Okay folks, I'm back to animals. Hunting, Hunting is now complete. I began it at the Prairie Center residency back in November. Below are the other three works that make up The Hunting Series. I feel pretty solid that I'm done with this particular series.
I also feel pretty solid that I'm drowning in paintings . Earlier this week I was putting together a slide show of work for an artist talk I have to give during my upcoming residency next month in Connecticut which is an odd experience within itself - me talking to strangers about what I make in my oddest moments alone in the studio. I envision an unconcious audience that looks a lot like they have just endured a 1972 Grand Canyon slide show (in black & white) given by a distant relative of a former neighbor's boss a.k.a. Snoozefest.
So basically I attempted to edit the last seven years of work in a semi-cohesive, chronological order explaining the journey of my exploration of man vs. nature. I ended up with 25 or so of what I feel are the most successful images and when flipping from the first slide through to the last one I thought, "Hey, that's a pretty sturdy group of paintings you have there Layla."
It's nice to be able to see the evolution of an idea but at the same time I feel it's a farce. The audience is seeing less than probably 5% of all the work that was made during that time period. They don't see the crap work (experiments as I call them) that fill three closets nor do they need to (they would be sawing logs before we got out of 2009). I just find it interesting how much work goes into your last painting. It's not the 30+ hours you stand in front of that particular canvas but how much time you spent in front of every other canvas combined.
Hunting, Hunting, oil, 5'x5', 2014
St. Francis and the Addax, oil, 5'x5', 2013
Casey the Elephant, oil, 5'x5', 2014
The Moon Bear Story, oil, 5'x5', 2013
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