Three Graces with Cardinals

digital painting, 12/2019

References an ancient Greek marble statue.

Gold Fish Mashup Suite

 

 

Gold Fish, Warhol, Elvis, Mashup

digital painting, 6/2018



Gold Fish, Visible Couple Mashup

 

 digital painting, 6/2018



 

 

 





Gold Fish, Picasso Mashup

digital painting, 6/2018

Here are three Photoshop paintings, completed recently (6/2018).  Size is 103Mb for each individual picture.  I make prints with Arches paper and a new Pro Epson printer.

 You may ask, "What does it mean?"   And I will answer, "Your guess is as good as mine".

top picture, Warhol, Elvis, Goldfish Mashup,  Warhol did a picture, Double Elvis, with a gun totting cowboy.  Warhol, Elvis, goldfish and water, all mashed up.  Elvis is shooting and the fish are flying.

middle picture, Visible Couple Mashup,  Anatomy is so interesting.  As a child, I was eager to explore the Visible Man toy.  When the woman with an incubator belly came out, sometime later, I was delighted. 

bottom picture,  Picasso, Goldfish Mashup. A riff on another famous picture.  When creating a digital painting I alter the inspiration picture by photoshopping the entire picture. This Picasso woman is a recognizable image but has been completely redone.  I call the digital works digital paintings, because I have been a painter for such a long time and the texture looks like painting.


Water is a continuing element in my art.  Several of my recent pictures and many past pictures have featured water.  I love swimming, kayaking, and gazing at water.  Ocean, Gulf, lakes and creeks.  My studio flooded twice in 2015.  There was some damage, the bottom of the sheetrock had to be redone, I accept this threat, because, nature is so beautiful here.

On the property here we have two creeks.  One small, the other larger.  There is a relatively low population density along the creek and running toward the Pearl River.  This is a bird flyway and is bountifully populated with wild animals. 

Hollywood Kiss

HOLLYWOOD KISS

 

The composition is like a see-saw.  Stable/unstable.  A dynamic pyramid. Yin/yang.

 

The weather is lovely.  Beautiful here at Silver Creek.  Temperature perfect.  The privet trees are blooming like snow on the large, scraggly hedge.  Allergies and bugs abound.  Carpenter bees chew up the house and dive bomb humans.  Mosquitos prick skin with ting sensations.  Just the price of living in paradise.  Gotta go now.  The riding mower is fixed, will mow.  The jungle is advancing.  I will battle the jungle forces with the mower.  Don't battle the jungle, work in harmony??

 

 

Like,  I have a libertine past.  I am not sure that it was worth all the effort.  Oh, what am I saying, of course it was worth the effort.

Zatay, Goddess of Art, Music, and Spring

Zatay, Goddess of Art, Music and Spring

Spring is popping here at Silver Creek. The huckleberry bloomed and has lots of tiny green berries. The wisteria is blooming. violets, Carolina allspice, snow drop, all are blooming. The trees have that beautiful spring yellow green. I want to garden. I had lettuce over the winter. The fig trees are hanging on. We are making a new veggie bed.

The last flooding of the creek broke down the beaver dam. The frogs sound like a bell symphony.

If you are having nice weather, I hope that you have time to enjoy it outdoors.

Foot Bridge

FOOT BRIDGE

Evonne and Yvette purchased the first camera that they ever saw. In 1888, the camera was an exciting novelty displayed in Evan's General Store. They saw it in the store. They had heard about cameras, new fangled contraptions that captured a visual moment in time, freezing it forever. They admired it in the store. That night they chirruped in their private musical language about the new invention. Their talk is translated here. "We can stop time in its tracks", Evonne exclaimed. "We can still the slipping away," Yvette said. "We will purchase it tomorrow", they sang.

Their older brother, Emmett said, "You cant work that newfangled contraption, you two are just air heads. You will never be able to make it work."

The twins ignored the insulting remark. Emmet was always trying to put them down. His sarcasms went in one ear and then evolved, in the crystal mist of their heads. "Poor, dear Emmet, he really is trying. But he has a long way to go", the girls sang.

Behind the plantation mansion, to the west, there was swampy forest acreage that was not suitable for growing cotton. A wooden foot bridge crossed over a bog to a light trace of a path. The forest was said to be haunted. People said that a giant hairy wild man lived there.

Estelle, mother of the twins, died during their birth. Her blood leaked out, followed the babies out of her body. The double childbirth was the crowning achievement of Estelle's life, there was no need to go on after that. Her vital fluid slipped away. The twins did not need her. Servants cared for the two infants. The twins did not need anyone but each other.

Over the years, the father, Esau, occasionally saw the girls in the dining room. When Esau was home from the hunting camp, or home from doing business or dissipating in New Orleans, father and daughters happened to be taking meals at the same time. He noted that they were healthy and happy. Except for the unusual heads, they were normal.

One time, after he had been at the hunting camp for three months, in New Orleans for six months doing business and another six months doing dissipation he came home. His sweet strange twins were eighteen years old. Surprised, he was, to see that they had turned into young women. "I should have obtained tutors for them years ago", he thought. "Time just slips away."

The servants and town people considered the girls strange, but sweet. Once the people got used to the bubble heads, they realized that the girls were pretty. And that weird singing was beautiful.

Evonne and Yvette were happy to be left on their own. From the time that they first learned to walk, they spent hours alone together, in the forest, beyond the footbridge. Once they were gone for three days. The cook happened to notice that she had not seen them, that they had not eaten for three days. The kitchen gardener was sent to find them. When he saw them coming back, over the foot bridge, they seemed to be levitating. "But", he thought, "sometimes my vision is blurry".

Emmet was wrong, they were not air heads. Their minds were clear light. Cloud free. No shadows. Their minds were gently humming with the atmosphere of immediate intimate impressions.

Emmet was a block head, a normal person, his brain constipated with notions and resentments.

They took the camera to the footbridge behind their house. For the twins, the wooden walk way was a bridge between two different ways of being. A short stroll over the bridge was always a clearing remedy for the occasional heavy concepts that were impressed upon them from the world at large. In this way they erased unwanted thoughts. They could control the data in their brains and maintain a Zen calm.

In the end, ironically, Emmet was correct. They could not make the contraption work. They aimed and pressed the button. The negatives were mailed to New Orleans to be be developed.

The photographs arrived back by mail. Evonne opened the mail with keen anticipation. Yvette carefully removed the photographs from the box. Together the twins gazed at the beautiful photograph paper, which had a satin finish. They saw white. Softly shining white. Simultaneously they said, "Ahhhh-haaaa". Yvette said, "It is so beautiful". Evonne said, "This is perfect!"

Emmet stomped into the room. "So, your photographs arrived, let me see." He snatched the pictures. "There is nothing here, no picture, blank white."

"We know, they are perfect," the twins chimed.

One last time, the twins strolled over the footbridge to another reality. They evaporated. They slipped away. Their bodies were never found.