กรกฎา

Behold The German! This was a Procreate drawing (digital painting?) from some time ago, I think more than a year, and here it is now. Now that I’ve done a few more; see below for those, for better and/or for worse.

Aside: for those who can’t draw — the handless, let’s call them, poor souls — and specifically for that subset (the larger!) unversed in digital-illustration tools, how odd it must sound when we blather on about Procreate! And in an era when fewer and fewer people are actually procreating. Which is a subject for another time, and probably another place.

July is more than two-thirds gone, and with it the summer. Trips to the sea and the mountains. And to… to whatever it is we’re supposed to call New Mexico. The plateau?

And then back to Asian sea level, the beautiful beast, Bangkok mi amor. Gleanings follow, Dear Lonesome Reader, but first a bit on the mini-show.

I went, I saw, I… I was both happy for them, my canvas-babies, and also a bit disappointed to see probably thirty people walk by and not cast an eye artward. OK, that’s the deal, as we say here: I’m not complain. But it’s an interesting mix of potential and apathy. One does well to remember that this, not the gallery show, is the truer measure of the Interested Public. The disinterested, mostly, and pretending otherwise is bad form.

I made time for galleries in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Venice Beach. Lots of good stuff. Did you know LA Louver has a bunch of Duchamp goodies, including an original Green Box? Saw me some fresh “Kats” too. A couple of them were, uncharacteristically, bite sized (I have a big mouth, I’m told).

Let’s just randomly throw out a few names, for the sake of Posterity: Jora Nelstein, Jared McGriff, Jeremiah Chechik, Pierre Picot, Sui Jianguo. These people made strong impressions.

In Santa Fe I had much less time for art, but I did manage to see the quite amazing, nearly overwhelming annual show at Site Santa Fe. Wow. Also saw Maja Ruznic with her regal bearing, holding court with her lovely family in front of a massive, wall-sized greenish painting. Happy to see her making it big, in both senses.

Also in Nuevo México: a really fun show featuring Erin Currier. Thanks to Holly for the tip!

Overall, the trip was a mix of joy and trouble. Back to the Montañas Sagradas after two years. Back into the Pacific after one. But I came home still short of a day-job, and it’s gonna be a dicey couple of months.

So many things one doesn’t say, even now. One wonders whether there will be a literature of these unspoken truths, and will it come to light in an age of honest introspection or remain an underground thing, suppressed and cancelled, a thread pulled on by the paranoid but not entirely wrong conspiracy theorists whose ranks I predict will swell as Skynet tightens its grip.

I’m still at a loss for what to do with the digital “paintings,” some of which I quite adore. I’ve thought about printing them on Instax, but that seems unfair: they deserve to be at least the size of their original creation, about 8x10” I guess.

Latest idea: print on metal. Because it’s Metal, dude! No, I think it’d work well, but who knows. The goal would be a small edition of each. Might never go anywhere, and this is one of the problems with these new media. Nothing artists haven’t struggled with before, but now I really have no idea which way the winds are blowing.

Consider this related problem: if you expect that at best a few people might acquire one, and you want to reserve one for yourself (“AP” as they say) — should you not then do a very limited series? But what if they break out? Meh. Luxury problems: right now, I just need to get back to painting.

That’s my rather tedious lead-in, now the meat: the following two digital images were drawn with Procreate on a Cathay Pacific flight from LAX to HKG while watching the latest filmic incarnation of Nosferatu. Enjoy, if that’s the word!

ze vampyr Nosfera-One

ze vampyr Nosfera-Two