Unique Views of Huntsville Retrospective

During the entire month of October, many of the works displayed at the Huntsville Museum of Art as part of the Unique Views of Huntsville show will be on exhibit at the HAL Gallery, including my painting of Big Spring Park. Be sure to take this chance have a look (or perhaps another look) at the excellent paintings from this year's show!

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From Urban Sprawl to Art

University Drive is a messy strip; no depiction of its myriad signs, lights, hotels, plazas, fast-food restaurants, heavy traffic, and warehouse-like box stores (obscuring what would otherwise be beautiful views of rolling hills, trees, and a quarry) could be completely tranquil. Like many places across America, it is a decentralized, impersonal, arid, automobile-centric stretch. When it came time to make a painting of this major thoroughfare through Huntsville [above], the calm-seeking nature-lover in me wanted both to represent the disjointed feel of this sort of land use, but also "fix" it through art, blending the random lines and monotonous boxes into a more organic landscape, concealing them by viewing them from a distance, through a tree.

As in View of Five Points I and The Wanderer, I created a multi-layered and textured image, but rather than expressing complexity or history, the variety of brushstrokes, semi-transparent build up of colors, and knifework only suggest disarray. The title, Showers over University Drive, adds another layer-- rain. Rain can often smooth over a harsh landscape, almost reclaiming it into nature, and University Drive in the rain is a kaleidoscope of colors melting into each other over glass, glimmering puddles, and the endless spray from car tires. . .

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The Landscape of Expression

The beginning of Fall is an excellent time for deep thought; 2010 will be over within a week and three months, the summer heat and wild foliage are finally relenting, and so I, too, withdraw a bit and allow my daydreams to lead me, philosophize even more than usual about education and society, become more conscious of what it means to live life fully. Yet what is interesting about these meandering ruminations is that they lead me to spend more time at the easel, not less; in fact, the more time I spend daydreaming and thinking grand things and relishing the notion of free will and self-reliance, the more new ideas come to mind, and new ideas mean new work [above]. That having been said, I have recently completed two new paintings, one on unstretched canvas and one on stretched.
Around Huntsville, many people refer to the public library as "Fort Book" because of its unusual architecture. The first of my two most recent paintings, View from "Fort Book" [above] is not only an abstraction of the actual view from the library, a strangely desolate view given that it so close to downtown, but a fanciful play on the idea of surveying the region from a fortress.
While the second new painting, Near the Corner of Holmes and Jordan [above], was meant to be considered one of a series with Huntsville Through the Dirty Glass, as I worked on it and completed it, I could not help but note that it seemed a sort of spiritual successor to 417 Greenacres Drive as well. Of course, the proximity of Greenacres Drive to Holmes Avenue and Jordan Lane, areas of Huntsville that are probably seldom depicted in fine art, explains the relationship to some extent, but the living vibracy of the design and colors also strikes me as related. View from "Fort Book" is a painting of cool, though not unpleasant, isolation and watchful stillness, Near the Corner of Holmes and Jordan seems more about movement, growth, deterioration, dreams, and cycles, a very fitting work for a contemplative soul at the turn of seasons. . .

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Another Year of Unique Views

Whenever summer begins to turn to fall, I look forward to participating in the Art League's Unique Views of Huntsville Show. It has been an honor to see my paintings hang alongside works by some of Huntsville's most skilled and experienced artists for three years in a row now and I am continually interested to see how others interpret this city in art. This year's show opened today in the upstairs great room of the Huntsville Museum of Art [above and below] and will be up until the 19th of September. Admission is free to the public.

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You Are Here: Questions I Ask Myself

I enjoy setting goals for myself, small goals, something to finish by the end of the day, something to work on throughout the week, very general adventures or projects to pursue during the year. As stray breezes begin to hint at fall, I take time to think about how these seemingly trifling yet strategic goals build upon one another.

Last year, when I left Montreal and McGill University, my artistic goals were fairly straight-forward; to continue to exhibit works whenever possible, to begin writing a bit more about each painting and why I paint, to never stop seeking beauty and truth, and to continue to do something artistic each day, preferably in the context of my previous work (but without repeating myself). Though I was able to complete paintings such as Depth Puzzle [above, 2009] while in Canada, graduate school did not allow me very much time to pursue art as anything more than a hobby, and that was too out of tune with the direction my thoughts and actions had been following for the past years to be acceptable. I had to re-arrange my schedule and re-arrange some of my goals so that my art could continue to flourish.

Most serious artists probably find themselves asking painfully self-conscious questions: How do I promote my work? Is it irresponsible of me to spend so much time making art? Do others enjoy my work? It is important for an artist, having answered these questions to his satisfaction (if they were not self-explanatory or even trite to him in the first place), to move on to a more enlightened set of questions: Does my work contribute something worthwhile to my community? Does it take into consideration historical context? Am I doing everything that I could possibly be doing at this point to create meaningful work and integrate that meaningful work into a meaningful life?

I do not like to ask myself too many questions when it comes to making art. In a sense, art is what results after I have already explored questions through experience or thought and so I have no need to cringe at every brushstroke with Kafkaesque paranoia and post-modern analysis; instead, I can serenely guide the combination of color, energy, and spirit that makes up a brushstroke across the canvas. To me, art will always be a thing to be done and experienced first and foremost. . . yet as I reach the final quarter of each year, I always return to that latter set of questions concerning community, context, and the art of life itself, and as I contemplate my answers, new small goals will gradually begin to arise for the next few months and my next new year of life as a painter.

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Rocket City Inspirations

Walking over the uneven wooden slats of one of the upper floors of Railroad Antiques downtown, I began to think about how much I enjoy painting Huntsville-- the beautiful Southern trees, the odd angles of the buildings from the 1960's (the decade when this town most noticeably stepped away from cotton mills and into the Space Age), the cold, arching overpasses juxtaposed with magnificent greenery, stately, well-preserved historic buildings, rockets, faded houses and signs, high-tech modernity, country life, and Antebellum romanticism all rolled into one. I then returned home and began scribbling in my sketchbook. The first painting resulting from this particular sketching session is Huntsville Through the Dirty Glass [above], a work directly inspired by a third-floor view out the window of the highway leading into town.
Though I have already painted quite a few Huntsville scenes, two of which [Big Spring Park, above, and Lilies, below] will be displayed in the Museum of Art's upstairs exhibit hall from September 11-19 along with other interesting works in the Unique Views of Huntsville exhibit, I have no doubts that the Rocket City will continue to provide material for my artistic renderings as long as I call North Alabama home. . .

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