Seven See-Through Stones

Enamel on heavy gesso-coated paper, 61.5" x 72"
$6300. Free shipping in U.S.
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Predicament

Enamel on heavy gesso-coated paper, 71" x 59"
$6300. Free shipping in U.S.
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Celilo

Enamel on heavy, gesso-coated paper, 60" x 68"
$6000. Free shipping in U.S.
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For check payment or other arrangements, email don@dailyartwest.com

In 1981, artist Bill Viola made a videotape he called “Hatsu Yume (First Dream)”. In it there is a sequence where a fixed camera views a rock on a mountainside for a long period of time. People move around the rock, at first 20 times normal speed, then gradually slow to normal, then slow-motion. Here’s what Viola says about it:

“...What I look at in that scene is the rock, not so much the people. I thought it would be interesting to show a rock in slow motion. All that is really happening is that the rock’s time, it’s rate of change, exceeds the sampling rate (the recording time of the video), whereas the people are within that range. So the rock just sits there, high speed, slow speed...it doesn’t matter. I think about time in that way. There are windows or wavelengths of perception. They are simultaneous and interwoven at any one moment, but we are tuned only to a certain frequency range. This is directly related to scale changes in space or sound, proportion in architecture or music. A fly lives for a week or two, and a rock exists for thousands or millions of years."

Fly By

Enamel on heavy, gesso-coated paper, 60" x 72"
$6300. Free shipping in U.S.
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For check payment or other arrangements, email don@dailyartwest.com

Work in the studio continues on these large paintings in my stone series. I love the creative freedom this type of work affords me. The process is almost diametrically opposed to the controlled, goal-oriented approach of my realist paintings. I begin without a goal in mind, just applying paint very freely and intuitively with large house painting brushes. Instead of imposing an image, I try to discover one by developing an ongoing dialogue with the painting, letting it tell me what it wants to become.

At some point the shapes of the stones suggest themselves in the marks I've made, and I begin to more or less define the forms. The rock forms give me a malleable structure for the paintings that provides an anchor, or focus for the paint. I'm happiest when the final result is a balance of representational and abstract.

Many changes occur. Traces of previous colors and shapes show through succeeding layers of paint in the search for something that feels resolved. In the painting--as in life--yesterdays affect tomorrows.

So much of the impact of an original painting, especially if it is large, is lost in reproduction. I'm including this studio shot to give a sense of scale.

New in the Studio

Bluff
Enamel on gessoed paper, 59" x 68"
$6000.  Free shipping in U.S.
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Things Go Either Way
Enamel on gessoed paper, 59" x 68"
$6000.  Free shipping in U.S.
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New Home, New Studio, New Paintings

We have relocated from eastern Oregon to Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland.  There are numerous reasons for the move, not least of which is getting closer to our kids living in Portland, as well as our two year old grandson.  We've had family gatherings here for Thanksgiving and Christmas--it's been great.

I've been busy remodeling a three car garage with eleven foot ceilings into a studio.  There's still work to do, but it is turning into a space I really enjoy.  I built a floor to ceiling plywood painting wall on one end and installed track lighting to wash the wall evenly.  Just last week new aluminum and frosted glass garage doors were installed, letting in filtered natural light that really transforms the space:

The works in progress on the studio wall are on large sheets of heavy, gesso-primed paper.  I'm calling the one on the right complete.  It takes its place in the succession of stone paintings that have been in progress for several years.  You can see other works in the series and read about their motivations here and here.

Sense of Place
enamel on gessoed paper, 63" x 72"
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Blue Fog

Acrylic on board, 49" x 54"
$5000 plus $75 shipping in U.S.
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I recently changed the proportions of this painting from the Stone series and did a little more work on it, so here's the current version.