New work

All titled Bojagi, 2006, oil on canvas, L: 18 x 14", M: 20 x 16", R: 16 x 12"

I posted a bunch of new stuff on my weblog today. In response to an email from Douglas Witmer, I wrote, expanded and edited a bit for here:

I have a lot of stuff in progress. I'm really just painting kind of whatever I want- I'm feeling very loose, and I'm very open to all kinds of imagery. What I'm doing is rolling right out of what I've been doing since around fall 2004, and getting a whole lot more comfortable with oil and all of the different ways it can be handled. I like that my approach, and the variety of the work, still feels to me part of a single overall approach, and I like that I don't feel locked into a certain way of painting. I like being able to work in bursts and smaller series, to shift gears, to have some works that belong together but are separate from another group of work. I'm liking the domestic, intimate, personal feel of what I'm doing- these are smaller issue paintings, intimate, but also painting in a way that is critical of painting and its history and possiblities, all while staying within the tradition- oil, on canvas, over stretchers, on the wall. Nothing radical? I feel that this kind of low tech approach, in the face of so many things that are depersonalizing, in a time of the absence of the original, next to so much art that is not about the unique handmade object, that this little domestic approach has the possilibity of being very radical. I'm thinking of this idea of a domestic kind of art as acoustic, like playing acoustic guitar rather than big plugged-in electric, but acoustic with a bigger idea in mind- playing acoustic guitar and recording it with iTunes to be used in a larger context than one's porch or backyard. Just thinking, just wondering what this is and where it goes. Also, I think, actually, that this approach is realistic. I have a day job. I have a small place to work. I'm very busy. I don't have hours on end in the studio. I don't think my ambition is to make ten foot paintings. I'm trying to be realistic about how painting is part of my life. I'm in it for something other....