Four Part Portrait. Mount Olive College. 2007

A large four panel portrait of my old band Art Lord & the Self-Portraits from a photo someone took at a house show. Each panel was 2' x 4' on Masonite with a wood frame. More a large drawing with paint than a painting. I really liked how this turned out. Below are details of each panel and a photo of the painting in process at a home studio. 

Portrait/Figure Series. Mount Olive College. 2007.

"Last Dance" is a painting based on the spirituality and culture of the native Americans and Latin Americans in the time before the Europeans. I was reading a great book called "1491" about the history of the Americas before Columbus. The painting is more of a mixed media piece as it is mostly a charcoal and chalk drawing with some paint. It was 4' x 6'.  I think at the time it was one of my strongest works, but now I see it as yet another step in my development. 

Small ink sketch for "last Dance." In some ways I think I executed this better than the larger work.

"Triple Self-Portrait."  I think this was from an assignment to use repetition. I used the repeated images of the cup and myself. This is more of a mixed media drawing with paint. 

Detail from a portrait the class did of one of the grounds keeper/maintenance man John at Mount Olive College. This was a full on painting, as opposed to the  other paintings here. I learned a lot from making this painting. I remember figuring out how to paint the trees and leafs while driving back and forth school and home. I observed the light acting on the trees. I am fortunate I didn't crash. The flesh tones clothes were a challenge too, but I think they turned out well. The most difficult part for me was the truck. I have never been one to draw vehicles and I struggled with it the most I think. That is why it looks a little off.  Overall, I think it turned out well. 

Painting Studios. ECU. circa 2000.

 The first painting is "Angels vs. Balloons." I think it was supposed to be allegorical. I can't recall. I made these angels designs based off of some doodles I made while I was taking notes in some other class. I don't know where the idea came from, it just kind of happened.

The second painting is "In the Garden of Eden, Monkeys Helped God make Man." This painting was a building process. At first I didn't have much of an idea of what I wanted to do content-wise. I had this problem a lot when I was younger. I would have either concepts I was unable to complete or no concept at all. During the process of this painting I was listening to the Pixies a lot, and took an idea from "Monkey Gone to Heaven." So I guess in a way I was trying to reconcile Evolutionist and Creationist thought.

 The third painting is a self-portrait with a cane. This is one of those classic "night-before-crit" paintings many of us have done in art school. I really pulled it out of my...tail end, and the instructor made note of that during the crit. He liked it though, so all was well.                                                            

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The forth painting was from a POP art assignment. I found this panel in a beat up old Justice League of America comic from the 1960's. In the story, the heroes are swept away to another planet and blasted with a ray that takes all there powers. This panel stuck out to me. The text on it's own, without the context of the story, is so very un-Superman-like. The pose seemed like a shrug, lacking in the confidence which Superman carries himself. I think I was feeling that at the time. I think I identified with this "in name only" idea. I had all these ideas of who I was supposed to be, but was still trying to figure myself out. I had all these ideas and things I had grown up with, and was being exposed to new ideas and things so very different from my background. Cultures and ideologies clashing and crashing together and me, powerless, stuck in the middle. This is all clear in retrospect, at the time I was in the trenches of that war. But I made out alive; battered, bruised, and a little bit wiser.