The hands are disturbing. The grip is a strangle hold. The flowers are sparse and sad. The thin stems have the delicacy of a tree trunk.

It’s funny what sticks with you. Another thing Picasso rolls through my head is his quote, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” What a jerk…

The culmination of these two Picasso thoughts jumped onto a canvas when I was asked to paint a purple orchid series. I was stumped at first, not because of the orchids, but because I never really work with purple. Thanks for the help Picasso!

I don’t steal…I just paint what I wish other artists had done. My “Bouquet” is still in the works.

Sometimes the painting is a close reinterpretation. Hummingbird Girl sketch and “Hummingbird Halo” have many of the same elements. The palette and lighting are deeper. The hummingbirds achieve a different spatial tension and movement. The painting also introduces a woman with smudged lipstick. It’s a small detail. The little details are gifts to the viewer who keeps looking. It broadens the story.

Other times the essence of the sketch sketch evolves dramatically. “Eaglehandler” portrays a very plain girl with an enormous, rather well behaved, eagle on her ungloved hand. The sketch does not have the visual tension of the actual scenario.Eagles are big raptors that should not perch on anyone’s hand unaided.

The following painting, “The Facilitator”, creates a more engaging situation and the title adds nicely too. The woman is more refined, the eagle, more raptorous. Adding the titmouse in her right hand would be trite if I kept the eagle’s original stance from the sketch. It would have been titled “food chain”. Eye contact is skewed between the main players, so motives remain veiled.

The talon to bare hand reveals the nature of the relationship between woman and eagle. In the sketch, it is also the weakest point…It’s a mush of charcoal and pretend. The painting shows less mush and more pretend.

The subject is Eve. I didn’t know it when I started the painting. It was just some odd idea of a nude woman surrounded by herons. I liked the ambiguity. It was a little too ambiguous – so I set it aside for awhile. During its quiet time, I finished many other paintings, including “Exiting Eden”. The man’s back faces us, shoulders rounded, as if he just heaved a heavy sigh, or got the wind knocked out of him. The emotion is in the posture. I didn’t know it was Adam until I had to give it a title.

The seed for this painting is a little note I wrote many years ago… “Where does a good man go in the face of a gathering storm?”..but I don’t feel like going into that when someone asks what the painting’s about.. Both painting and note work well with the biblical themes. I like to think the Bible’s first couple were good people. Good people make crummy decisions sometimes…sometimes it happens when they think they’re trying their hardest.

“Exiting Eden” brings me back to the Girl with Herons with a new understanding of the dynamics of the image. She cannot be languid, the birds too romantic. The posture is the expression of a greater story… Almost the opposite of the “saint” series, which are all about the serene face.

So I visited the other extreme with harsh lines, muted color, and high contrast…that’s the disaster on the right side.

Going from one extreme to another leads to a beautiful in between. Scrubbing out layers, re introducing line, and reshaping form, all bring movement into the composition and reveal the character of the medium… The paint has probably set enough for me to dive back in now…

As the second week in September rolled around, I knew it wasn’t happening. Understandable. I haven’t written a science anything since high school. Of course I was out of my league. They were rats for not at least sending a rejection letter, just for courtesy’s sake.

Late Tues. night, Sept 15th, I get the e-mail: Congratulations. You’re poster’s accepted. The conference is next week. We had some technical problems..Sorry. !!!
Sept 16, finish painting living room/juggle Credit cards, buy a ticket, Sept 17 finish painting the livingroom for real, take down my largest art show, Sept 18, pull out notes from March, relearn, Sept 19, borrow a mac, learn mac, make a poster, Sept20 print poster, pack. Sept 21, leave.

What follows is the most wonderful time of my life, which is why I have no idea how to write about it properly. The conference organizers are Soren Kaspersen, Jon O. Laurig, and Martin Skov. The quality of company and conversation throughout the presentations and into the pubs is of a rare caliber.

A whole review is being written by a much more knowledgeable participant. I will revisit different aspects of the trip in a more stream of conscious way. The speakers are amazing. The subject matter is intriguing…and sometimes a little over my head. I will start with Helmut Leder’s talk…tomorrow.

My reading:
My favorite, Gerald Edelman, neurobilologist writes on “Neural Darwinism” and consciousness. Denis Dutton is a philosopher whose book, Art Instinct, is a dry read with ideas that stick. James Elkins, an art historian delves into the element that triggers people to weep before works of art in Tears and Pictures. He came up w/a tidy list of visual triggers which I reviewed and discarded as I welled up at the MET in front of a bunch of Monets… so irritating… Jonah Lehrer has great articles in SEED magazine. Of course it all starts with Semir Zeki one of the forerunners of neuroaesthetics.

I know a man who bets on horses based on their horoscopes and the stars (the horses’ horoscopes-not his.) I don’t think he gets accurate birth dates as he still works at the lot.

I worked with five brothers from Brazil who couldn’t get back home for their mother’s funeral.

My bank tellers bring their kids to work on Saturdays.

Life is a challenge daily, here. These are the people I gauge my perspective by. During the time around Katrina, these are the people I really started to watch, mostly because we were all in the same boat.

Painting Fly Away in response to the Katrina Disaster got me looking at Medieval woodcuts. I felt like I was living in the New Dark Age. I blamed the government for a landscape of fear, war, misused religion and unchecked business. Working in the airport didn’t help matters. (At the airport, there were a lot o people in my “boat”.)

The cool expressions of individuals in peril, suffering for their belief repeat throughout medieval texts. (Such familiar faces like those I work with) Thick lines of the wood cut and the stain glass window create bold simplification of both the serene face of the saint and the symbol of the story. Out of context, it’s anyone’s guess what dangers the story holds. I like this aspect quite abit.

This group of sketches use the idea of the saint and symbol without a back story. The placid composure of the subjects make potentially alarming situations ambiguous. They are contemporary subjects, those who take on any challenge and make it through the day and keep a poised demeanor for the sake of those around them, their children, job, for their own sense of control. They are not allowed to panic.

Slowly but surely these sketches all became paintings. You’ll see why I couldn’t leave these guys alone.

My paintings share themes but are often different in content and style. Painting time is lean. My work schedule has never been pretty. This leads to small paintings, slow evolutions for larger pieces, and ideas that sit in wait.

I revisit an older painting for the path that leads to paintings I’ve just finished. Even if I have new ideas, the older ones demand completion.

I am wary about telling this painting’s story. It’s not pleasant.

Aug 2005 Hurricane Katrina-(you see?)
Me – working a restaurant beyond security in the airport- Logan Boston Int.. All four TV screens on CNN’s blow by blow Katrina updates.

The Delta jet shuttle between Boston and NY is the regular audience…very nice business suits. I go home via Paul’s Parking Shuttle…very different shuttle… sometimes the breaks don’t work. At home I continue to watch and cry for a hopeless situation. How terrifying – no escape!

I begin my painting with a bird on the wing with the storm at its back and a woman gathering unripe oranges from a potted tree. Birds and flowers are the key in many of my paintings. Wild vs. Tame..The wild can flee at least.

As the newscasts continued, the line between survivors and sufferers was clear. It is money. Apparently birds aren’t the only free things…so are the wealthy. A new heightened awareness of such divisions filters into my daily life. I watch the business shuttle crowd back and forth, blithely batting at their blackberries waiting in line to jump to the next city. And the airport workers, many from hard luck parts, thinking an airport job was golden… it had benefits ..but fighting every day for that extra shift, figuring out child care or bills or how to change their life either by school or a race horse. I am one of them. If anything beyond the regular happens- our lives turn upside down. A missing babysitter or a car problem puts a job in jeopardy. The job is everything, no matter how horrible it is.

My painting grew business men…and a plane.

I don’t think I finished this until 2007. Touching the painting made me sad. The philosophers and psychologists all talk about the beauty and pleasure art brings. They attest that pleasure is what drives the production of art. Where can my send a letter of dispute?

I often wonder why I paint such things. I called on a higher power for a proper finish. The painting emerges from a watery wash of bright reds to rich dark earthy tones, thick lines, …Diego Rivera used these heavy lines in his paintings of peasants, farmers, business moguls, politicians, the poor and the powerful…It is appropriate. I think he would approve. I wanted him in on this painting.

On the way through this painting all related things showed themselves. As I watched some struggle, I saw strength. As I watched others create turmoil, I saw their weakness. The political system in place did homage to the Dark Ages with Intelligent Design and religion as righteous mask to underhanded business.

This painting leads me to ideas of medieval thought process in contemporary times. My next paintings lay in wait of a day off.

The 10% Shift idea states that if everyone in a community shifts their spending habits a little, employment, wages, and local output will increase by thousands without a cent of tax relief help. The statistics seem unbelievable!(but they’re published in Business Week.) It is not about spending more, but buyng everday purchases at locally owned shops instead of huge corporate shops…and no everything- just 10%.

I know my weak spot is Home Depot. I have also scouted out a small hardware store near a locally owned coffee shop I love – Perfect! That’s all we have to do – find those small businesses, adjust our habits, and keep our money in the neighborhood instead of tossing it all into giant faceless heartless corporations.

If you have questions, 10percentshift.org, or visit Joe(and some of my paintings) at the SLF’s “pop-up” gallery space/office, the Prospect Gallery in Union Square, between the post office and the Independent Pub. Please come celebrate the gallery’s show closing at the end of December, the 30th, 6-9.

This is especially important this time of the year. Your gift shopping can make or break a business. Lets keep our money where we can see it…in our towns and our independent businesses.