thorns

Medway
Oil On Wood Panel
12"x14.5"[framed]
2006
Yolo
Oil, Acrylic, Collaged Paper
21"x36"
2005

I've been staring at some work I did a few months ago, and find myself a touch puzzled by my own actions. Unlike many starts, I know the origins of this body of work. It started, in of all places, with me discovering some early Bauhaus fonts, and then solidified after visiting the Bauhaus Archives when I was in Berlin Germany a couple summers back. I took the X from the alphabet, and basically looped it. I was also going thru a intense love affair with slot car racing here in my studio; I had the space to build large tracks, using 1/32nd scale scalectrix track and a variety of new and vintage slots, made available thru purchases on eBay, and made some rather large track variations, that of course, looped.
I strung this idea together for a good couple of years, and then hit a wall earlier in the summer, when I felt I was getting to tight, to pre-occupied with set pattern, and went about loosening my work again. I also felt I had a dead end on my hands and the energy to do work was less exciting, or interesting, then of all things, going to my job. I now feel like, with the studio all clean[pictures of the new, minimal clutter studio to follow soon], junk thrown away, and work really rolling along I can look back and see the clutter, both in the work I was making, and in my space here on Capital Hill. It doesn't probably exist on the surface of these paintings, and I still like this work, but it is now like looking at a scrapebook, a memory, a snapshot. These hooks one can snag upon are probably common to artists, and I think it good to remind myself to keep myself loose, work a bit harder, and let certain associations bounce, and if they don't then let them sink to the bottom. I think I'm in a good space these days. But fuck it, I could go back to doing these again, just watch me...