Cub II

 Cub II, oil on wood, 16"x12", 2013

Two cubs evoking two different emotions.  

Cub

Cub, oil on  wood, 16"x12", 2013

Most waking hours I'm consumed with the Specimen Series.  I've become obsessed with collecting information on the topic of animal specimen preservation, specifically the spaces where these animals now exist.  I'm up to my eyeballs in photos, collection visit time, books, and documentaries on the subject.  I feel like the information itself can be tagged and sorted into shallow drawers to make a collection all of it's own.  

I want to see animal specimens in a different way, stripped of the space around them in order to develop a better understanding of their appeal.  It is impossible to render something completely void of an environment but what happens when you take oh let's say a cub in a jar or a stuffed moose head and place them in a blank environment?    

What does it all mean?  Where to next?  Dioramas?  

Epic-scale paintings?  Sculptural curio cabinets?

Step right up!  Before your very eyes - BEHOLD! - the smallest cabinet of curiosities in existence!  I've begun a collection of my own - some skulls and bones, a leaf wing butterfly, a mudbug, some ammonite, etc.

Self-portrait with Stole

  

Self-portrait with Stole
oil on wood, 46"x34", 2013

Left to right:  Self-portrait with Cap Gun, 

Self-portrait with Can Phone, Self-portrait with Stole

I'm moving toward world domination one self-portrait at a time.  Self-portrait with Stole is done and done.  I started the series almost a year ago when I was just beginning my upward climb from a very dark time in my life.  Hitting rock bottom isn't encouraged as the topic of most conversations.  It makes people feel itchy and awkward.  Judgements are made and raw feelings exposed.  Can you ever look at someone the same after they've told you they went stark-raving bananas?  I sure hope so.

"God won't give you more than you can handle."  That's bullshit.  Many of us have experienced events in life which were too great for our sweet beating hearts to bear.   That is what happened to me.  It was a succession of events over a two year period that completely knocked me off my rocker.

From start to finish, a mere four weeks is all it took for my seven and a half year marriage to completely unravel.  High on the freedom that only a once married woman can understand and desperate to outrun the impending devastation of a failed marriage, I naturally moved to New Zealand.  It took a year before the pain came to claim me.  I grabbed a couple of six packs and hightailed it back to the States to keep the demons at bay but they immediately began to paw at the window pane.  Some serious interference was needed so I got into a highly toxic relationship with a total bottom-feeder.  Douse that train wreck with twenty years of drinking like I was headed for prison and you have the makings for a full-blown breakdown.  Four day stint in a psych ward - check.  I drove that shit till the wheels fell off. 

Thank god, you think...it's finally over.  But you would be wrong.  "Once you hit rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up!"  That is also bullshit.  Once you hit rock bottom, you may not be able to fall any further downward but you sure as shit can linger around for an indefinite period of time.  I crawled from the smoking wreckage that was my life and crashed and burned a couple more times before finally waking one morning simply knowing I'd had enough. 

And here I am, glad to be at the point where I can reflect on this period of my life and relay it as another anecdote in the arsenal of many.  

Moose on a Cart

First painting of 2013.  Moose on a Cart.  I always research the animals I draw - their habitat, characteristics, etc. but I wanted to research in a different way for this painting...a hippie way.  What is the symbolic nature of a dang moose?  If you haven't googled moose symbolism lately you'd be surprised at the large amount of info out there on the subject.  Courage, determination, and self-esteem are mentioned a lot as is being a contradictory animal - they are awkward yet graceful.  The phrase that spoke to me the most and what I felt when I painted this is...strength found in gentleness.  I like that.  Strength found in gentleness.

 Moose on a Cart, oil on wood, 16"x12", 2013

Can't wait to meet ya lucky #13.

Startin' off the new year with a clean slate - 2013, let's do this!  Sayonara 2012!  Above is the prepped and pristine beginning of what will be the third self-portrait in line to the two below.

Self-portrait #1 - cap gun and apple toy, self-portrait #2 - can phone, what ever will self-portrait #3 have in store?

What good would a new year be without beginning a painting of a moose on a cart?

 Moose. On. A. Cart.

Specimen Landscape is done and dusted.

Interior Specimens

This Specimen Series biz is leading somewhere...not sure of the destination and I haven't been able to perfectly articulate it's reasoning, but I'm riding this thing out.  Interior Specimens is just another step down the path.  A few thoughts swimming in my head in regards to this painting:  animals as objects, the need and passion for collecting, desire of ownership, intrigue with the exotic, and marrying interior and exterior. There's an odd romance about it all.

Interior Specimens, oil on wood, 48"x32", 2012

Snakes and a Deer Baby.

What is my idea of fun these days - creeping around in off-display specimen collections.  So that is how I spent my Tuesday this week...cruising through countless drawers and cabinets of animal skins and insects, taking pics of super rad stuffed mounts to use for reference, sketching, taking notes, and generally being in awe of my surroundings.  I even faced one of my most major fears...swimming snakes.  I didn't really see 'swimming' snakes per se but I saw tons of jars filled with snakes in liquid.  Same thing.  So I chose the gnarliest one and stared at it for as long as I could.  I even touched the jar but they jiggled around inside and I bailed.  Welcome to my snake-mare... 

Hey, you wanna see the opposite of a jar of snakes? 

 I named her Dalylah.

 I sketched Dalylah and forgot about the snakes.

The inspiration from visits like these follows me to the studio.  It's not just the specimens themselves that I find so fascinating, it's how they are arranged in these collection spaces that I can't seem to fully wrap my brain around.  It's what they are placed next to, the carts and cabinets that they are rested on or in, the overall oddness of their new existence that is so intensely intriguing. 

Below are the two works in progress I've got going.

 I still haven't figured out the allure of animal skin rugs.

I swapped out the jar of fish (although it was totally looking like a jar of baby birds) for a beetle.

Tiger. Skin. Rug. Who the hell thought of that?

 This is the beginning stage of a painting when...

you add this and....

 this.

Specimen Landscape In-Progress

The exploration of science continues...current topic:  preservation, conservation, and our obsession for collecting.  Below is stage one of what is now deemed, Specimen Landscape but that title may change to something snappier like Untitled #2...wait, make that Untitled #3 (no way am I having #2 in any title).  Like Untitled (Specimen Table), the subject matter is from the collections of Tulane's Biodiversity Research Institute and FW Museum of Science & History.  Sprinkle in the inspiration of 17th cent. Flemish dead game still lifes, Rare: Portraits of America's Endangered Species by Joel Sartore, the work of Lucas Johnson, and about one million hours of nature documentaries and you have yourself the workings of a goddamn science painting. 

48"x32", acrylic on wood

 TBRI, New Orleans, LA

 FWMSH, Fort Worth, TX

 study from FWMSH's collection

 TBRI, New Orleans, LA

Untitled aka Specimen Table - Finito!

Untitled, oil on wood, 32"x48", 2012

I referred to this painting as Specimen Table but it has now been christened, Untitled.  I was kicking around the idea of Skull Skunk Flower Ammonite Shrimp Jar Feather Rabbit but thought that to be too wordy.  Don't know how I feel about this one exactly.  I think I killed it a bit - lost all of the freshness that was there in the beginning.  It's a highly manipulated and sterile space which I find bland or cold or something but so is a table of once living beings that now act as objects.  Untitled is just another bridge to attempt to mesh my idea of art and science.

This book is a thing of beauty and a major source of inspiration.  It's goddamn delicious.  The Discovery of Nature...could there be a more overwhelming and head spinning topic?  Nature is the core of it all and wrapping my head around it and attempting to make art about it, even if it's tackling the tiniest branch, is wicked humbling.

American Youth Series

American Youth is a series of paintings depicting the experience of returning to live in my hometown of Fort Worth, Texas after being away for almost 10 years.  I've spent the better part of this year consumed  with it.  Every flat surface of the studio has been covered in Lincoln Logs, cap guns, wind-up robots and dinosaur figurines.  Grocery money was spent on thrift store toys and hours went by as I re-read the diaries I had written as a kid.  I climbed back into my childhood and now it's time to resurface.  I'm done with the series and the series is done with me.  So long cowboy...

  

 Jacks Landscape

oil on wood, 48"x32", 2012

Doll Landscape

oil on wood, 48"x32", 2012

 Dinos

oil on vintage wallpaper,13"x11", 2012

 Birds

oil on vintage wallpaper, 13"x11", 2012

 Guns

oil on vintage wallpaper, 13"x11", 2012

 Cowboys & Indians

oil on vintage wallpaper, 13"x11", 2012

Jacks

oil on vintage wallpaper, 13"x11", 2012

 Ode to the Joan Vollmer-William Tell Incident

oil on wood, 46"x34", 2012

Can Phone

oil on wood, 46"x34", 2012

 American Youth Airborne

oil on wood, 50"x34", 2012

 American Youth on Land

oil on wood, 50"x34", 2012

 American Youth at Sea

oil on wood, 50"x34", 2012

 Dino Cowboy Standoff

pastel, 8"x10", 2012

 Robo Wagon

embroidery, 8"x10", 2012

Pink Boot Convo

acrylic and pastel, 8"x10", 2012

Paintin' Like I'm Headed For Prison.

I try really hard to focus on one maybe two paintings at a time.  If not, I'd be up to my eyeballs in unfinished work.  Not only would I have enough material to build a small city from the half-done shite, but it would be a small city built of weird, completely random and poorly thought out ideas.  Wait...that's kinda like what my work is anyway.  So...having said that, I now find myself smack dab in the middle of three largish in-progress paintings.  I super promise to not start anymore.

***JACKS PAINTING PROGRESS****

Booooorrring.........

Awesomer.

***DOLL LANDSCAPE PROGRESS ***

This is the painting that will never end.  At this moment I feel it is very close to completion simply cuz I can't fit any more weird stuff into it.  Or can I?

***SPECIMEN TABLE PROGRESS***

Skrimp in jar -  beginning to make an appearance...check.  Skull...check.  Other stuff...getting there.