The Tailor’s Apprentice is one of the first projects I started when I started making non-observational art about 15 years ago. It may eventually be a comic, but you never know about these things. Anyway, here is a bunch of the work I made between 2004-2007.
Presentation slip cast porcelain sculpture & mold.Spent the last month understanding how to create slip cast sculptures. This is a 6 part plaster mold created for my wood & wax sculpture. The figure presents a vessel.
While resting, the quickest watercolor sketch of my daughter and son, ice skating at the big indoor rink in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was a lot of fun.
A sketchbook title page, of which I have a superstition that how it goes, so goes the whole sketchbook. This is (clockwise) a work meeting with Jess, Ryan and Farley; A museum visit to KU’s Wilcox; A museum visit to KU’s Spencer; A visit to Boulevard Beer Hall.
A watercolor portrait of Tess sitting in our living room in the afternoon.
1992 photo of Ken Bini in an American Dirtball costume. Enamel paint on wallpaper.
Repetition as a theme. Man bearing a gift to another figure. Woman bearing a gift to viewer. Wood and encaustic. 3x 10″.
Drawing for a slip cast of St. Anthony. This will be a large porcelain ceramic sculpture, maybe 1.5x life size.
Of all the recent exhibitions at the Nelson for which I have evangelized, Janet Cardiff’s 40 Part Motet bears it away I brought family, friends, coworkers, strangers. Here is a sepia sketch of John and Thomas listening to the installation, with my (obscured) notes, from January 2017.
A watercolor sketch of Julia’s performance of The Understudy at Capsule in Kansas City, July 19, 2019.
Watercolor study for a larger oil, Thomas Shooting, using my diamond grid to structure the composition.
Comic from the biography page of 60 Ways To Leave Your Mother (Alone), my self-published children’s book from 2012. Françoise Mouly chose a few for inclusion in the 2012 edition of Best American Comics. Seems like a hundred years ago.
The only record of my largest and earliest painting, from 1989, when Basquiat was still king. Supapowa. Acrylic on canvas. 8 x 6 foot. After Caravaggio’s Conversion on the Way to Damascus. Seems like another lifetime, and I suppose it was.
I loved, loved sketching this Scholder bronze at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe.
Two sketchbook spreads, watercolor studies of the sky looking west from Santa Fe International Hostel over a 24 hour period in late July at 11am and at 7pm.
Sketches for painted busts of St. Anthony and demon. Brown and black ink on watercolorpaper. 2017. 11×17″
Pencil sketch of Anja in pioneer dress, inherited from her mother. Anja holds her dolly.
A pencil sketch of a Kwakiutl sculpture in the Nelson Atkins collection. Wood, pigment, iron door hinges, cordage and nails, ca. 1900.Larger? See link in profile.
A pencil sketch of artist Israel Alexandro García García, performing at David Wayne Reed’s Shelf Life, at the Brick in Kansas City. June 6, 2019.
Watercolor study of Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park, from March 5, 2019, in the morning. Pencil and watercolor, about a thirty minute sketch.
A work-in-progress of Thomas shooting Carson’s ’43 Mosin at the farm. This is the first canvas I’ve attempted in about 30 years.#oilpainting #contemporarypainting #newamericanpaintings #philipguston #davidhockney #nickynodjoumi #neorauch #kerryjamesmarshall #jonimber #markuslupertz #georgbaselitz #jamesensor #fritzscholder #burchfield #harveydunn #georgecalebbingham #mosinnagant
Museum notes of Ft. Worth Modern and Kimball. Of Quaternity (1973), by Anselm Keiffer, “one of the most amazing paintings I have ever seen.” Dennis Blagg, Passover (1997), “the air scrubbed clean.” A sketch of Stephan Balkenhol’s 4 figures. A sketch of Bassano’s variant of the Adoration from the wonderful gem, Kimball. #kimballartmuseum #the_modern_fort_worth #anselfkeiffer #dennisblagg […]
A pencil portrait of Theresa, who held her bright, natural smile for 25 minutes, the longest I’ve ever seen.
A pencil sketch of a bronze by Wilhelm Lehmbruck (German, 1881–1919)Portrait of Herr Falk, 1915.
A gouache sketch of a woman. Color and composition notes from the Nelson Atkin’s European painting, such as: Poussin, “Shockingly narrow gamut of value and chroma on the [divine] faces. Greater gamut on ‘rough’ faces. Satyrs, centaurs, etc.” Or, Panini, “Mottled flesh, cartoonish simplification of planes and chroma. Bizarre foreshortening of leg on right figure.”And […]
Ink and pencil sketchbook pages for a tea towel design of one of Porowski’s aphorisms to be silkscreened on tea towels, giveaways at a variety show earlier this year in Brooklyn, Antoni Porowski & Friends.
A pencil sketch made on the spot of Albrecht Bouts’ Christ Crowned With Thorns at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art.
A gouache sketch exploring how the mask as cultural object, repetition of that object and the placement in a profane setting changes the nature of the religious subject.
A gouache sketch for a sculpture, after Bouts’ Christ Crowned With Thorns, in the Nelson Atkins museum of art. Conceived as repeated vacuform objects mounted to a wall, exploring how repetition changes the nature of the religious subject.
A watercolor sketch after Italian master Giorgio Morandi, of his Natura Morta, at the University of Iowa Museum of Art.
A gouache sketch for a sculpture, after Bouts’ Christ Crowned With Thorns, in the Nelson Atkins museum of art. A mildly absurd, decorative copy of Albrecht Bouts’ work of 1495, including the original’s inseparable round frame. Conceived as a vacuform object and also as a dimensional, popup-like work on separate panels.
An inadequate oil study after Frans Hals Rommel-Pot Player, at the Kimball Art Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas.
A pencil sketch of Mothers, playing at the Record Bar.
Pencil and watercolor sketch of a striking and beautiful wooden Katayo mask ( Chokwe, early 20th c.) from the Stanley Collection in Iowa City. Additionally, a sketch of a “friction oracle”, and observations from the Neo Rauch show at the Des Moines Art Center.
Pencil studies of the Sèvres Imperial cast after Antoine-Denis Chaudet bust of Napoleon, from the Nelson Atkins exhibition, Napoleon: Power and Splendor. Also, a quick sketch of chef Beth Barden.
Pencil and gouache study for a larger painting. Seated midwestern outdoorsman with hunting gear and deer rifle. Also, a small sketch made at Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum, after “Flatstyle” master Monroe Tsatoke.
