I was commissioned to do a portrait last month of a mother and her newborn son. 

The photograph it was based on is a portrait by Trina Dinnar Photography.

Below is a little time-lapse of the process. 

The finished piece is 18" x 24", acrylic on canvas.

Oil on Canvas, about 3' by 4'

Watercolor and pencil on a nautical map.

It used to look like this.

Paula has not given me permission to post this, but hey, it's not done yet. This is a different way of painting for me. I've been heavily influenced in the past few months by Habib and Douglas. Douglas (shhh, don't tell Paula) has been helping me with this one. His approach is to slap around with the paint until he finds a part that I like and completely destroy it. Believe it or not, once I get past my initial burst of fury I find this a great help. Those spots left on their own start to scream everytime change aproaches them. They become surrounded by a wall of 'where the change must stop' and thus protected, vaunt themselves as the best parts, when, in reality, they are pretty holes in my painting given undue respect. In my mad attempts to reconstruct what is being destroyed, a much stronger, experienced painting evolves.

The mere thought of it makes an artist queasy.
Yet I believe it holds the key to unshackling Art in our minds.
The artist, continually falling in love with his own paint strokes, goes through great pains to appear nonchalant in his application. In reality, every daub is one step closer to the inevitable immobilization when there is nowhere to paint that won't destroy himself. He thoroughly binds his heart to the painting until it is all his. Nobody will love the painting like he does. He is staking his claim to Art. But Art is a spirit and not a painting. Art is not confined to our fantasies nor subject to our arrogant materializations. Art lays hold on us. Art takes us out on a limb in the nude while we sing what has never been sung before. And then we puff out our chests and say "I sang something new, I have the Art" Art just left, and all we need now is a small boy pointing "he doesn't have any clothes on!" This strong desire to possess Art blinds us from seeing her as a person. The same way we forget the earth is conscious. I suggest that the desires of Art herself have not been addressed and our aim is to work with her in order to discover them. This is the first collaboration.


Julian 5

This painting was composed from scratch. Literally. I started smearing paint around with no preconcieved notion as to what I was doing and after 400 hours I had this. The photograph has eliminated most of the texture and is no comparison to seeing it in person. This was sold to my friend K in 1997 for far too little and is possibly the most finished piece I have made. K keeps it behind his bookshelf because he says it scares him. Whatever. I'm going to buy it back. I have one painting in the works that will double the stakes with over 800 hours, thicker paint, and far more intensity. It's the one called Doug's Painting, which was started before this one, and is the one about which professor Donald Kunz told me "It's like you're trying to play all the instruments at once." In The Garden was started directly after that and finished 3 years later. If I've ever made a painting that was touching something new, this is the one.

this was painted in 1993.