bang them out. I hope such a time comes again soon and this present artistic drought ends!

This is the first one I did that summer and it's one of my favorites. The gears aren't as obvious, they're more integrated into the ground. My goal was simply to have a vast landscape with mixed industrial and natural elements in the light of a dying sun. The intense colours in the sky are supposed to be beautiful but at the same time indicating pollution in the air.

Here's another one done entirely from my imagination. It brings you inside a cave that's got possibly poisonous water/liquid and a single source of light in the distance.

This one has a Victorian lady lost in the woods, surrounded by mysterious darkness (or trees, or hooded figures) with no technology to help her. Just a source of light in the canopy above.

I just like my brushstrokes in this one and the sense it creates that you're zooming into this earth-like planet.

This is simply gears thrown out into space. The bit of galaxy behind them is based on a real picture of the Whirlpool Galaxy. The reddish bubbles of hot gas are where stars are born.

If you want to see the amazing beauty of outer space then you should take a look at Deep Space: The Universe from the Beginning by Stuart Clark. The whole thing is stunning, beautifully printed, oversized pictures with interesting info.

More gears!... from early 2008

This is a little painting with a bug-like rocket taking off for the great unknown. This is when I started taking more artistic liberties with the shape of gears. Perhaps they're getting mushy by the extreme heat of the take-off.



I have no explanation for this small painting. It was just for fun and to include the insides of a clock.



This is called the Orientalist. It's about the objectifying of Asia by white people in the Victorian Age which is why there are gears in her face. She also has the hair of a Japanese geisha, a Chinese top and a Korean sleeve in reference to the fact some ignorant people (even today) don't seem to realize we're not all from the same country (like China) and lump us all together.

Beginning of 2008

This is Planetary Attraction. I like the idea of worlds being dangerously close, illuminating each other's skies. It's about 3x4' and acrylic.


Steaming Forward: Weird train track/subway track traveling through land and space at the same time to who knows where.



Rolling Landscape. I didn't really have an idea for this one. Just that I like that kind of light that sometimes comes from sunsets and the sense of traveling.

End of 2007

I really like this acrylic painting and it is at Galerie Montage in Ste.Genevieve right now. I wanted a post-apocalyptic atmosphere with gears sort of left behind as garbage but also looking alive, like funny little bugs.

Tree Gears: trees with roots turning into gears. This was done in my intaglio class. Acid etch.

Victorian Landscape: This is the first time I tried mezzotint and boy was it hard. It was alot of long, physical labour getting layers of tiny holes into a plate of copper by hand. But I like how it turned out. I was able to get about 10 good prints.

Leaving for the future

Idealizing technology and the far future is such an integral part of human nature. Well, anyway you can really see it when you go back to the Victorian Age or even just the 50's. This is my first foray into such concepts.

Alien Moon

Here is when I started incorporating my love of science fiction into my artworks. And discovered it's fun to paint planets afterall!

Ascension

This is a photo lithograph print pieced together from other famous artworks and my own photos from Korea. Recognize Jackson Pollock textures? It was hard to keep all the nuanced shades from filling in while printing but a few of them turned out well.