yum.. snacks

Guess what? I got a kitty. Her name is olive - before I start bragging on her, let me stop. I'm sure this blog will get its fill in due time. For now let me just show you a bunch of pictures: (only one more of kitty)

oh so cute...

Here are some paintings I've been holding out on showing to the world (Mainly since they don't photograph well...)

andy dying

This is latex, water based house paint. I've been working with ideas of sleep/awake:life/death:light/dark (haha notice how I put sleep on the life side of the analogy. oh silly me, oh silly silly me.) I've been thinking about living and dying in terms of decision making - choosing to live, choosing to die - which leads, in a train of thought, to ideas of the interplay between life and death - the idea of extremities and middle ground - life and death as polar opposites therefore, logically have a middle ground. What is this middle ground? Is it obtained in life or in death? Is it in living life with the idea of death (a sort of living life to the fullest mantra - "live each day as if it were your last" sorta deal) or in some sort of death-like state such as sleeping? Or maybe the middle state is simply a transitional stage, living and dying - dying while living. This could be why I've chosen old people - They're more or less at the sort of pinnacle moment of this idea the last stages of living and dying and the transition into dead. An object in space in a neutral lit setting remains more or less 2-dimensional - or when painted, drawn, photographed, etc. remains flat on the page. When the object is lit - the interplay of light and shadow bring the object into physical reality -bring it off the page. So is the actual object existence or ...Is being spotlit simply a sign of greater importance, demand of focus, or is there something to say about living in a sort of cold mundane 2 dimensional state (could this be a sort of middle path) - i'm sure there's some quote that says if you never truly lived, you never truly die...a sorta - living your life as dead, you never really lived or something of that nature haha. Whether or not these pieces even relate to these ideas or questions is a whole other issue. I don't think they do...WELL....i think they do in some parts - or at least I'm coming to understand them a bit more - This is just... not how I want these ideas executed. I don't know that I want to work with old people anymore - I don't know that it shows what I want to show well enough and in a fresh enough air for me to be content with. Maybe I should branch this idea out of painting and work with something living like plants or something in an instillation or time based piece... but then I'll get all'thinkin-about-cycles-n-shit and I'd really just like to...not go there. The next painting I put up, I believe, gets closer than ones I've done in the past, but yea...the problem remains.

gouache and watercolor of my g-ma. My camera takes the most washed out pictures. Sorry for goofy quality.

On a totally different note - here are some experiments I've been doing with colored lights and shadows!