NOTE: These pages are best viewed on a screen larger than a cell phone in order to really see the paintings. It's important to take your time looking at these paintings, to go slowly and let your eyes and brain digest them over time. I've never been interested in making paintings that reveal themselves easily or that are about one thing. I've always loved paintings that can be discovered and then rediscovered, seeing different things each time you look at them. This website is going to be here for a long time so you can take your time, which will make a huge wonderful difference in the end.
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Acrylic on canvas - 12 in. x 18 in.
Thursday 5/17/1990 - Private Collection
I was working doing maintanance and remodeling in Oakland for property owner Randy Berger when his right-hand man and my boss/friend Phil Tagami hired me to paint this portrait of Randy in front of two of his commercial properties which included the Lake Merritt Hotel. Phil gave the painting to Randy as a surprise gift and token of his appreciation for their working relationship.
Acrylic on wood panel - 12 in. x 16 in.
Sunday 5/20/1990 - Private Collection
Acrylic on plywood - 8 in. x 9-3/8 in.
Monday 5/21/1990 - Collection of the Artist
Acrylic on plywood - 8 in. x 9-3/8 in.
Tuesday 5/29/1990 - Private Collection
Acrylic on plywood - 18-3/8 in. x 14-5/8 in.
Friday 11/15/1991 - Private Collection
My brother Christopher and I had recently taken a wonderful trip to Yosemite and I took a photo of him that he loved, so he asked if I would paint a picture from it for him. I was happy to indulge myself again with some straight up realism based on a photograph. The granite and water and trees in the photo allowed me to be somewhat loose with my brushwork which was not that different from how I worked in lot of my abstract paintings, so it was fun for me to see how closely abstraction and realism reside next to each other while working on this painting.
Making art that is based on real life or photo-realistic life always reminds me of when I was a kid teaching myself how to accurately draw the house across the street from where we lived in San Francisco. It was very hard learning how to visually measure the defining lines of the building while taking into account the perspective angles and then to draw those lines on paper and have them represent what I was looking at. At the time it was the hardest thing I had ever attempted doing, even though I had already drawn so many non-representational pictures beforehand. When I finally nailed the pencil drawing and then drew over the pencil with a black ink pen and showed it to my mother, I felt like a king. And for some crazy reason I decided to keep practicing drawing from life and sweating it out until it slowly became easier, as if I knew it would somehow pay off over time.
Acrylic on plywood - 9-3/8 in. x 8 in.
Tuesday 5/29/1990 - Private Collection
Another example of playing with letters and words as compositional elements and as a message. Having fun with colors that are childlike and playful in a picture that reads like a pre-school opportunity of obviousness. A clarity. An assuredness. A foundation of fun to build on...
Acrylic on plywood - 6-7/8 in. x 9-1/4 in.
Tuesday 5/29/90 - Collection of the Artist
A little clean painting that I just love. That it was randomly born from my imagination and then so quickly and easily evolved into this caper story with the aid of a few well placed lines makes it that much sweeter. The style always reminds me of De Chirico's paintings, and that too was accidental and random, which I also love.
Acrylic on wood panel - 16 in. x 12 in.
Wednesday 5/30/1990 - Collection of the Artist
I used tape over the bare wood, randomly placed, and then gessoed and painted over it and then removed the tape afterward to reveal the bare wood underneath. I first used tape on Painting 055, but placed it over an existing painting to leave the original paint underneath while I added a slightly transparent color over the rest. With The Artist Reviewing His Latest I wanted to really limit the amount of color and amount of things that I included in the composition. It was important for me to see how little it took to create a composition that still qualified as a painting as far as I was concerned. I had already created enough complicated paintings that challenged the viewer - indeed paintings that also challenged me. This painting was a real relief for me both in it's ease of labor and in it's simple interpretation. I wasn't sure if I could get away with it being so simple and so effortless. I didn't know if I was allowed to just have it exist in such an open and easy way. It's a happy and content picture yet still feels a little bit risky and audacious when I look at it.
Acrylic on wood panel - 16 in. x 12 in.
Thursday 5/31/1990 - Private Collection
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