Oof! One thing I realize I need to get better at is posting here. Lots of plans and updates coming.
First, what happened this summer? I painted my latest mural in Oak Park, Illinois titled “Still We Rise, Thanks Maya Angelou for the inpiration.” It’s located on North Boulevard, just west of Austin Blvd. behind the Gymnastics center. I hope it brings a bit of light to everyone’s day that sees it.
I entered a few of Oak Park Art Leagues shows. The Small Works show, where nothing could be larger than 12 inches on a side, I submitted 3 pieces, Joy, Love, and Rise that are part of the Still We Rise series of work, that I’m probably renaming the Nothing But Flowers series because of the next 2 paintings I’ve done. These 3 paintings are 12x12x2 acrylic on cradled board.
The next piece I painted continued the series and is titled Bloom. It’s 6x12x1.5 acrylic on cradled board.
Next I was inspired by a U.S. National Archives photo titled “Top Women” at U.S. Steel’s Gary, Indiana, Works, 1940-1945. There’s something about the way these 2 women are standing with their gas masks on that just feels timeless.
So now I had these flower people dancing in my head combined with visions of the future and what we could/should be doing to save the planet. The Talking Heads song, Nothing But Flowers has always been in my mind since I first heard it. Yes things are bad but also I have hope for the future. When I posted the Nothing But Flowers image to Facebook another friend artist Heidi Becker reminded me that the themes for the Talking Heads song also apply to Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me, The Ecology” so I painted another image that I titled the Ecology. I included frogs in that one because I think I read somewhere that frogs are one of the bell weather creatures that can be effected by pollution since they absorb thing so easily through their skin. Nothing But Flowers is 24×48 inches and The Ecology is 36×48 inches. Both are on canvas.
The final big painting for the summer is the Greatest of All Time Beholder. It’s 36×48 inches on canvas. The fun thing about painting this one was that I did it LIVE and in person at a local gamestore, Fair Game in Downer’s Grove. The Downer’s Grove Art Fair was taking place at the same time and painting live seemed like a great opportunity to get myself out there while also bringing in additional traffic to the store. The store also featured coloring pages of art work that I created for them for their kids Dungeons and Dragons league.
The next big thing on my agenda is opening my Etsy store. I’m going to have a soft opening for it next week. I’ll be featuring my original art painted on dice trays. I’ve been having a lot of fun with them and will have a blog post about them soon. Here are some samples.
and of course I continue to upload new designs to my Threadless store. The last few were inspired by my dice tray paintings.
Thanks for reading this far! As always if you have any questions feel free to ask. Take care! Love you all!