Salon Show

I just put paintings up at 4001 Duval Salon in Hyde Park - they welcome walk ins - yes, it is at 4001 Duval. Most of the works are having their premiers in the neighborhood (I couldn't help putting up, "Winter Coats"), but this one, below, is having it's first showing anyplace.

Courtier 2 x 3 feet acrylic on canvas

The puppy is modeled after my sister's little poodle, but rather than going for a likeness, which would depict something like terrified, I went for mischievous. It doesn't show very well, but the ochre ground blends into gold around the middle of the canvas. The shade is taken from a Japanese screen with which Peter Marino was posing in an issue of Architectural Digest I picked up several years ago; the pillow is borrowed from Francois Boucher - he used it in that painting of Louise O'Murphy.

Here's some work in progress:

Unusual for me, a still life, but for some reason I feel a compulsion to make some at present. Partially, I'm interested in the challenge of making interesting still lives. A couple others pending.

I'm re-using several older canvases, the ones that look too muck like wallpaper, as well. Obviously the old ones (framed in black) are no longer available...

Still figuring out at what the pigeon is looking: magazine, book, newspaper, Austin Chronicle.

Another still life:

This one is now cut down into several segments, two of which are here undergoing work.

Ceramics from Hokusai and Venus statue a great aunt gave me when she moved from her house in Texas to a smaller one in Louisiana.

This is a painting by a San Francisco artist I like, Deth P Sun, that I bought a few years ago from a show at Motel Gallery, now Motel Projects, in Portland, Oregon...

...that I'm using (with the artist's permission, of course) in the other fragment of the painting. Almost a still life, this one - pigeon peeking in from the one side.

With all the artists, Cy Twombly, Hedda Sterne, Lucien Freud, dying lately, it is perhaps odd that I shall conclude with a memorium for a Japanese singer (and not an English one), but of more personal relevance is the singer Isshi, from the band Kagrra, who died last month.

Kagrra split up earlier this year and I haven't enjoyed their later as much as earlier work, but a favorite band nonetheless, combining guitar-focused pop and traditional Japanese sounds in a compelling way. A number of videos on youtube: "haru urara," and, "omou," are songs I particularly like.