Brownnoser by Chuck Dillon. Click image to view source.

Sketch for How May I?, mixed media collage on paper. Click image to view on Flickr.

For about ten years now I have collected pictures to use as ideas for new pictures.* I often start a painting by gathering a small pile of image sources, either intuitively, because they seem to go together, or for a specific purpose. I used to create a pencil-and-paper sketch of these various sources, attempting to synthesize them visually before starting the painting. I would also scan them, resize them, struggle through PhotoShop layers to get them to fit together just right. At some point I thought, “what I really want is this head on that body,” and went: rip, slap, tape, done. I realized that the collage is visual shorthand for my pictorial plan. It didn’t have to make sense compositionally; the collage is a convenient way for me to gather a group of visual sources onto a single page. Plus, the faster I make the collage, the more unexpected and interesting visual moments show up in the result.

I’ve scanned a bunch of these collages and uploaded them to this Flickr set. Enjoy.

*Old-school illustrators call this a swipe file. Though it was years before I learned that what I was doing was a traditional practice; before then I thought I was (gasp) stealing and that it was (gasp) wrong. Thank you, illustration.

As the London Shop Fronts blog reveals, every place in the world has a unique character that may be difficult to define, but is instantly recognizable. It’s one of the things I love about Oklahoma City.

I’m drawn to the flat, almost clinical documentary style of these photographs. Although these are architectural spaces, the frontal perspective flattens the real-life objects into an abstracted array of color and texture. And the homebrew typography is always wonderful.

Related
Paho Mann, photographer. See particularly the Reinhabited Circle-K series.
Bernd and Hilla Becher, architectural photographers. See the Framework Houses series at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts for examples.

Faye (Runs Hot and Cold), acrylic on canvas, 2008.
Click image to see full-size, click here and here for detail views.

I will have three paintings in Mainsite Gallery‘s annual group invitiational show, Core Evidence, which opens this Friday, February 13th, 2009. Mainsite is located at 122 E Main St. in Norman, Oklahoma. The reception, part of a Norman Artwalk, will be from 7-9 pm. The event is free and open to the public.

Core Evidence will display art from the featured artists’ current bodies of work. Each artists is represented by works that comprise a “core sample” of their ongoing techniques and concepts. Featured artists include Todd Stewart, Paul Mays, XVALA, and myself. The group show runs concurrent to a solo show of paintings by Steve Breerwood.

This show at Mainsite is part of the Norman Arts Council’s 2nd Friday Circuit of Art, a scheme developed by the Fred Jones Junior Museum of Art, the Norman Arts Council, the Norman Gallery Association and the CART (Cleveland County Area Rapid Transit) Trolley. Patrons are encouraged to park their cars in the Downtown area, at the Firehouse, the Campus Corner area or surrounding areas and travel by foot or by CART Trolley to participating events destinations. Signs and information will be available at all participating locations and in the parking lot at University and Main at the Norman Arts Council Event Tent. For more information please contact the Norman Arts Council or visit the Norman Gallery Association website.

Anonymous Niece, acrylic and colored pencil on Rives BFK, 2009. Click image to see full-size.

To learn more about Illustration Friday, click here.

Anonymous Niece was created for Seeing Other People, a show of contemporary portraiture by Oklahoma Artists. The show hangs in the OKC Underground Invited Artists Gallery from January to April 2009. There will be an opening reception this coming Thursday, January 22, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Please join us!

To create this fictional portrait, I worked from several photographic sources. My primary source was a picture I found in a stack of old family photos. There is no information on the photograph identifying the subject, just the name of the portrait studio: Jamiesons Studios, 3A High Street, Wrexham. (A quick search tells me that Wrexham is in northeast Wales, the country my family came from two generations ago. So it is likely the girl in the photograph is a distant relative.)

Following is a list of movies I listened to (on headphones, from my portable dvd player) while I worked on Anonymous Niece.

A Room With a View

Ballets Russes

Warming By the Devil’s Fire

Charlie Wilson’s War

Chicago

Pride and Prejudice (episode 1)

Click image to see full-size.

Seeing Other People, featuring contemporary portraits by 12 Oklahoma artists, will open with a reception on Thursday, January 22 (5:30-7:30pm) in the Invited Artist Gallery (OKC Underground). Please join us!

Participating artists represent photographers, printmakers, painters, and mixed media artists. They are: MJ Alexander, Sarah Atlee, Josh Buss, Eleanor Davy Carmack, Sam Echols, Nick Hermes, Jackie Jones, JP Morrison, Jason Pawley, Liz Roth, Sara Scribner, and Alexis Winslow.

The artists in Seeing Other People have created artwork portraying friends, celebrities, and complete strangers using a wide array of styles and motives. The result is a broad, varied, and engaging exploration into this genre, and into the very different ways we all see other people.

The Invited Artist Gallery, located in The Underground, is made possible through a sponsorship by Devon Energy Corporation Entrances to the gallery are located at the corner of Robert S. Kerr Blvd and Robinson, and inside Leadership Square. The Invited Artists Gallery sits underneath the intersection of Robinson and Robert S. Kerr with entrances from all adjacent buildings. The Invited Artist Gallery is produced by Downtown Oklahoma Inc.

For more information on the Underground or Downtown OKC, Inc, please visit downtownokc.com or call 405-235-3500.

I’m pleased to announce that Hinton Geary from the Normal, OK series has been accepted to the Society of Illustrators 51st Annual book and exhibition. Ever since I learned about the S of I, I’ve wanted to be a part of it. My painting Let’s Make Some Undies was in the student show in 2005. This will be my first time showing at the Society (or anyplace in NYC) as a professional.

Hinton will be in the Book Illustration category, representing Normal, OK: The Book (which you can order by clicking here).

The exhibition opens at the Society of Illustrators in NYC on January 28th 2009. The awards ceremony for the Book and Editorial categories will be on February 6th. God willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll be there.

At the Red Dot Show, in addition to auctioning artists’ works, IAO does something different. A group of artists (myself included) [scratch that, I wasn't included] has agreed to auction “blank canvases” — that is, they are selling commissions. When a buyer purchases a blank canvas from me, the artist agrees to paint them a commissioned work.

And That’n: The Red Show: What Makes You See Red? An annual fundraiser for the Red Line Foundation, a local organization promoting education and awareness about HIV/AIDS. AKA Gallery, 3001 Paseo, Oklahoma City. Saturday November 15th, 8 pm to midnight. Tickets available at Moda Salon, The Velvet Monkey Salons, the 42nd Street Candy Company, or at the gallery door.

My friend and colleage Ashley Griffith is a cofounder of Red Line, and is lending us her Paseo gallery space for this exhibit of red art. (The show guidelines stipulate that works must be at least fifty percent red.) Below are the three paintings I made for this show. I have included in-progress shots to give an idea of how I build layers in a painting. (Secretly I hope that in five years I look back at these and think, “Gracious Aunt Betsy, what was I thinking? I am SO much better at layering now.”)

I began with photos of my subjects, which I doctored in PhotoShop to shift the color balance toward the red end of the spectrum. I drew very basic pencil outlines on my blank canvases. The underpaintings are thin layers of red (cadmium and napthol), yellow (cadmium and naples), and sienna.

This is one of my palettes at the beginning of a painting session. I use styrofoam takeout trays. When they get full of paint, I let them dry and then apply a thin coat of gesso.
Top row: burnt sienna, cadmium red light, cadmium red dark, napthol pink (mixture).
Second row: burnt sienna (liquid acrylic), Golden glaze in rust, Golden glaze in yellow ochre, Liquitex portrait pink (mixture).
Third row: burnt umber (liquid acrylic), van dyke brown, unbleached titanium (mixture), cadmium yellow.
Bottom row: payne’s gray (liquid acrylic), neutral gray, titanium white.
Not pictured: alizarin crimson.

This is a different palette, after a painting session.

Recently I am taking a more painterly approach to my work. Looking back at the last couple of years I have felt like a drafstman who uses paint. I’ve missed the tactile and aesthetic pleasures of pushing paint around, building layers of color, and laying down single, decisive brush strokes.

The Dave painting was not fit to be photographed at this point. In the final piece, you will see that I changed direction somewhat. As a professor of mine says, every painting goes through an ugly stage.

Charlie: Stripes, acrylic on canvas, 2008 by Sarah Atlee

Dave: Red, acrylic on canvas, 2008 by Sarah Atlee

Trent: Halvsies, acrylic on canvas, 2008 by Sarah Atlee

A warm thank-you to my sitters, including Mr. Trent Lawson.

Titus, collage and acrylic on Rives BFK, 2008. Click image to enlarge.

The artists’ labels will be sold by silent auction; proceeds will benefit the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition.

TAMORA
Know, thou sad man, I am not Tamora;
She is thy enemy, and I thy friend:
I am Revenge: sent from the infernal kingdom,
To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind,
By working wreakful vengeance on thy foes.
Come down, and welcome me to this world’s light;
Confer with me of murder and of death:
There’s not a hollow cave or lurking-place,
No vast obscurity or misty vale,
Where bloody murder or detested rape
Can couch for fear, but I will find them out;
And in their ears tell them my dreadful name,
Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake.

TITUS ANDRONICUS
Art thou Revenge? and art thou sent to me,
To be a torment to mine enemies?

TAMORA
I am; therefore come down, and welcome me.

(Thanks to William Shakespeare Info. And thanks to Julie Taymor for making the colorful film version of Titus Andronicus.)

Afterthought: The body and limbs of this character were collaged from a copy of Woman Stabbing Herself (or Woman Next to Water) by Urs Graf. If you like this style, you might also like Durer, Cranach the Elder, and Goltzius.

Normal, OK: Peoria Jenks. Mixed media, 2007.

Peoria Jenks, 72, carries on the family tradition of bootlegging. (Opteemah County is dry.) She does not sell to “drunkards.” One day, while having her hair set, she overheard a call on the salon’s police scanner noting suspicious activity at the Slim Pickens Mo-tel. On a hunch, she went over. Onlookers say she got a shotgun from the trunk of her Dart and walked purposefully past Sherrif Ardmore into room 112. No shots were fired. Ms. Jenks reportedly walked out shaking her head and saying, “Not in my town. Not in my town.” The headline in that week’s Porcupine read “Meth Lab Seized With Help From Locals.”

You can learn more about the people of Normal by reading the book.

My series of works titled Normal, OK was part of the Art 365 exhibition sponsored by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. Art 365 travels to Legion Arts in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to open on October 15.