Here we are nearing the end of June, and the Encantada 09 Exhibit deadline is upon us. Here are the three paintings I'll be submitting this year.

Koshare (oil on canvas)
28X34

The clown, touched by the Katsina World is a bridge between the divine, and the mundane. The Koshare is exempt from normal behavior, and is a guardian of traditional ceremonial forms.

You're all familiar with this painting because I've shown it a number of times progressing toward some distant time when it is "finished". When will that be? Now? Maybe, or maybe not. I seldom sign paintings because I'm never quite sure that after some period additional work will insist on being made. "In-progress" paintings may still be hanging around for years after they've been set aside.




Rio Ariba (oil on panel)
24X20

Visitors here will also recognize this painting. Hopefully, this is a somewhat better photo. Water rushing through SouthWestern landscapes, night and "moon" elements all turn up with some regularity in my work. Once experienced, the rumbling of a flash flood that both brings life to the desert and grinds it into a fine sand is never forgotten. Mysterious night, revealed in dream-like moonlight is another powerful image to me.



Still Life with Nudes (oil on panel)
24X20

This one is new, and is a bit of a throwback to a style I was using a whole lot back in the late 1960's and early '70s. The Klee influence is obvious, and drawn from a little pamphlet he wrote on composition. The approach here is to suggest more depth by greater control of pigments and values than I used way back when. Rothko influences and attention to color fields made this painting interesting enough for me to probably do a bunch more similiar to it.

Alright, I know its been a few weeks since I posted here last. My alibi is that I've been busy painting and getting stuff done around the place. Even more to the point, I didn't have digital pictures yet of the work being done. This morning I took a number of photos, and they appear here today. All of this series existed before, but are continuing to evolve.

Koshare
Oil on Canvas

At the end of the last session the painting was largely monochromatic. Now more color and surface snap have been added. This will almost certainly be one of my submissions to the 2009 Encantada Exhibition.





Rio Ariba
Oil on canvas

When you saw this last it was shown in the portrait mode and was titled "Corn Maiden". Oh well. After thinking on it, I decided to change to the landscape mode and expand the color palette. There is a thematic similarity to an earlier painting, but this one is more abstract and better developed. This will likely also be an entry to the Encantada Exhibition.



Ristra
Oil on panel

This painting has been around for quite awhile, and has undergone a number of adjustments over the past couple of years. This is the latest version, and is more brilliantly colored than most of the earlier efforts. Is it near enough to be my third Encantada entry?











House in Portugese Bend
Oil on panel

This panel is darker than the others featured here today, and the dimensions are different from those of standard frames. Framing is a real hassel, so this one may sit around the studio for awhile. The longer a painting sits, the more likely I'll paint over it hoping to come closer to a really good image and painting.

In the last posting, I showed a little painting titled "Heart of the Matter". As I painted that my friend and partner in crime made a digital video clip of the process. Unfortunately, the clip is about half an hour long, and the orientation of the pictures changes a few times. I'm working to correct the video clip (another thing that's taken up my attention lately), but fixing the problem strains my computer resources. Oh well. Joe and I intend repeating the experiment incorporating the lessons we learned in that first ad hoc try. Maybe later this year I 'll have a video clip that can be shown here. Stay tuned.

In addition to these four pieces, I've been working on several more but can't document them until I get fresh batteries for the old digital camera. Stay tuned.