and for my next trick!

  The past couple of weeks I have been working on developing some still lives for my next semester painting class.  Below are a couple of my works-in-progress.

  I am awaiting a soviet gas mask for the deer and need to sculpt a face for the monster as well as make a body suit for it and find some stuffed birds to perch on his arms.

  The content for these pieces comes from my dichotomy of being a rural/urban hybrid.  I have been thinking over the past couple of years how to integrate my upbringing into my present work.  I decided to make still lives that combined relics from my childhood and present day art objects (monsters, designer art toys, etc.).  When thinking about my childhood no big pop culture memories stood out.  While this was frustrating, I did remember very distinctly my father as a hunter and helping him skin deer and break the necks of rabbits before they were butchered. 

  And hence the present project: creating these wild creatures that are half taxidermied animals and half contemporary art objects.  They speak both of my upbringing and of my life today. They combine the rural life that made me what I am and the life I have created for myself of my own volition. 

oil paintings

 While I learned lots of handy techniques this fall in oil painting, I don't think I finished a single painting! Hah!  It was like cramming food only for nutrition, not for the sake of taste, which is something I, among other artists, am prone to.  Not necessarily a flaw.  So, here are a couple of the last paintings I worked on, the self portrait being the ending piece.  I have come a long way since my August black and white still live.  woot!