10 Year Anniversary: The Painting Diary 28 of 30
Painting Diary 28 of 30: Fever Dream, 2019
Near the end of 2018 I helped Carrie with one of her artists retreats on Vashon Island. It was a deluxe weekend. I got to paint all weekend straight and feel official about it too. This painting was started there and was still a huge sloppy mess when we left. There used to be a panther in the middle, looking out of the foliage…he got painted out though, sorry dude.
It wasn’t until the first part of 2019, in my new home studio out in the woods that I pulled this out of the basement and decided it was worth finishing. I wasn’t feeling too confident that it would turn into a good painting but I didn’t want to waste a canvas, and I always try to save those mediocre paintings before I destroy them. But once I started working on it I was back into it and it quickly evolved from a sloppy mess into a painting I was felling pretty excited about.
I’m not sure what it means, it feels like a psychedelic dream maybe. The jungle grows from every direction, birthing from nothing and returning to nothing. The blooming colors bleed into one another and there is really no distinct dimension. All is one, only the mind separates and categorizes.
This is one of my favorite paintings from this year. I think it beautifully captures the method I’ve been chasing of painting from the subconscious and letting a work evolve the way it wants to without thinking too much. It’s abstract but yet not too abstract. I can almost see a story in there somewhere.
At our new house we live on the property with the builder of the house and although he’s retired he still loves to work on projects, so I had him help me build a nice frame for this piece. From a basic design I sketched out, we built the frame in a couple days and it turned out great. It’s kind of a dream to have access to a wood shop. It brings me back to my childhood and spending time in my grandpa’s wood shop, tinkering and making little things. It was one of my favorite places to be when I was a kid.
Fever Dream, acrylic on canvas, 2019