The deconstructed, cliche still life 1

It took me a while, but I finally went back and worked into my latest intaglio print. I love the new dimension those little bits of color add to the piece. I cut this one down pretty close to the page, and I wanted to show you all the beautiful torn edges of the paper. That's why I didn't crop it down all the way... more soon to come!

Commissioned painting

I don't do a lot of realistic paintings, especially of people- which is funny because growing up that was basically all I did. Maybe I got burnt out of it. Well I was commissioned to paint this picture of my aunt's father in law for a Christmas present. And I actually enjoyed doing it, to my surprise. It was challenging to try and accurately portray all of his wrinkles and his glasses in watercolor, but I had fun figuring it out!

                                                                 8" x 10"

For information on commissioned paintings, just shoot me an email!

20 studies project

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I love mixed media and collage. It's kind of become a running joke that my professor Sunny is always telling us to crop down our art, because she always likes certain sections of the art pieces. Well I decided to take that idea and run with it. I painted maybe 6 or 7 larger, somewhat chaotic mixed media pieces, and then cropped them down into nice little paintings just a couple inches big. Each study was then matched with a corresponding magazine page.

You probably recognize this last one from my blog header background. I took this last study and painted it on a 2' x 2' wooden panel. I gave myself the artistic freedom to slightly change or alter the piece where I felt necessary. I plan to do this for all of my studies and hopefully have a show from it all based on the concept of process. Here's the first one.

                                                                2' x 2'

Center Street Provo

This oil series I worked on the past month and a half was based on a really weird building on center street in Provo. It's kind of falling apart, and has this fantastic neon reddish orange netting over certain areas of the more subdued colored building. I wanted to turn this building into paintings more focused on interesting shapes and compositions, while keeping the fact that it's a building somewhat recognizable. I painted in layers to build up some nice textures and colors. I also decided to expose some of the beautiful natural wood of the panel through the painting, it seemed to work with the idea.

                                                                   12" x 12"

                                                                  12" x 12"

                                                                   12" x 12"

                                                                   36" x 36"

Lithography

Lithography is certainly not conducive for the way I work as an artist. It is extremely meticulous and exact, one false move and you will destroy your whole image. I usually work very loosely and intuitively, so this was a challenge. But in the end, after all the hard work, I was happy with the images.

 This print is for the true minimalist. It represents the depletion and fading away of local, small, personal businesses that have been around for decades. This print is 11" x 14" and has an edition of 5.

This print is based off of a peculiar, somewhat modern house in Uruguay. Fell in love with the composition. This print is 11" x 14" and has an edition of 5.

This is my only multi-run print I created. It is titled "Man's endeavor to mimic nature's precious gems." This print is 8" x 10" and has an edition of 8.

Mixed media with Intaglio

I love the gorgeous impression intaglio prints have. But I wanted to experiment with adding some paint, magazine pieces and other materials/mediums to add some color and texture. What resulted was quite exciting to me. I made a few extras of this print...

and thought I would play around and see what happened. Here is what came to be.

This particular piece was submitted to a juried show in October. Not only was it accepted into the show, but it was rewarded an honorable mention. Considering the scale of it, only 11" x 14", in comparison to the scale of much of the other work submitted, I was very pleased!

So many doors, so little time

When I visited Uruguay, I was blown away by the quirky and frankly stunning doors. They were so unique, I really had never seen anything like them. I went a little crazy, I must of taken pictures of 50 doors in two hours. So you may see a theme of doors and entry ways throughout my art, but I just love them. Especially when they are falling apart and are being covered up... like this door. For this piece I used watercolor, graphite, acrylic house paint, colored pencil, and magazine clippings.

15" x 15"

Step by Step- oil painting

Lately, I have been taking pictures on my iphone of my oil paintings as they evolve and change. I tend to work in layers, I'm interested in what happens when the paint builds up and also when you start sand back into it. Doing this helps me to see where areas have changed for the better, and perhaps areas where I lost some beautiful information that I want to bring back. Here is a series of photos to show my process in my latest painting. A nice, cropped picture of the final painting soon to come. This panel I made is 3ft x 3ft

 Started out by loosely blocking in color and roughly the areas they belonged to. I love the natural beauty of the wood, and thought it would be nice to expose parts of it in this piece.

 At this point the painting became too precious. I wasn't making progress because I was scared of ruining any little place. So the only option was to obliterate it.

 Working back into it to bring back the image.

 
Just about finished. Because of the mess I made a few steps earlier, I was able to bring out some small and unpredictable details that add a lot overall to this painting.

The inspiration from this piece comes from a run down building in downtown Provo that was really quite quirky and non-sensical. I wanted to look at it more as a flat composition of color, shapes, and line, while still making the fact that it's a building somewhat recognizable. I love weathered architecture, especially when it's really odd and has very unpredictable parts to it. I am a big supporter and believer in small businesses. I think my use of old buildings as subject matter ecetnly is in response to my love for local, family-run, and or small businesses. There is something really fantastic about that whole concept, especially as the world becomes more advanced and more out of touch with it's local community. I want people to appreciate and recognize the beauty of this idea, and hopefully think more about supporting them so their little building doesn't just get demolished to make way for a large, corporate business that will tear down the history of a whole block just to make room for an office building.

Hope you enjoyed this friends. Cheers!

Se la Vee

About a year and a half ago, my dad and I started a card company called "Se la Vee." It has been such a wonderful learning experience and I have loved every step of the way. I do all the art work for the cards. They are simple watercolor and ink paintings, but I have never seen anything done like these cards before, which makes me very excited. Here are a few examples of some of my favorites.

                        
For more information on our company, and to view the complete stock of cards we offer, check us out on Facebook...

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Se-la-Vee-cards/113347448752859

You can also see cards, as well as purchase them, at Cargoh...

http://www.cargoh.com/store/se-la-vee

Cheers!