1980 - 1987: Some examples of my artwork that paved the way to the start of my career as a fine arts painter
EARLY ART 001 - 011
NOTE: These pages are best viewed on a screen larger than a cell phone.
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Houses Outside My Bedroom Window
Water-based paint on canvas - 8 in. x 12 in.
1971 Collection of the Artist
Black & Prismacolor pencil on paper - 24 in. x 18 in.
1981 Collection of the Artist
Summer 1981 - I had moved into the old red barn on my family's property in Sebastopol, CA while my mother Carol Ann occupied the main house. After her divorce from my father and selling our San Francisco house, she was starting her life over in Sebastopol.
I had just graduated from high school the year before and wasn't doing well living with strangers in my first apartment in San Francisco. I needed to learn some self-responsibility so I moved up for the summer to get my life in order. With my mother's help we bought a run down 1965 VW Bug for me to learn how to drive a manual stick shift and use. I got my driver's license, got a job at the Bohemian Grove in nearby Monte Rio, and worked on this drawing of Mick Jagger. The barn I slept in was not really habitable but I made it work for my needs. I remember this drawing took a lot of hours to create, as I was just using a photo as a reference and freehand drawing it by eye. So it became a kind of testament of my ability to have it be representationally accurate while simultaneously restructuring my troubled life. I still look at this drawing and appreciate the therapy it provided me and I still think it's a good drawing, even with the upper psychedelic colors that I decided to add at the last minute instead of keeping it all black, white and gray. I suppose Jagger's expression mirrors the mental anquish I was undergoing at the time as well.
After moving from Sebastopol back to San Francisco, I worked at an auto repair garage which paid my rent on a little studio apartment on 9th Ave. between Lincoln Ave. and Irving St. in the inner Sunset district. I spent my after work hours drawing a lot and painting a little in my small bedroom/living room. During a phone call with my mother she told me, "If you want to do art, to really do art, you have to commit to doing it all the time, like a job." And funny enough I took her suggestion quite literally and set out to "really" do my art, like a freaking job. With financial help from my grandmother Aldura's estate, I quit my garage job and attended City College of San Francisco where, along with some required classes, I took a couple of oil painting classes with Richard Rodriques. He was a wacky yet enthusiastic teacher who helped me learn more about the proper handling of brushes and oil paint. I loved his classes and loved working with the delicious smells of oil and turpentine. I made some fairly awful looking paintings which taught me what not to do while increasing my fascination for what was possible. After completing my required courses at City College I decided to continue my art studies at the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) in Oakland, California.
CCAC introduced me to art classes that helped me develop my skills at figure drawing in multiple media, along with metal, plaster and wood sculpture making, print making through etching and lithography, and traditional illustration techniques. I chose to major in Illustration as it seemed a perfect combination of fine art and commercial art. A way to keep drawing and painting and still be able to make a living. However a couple of the teachers warned us young wannabe illustrators that the entire field of illustration was drying up and being replaced by the use of good old photography. Curious thing is that this impending fact did not put an end to the Illustration program at CCAC, nor were we encouraged to pick another major. My time at CCAC was funny like that.
These first two prologue pages, i and ii, show 22 examples of the work I completed while attending City College and CCAC, work that I was proud of and work that helped me hone my representational image making skills. And in light of the doomed field of Illustration, these drawings and paintings helped convince me that the last thing I really wanted to do was to be a hired illustrator for various art directors of various companies looking for new ways to advertise their products. Also included herein is the very first painting I made when I was about 9 years old and a drawing of Mick Jagger I did after finishing high school. I wanted to include these artworks so you could see where I was coming from prior to committing myself to being a full time painter.
Oil pastel on paper
1984 Collection of the Artist
I met Jennifer in my oil painting classes at City College of San Francisco. She became a good friend and so I asked her to sit and chat so I could take Polaroid photos (there was no "digital" anything back then) of her for my new series of drawings. I was interested in how people's faces changed in the course of a short conversation as they talked. Putting two of the different facial expressions close together created an interesting juxtaposition as well as a more in-depth portrait of the person. Here are two examples out of four that I made featuring Jennifer. I also began experimenting with adding abstract lines and colors to add flavor and feeling to the portraits - indeed to make the portraits more interesting to my eyes.
The right photo is me in Richard Rodriques's oil painting class, in the process of painting a dream I had the night before. This was one of the first paintings I made straight from my imagination without any photo or life references.
Prismacolor pencil on black paper
1984 Collection of the Artist
I was having a lot of fun drawing and painting and generally learning lots of things at City College. It was the beginning of me really exerting myself to create serious art and to study various aspects of artistic rules and art history. I remember being mostly excited about being a working artist and not feeling self-conscious about my work. The floodgates were now opening for me.
Photos: In my oil painting class, creating a painting using references from found photos and photos I took. Teaching myself how to assemble an image by combining different sources, successfully handling the various types of paint brushes, determining color use, and working with the oil paint in layers, allowing each layer to dry and then painting more layers on top to create the final effect. Here I'm also working in a more refined and traditional style, in an effort to create more realism and less surrealism.
White pencil on black paper
1985 Private Collection
Oil pastel on paper
1984 Collection of the Artist
I love working with oil pastels because they stick to the paper, unlike chalk pastels. They also allow for wonderful color blending, albeit without the ability to erase or cover up any mistakes.
Prismacolor pencil on paper
1985 Collection of the Artist
It was important for me to work from life, reminding me of when I first started drawing from life when I was a child, and how hard it was to learn how to measure with my eyes to get the perspectives and proportions correct. Realism does not come easily as everything with three dimensions requires it's own set of values that in turn have to correspond with the values of everything around it.
All of life is connected with everything that surrounds it. Drawing from life so clearly proves this every time. Nothing exists apart from anything else. And it's okay to not get it perfectly proportionally correct. It's okay to let the unique eye of the artist direct the composition as it sees it, not necessarily as it is. The relative imperfection or inaccuracy of reality as depicted by an artist's hands is what gives any representational art it's humanity and flavor and style. And each of us, like all the stuff that surrounds us, are also forever linked together in space, never able to separate from one another no matter what.
Pencil on vellum paper
1986 Private Collection
Drawing can be hard, frustrating, and completely maddening sometimes. It is fickle and demands full concentration and diligence. And still sometimes it just doesn't work out. But sometimes it's glorious and delightful and fun. Sometimes it all comes together ridiculously well and the artist gets to see the better part of what they were after. And it doesn't all have to make sense or fit together like a puzzle. It can be kinda messy and chaotic. Drawing is akin to singing in that when you get it wrong it's very obvious, but when you get it right it's like magic.
Conte crayon on newsprint
1984 Collection of the Artist
At CCAC I studied life drawing with Alan Brooks, a master of conte crayon drawing. Watching him use the conte crayon to deftly and swiftly create muscles and body lines was like watching a stream flowing effortlessly yet perfectly around rocks. An absolute thing of beauty. I am forever grateful to Alan for teaching me this marvelous tool and technique, and for being gentle and humble in the process.
Conte crayon on newsprint
1984 Collection of the Artist