News:

2009

Friday, December 18, 2009

Dimebag Darrell

Earlier in the summer, my daughter Shannon commissioned me to create a painting for her boyfriend's upcoming birthday (Which turned out to be a Christmas present instead).

Apparently, he is an enormous fan of a character known as "Dimebag Darrell". Now, I didn't know the first thing about the guy so, it seemed some research was in order first.

It turns out that Dimebag was a founding member of heavy metal bands Pantera and Damageplan. He also appeared in numerous guitar magazine articles, even wrote his own column, and received various industry awards and accolades.

Unfortunately, his very successful career was cut tragically short when he was murdered, on stage, during a performance in December 2004. At that point, Dimebag's status suddenly became iconic for thousands of devoted fans.

Originally, Shannon had assumed I would paint his image in the same black-and-white fashion as my Icon series of paintings. However, I felt that his character was too complex to capture in such a minimal format. I still kept the colour references to a minimum — using mostly muted neutral tones. The highlight areas though, such as his trademark beard and guitar, I accentuated with bright blasts of iridescent colours.

The final piece measures 24 inches square and is painted on gallery-style canvas (1.5 inches thick).

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Lauren Bacall - a living legend.

In another break with tradition, I've chosen to paint the first Hollywood legend still living.

I chose a reference from some of her very earliest work, when she was barley out of her teens. The Big Sleep was a particular favourite of mine.

I remember writing more than one paper in my film studies classes dealing with her on-screen presence and symbolic use of cigarettes.

And, at 85, she still looks fabulous. One classy dame. She'd make an excellent pairing with Humphrey Bogart (finished in May of this year).

Friday, July 24, 2009

Marlene Dietrich (#2)

This marks the first time I have used the same subject twice for a painting. It was, in fact, Marlene Dietrich who was the subject of my very first painting which I had completed at the special request of my girlfriend.

However, popular opinion led me to believe that it would be worth painting a second version of one of Hollywood’s greatest film icons. This was confirmed by the fact that the painting sold only two days after its completion.

Perhaps there will be a Marlene Dietrich #3.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Commission finished

After nearly a year, I have finally completed a very special commission for a good friend.

She had seen the style of serigraphs I was producing in the Juxtapose series and was very eager to have me produce a limited-edition set of prints of each of her two sons.

Each print displays a large foreground image of the guys while the smaller background image showcases one of their passions in life.

The prints were very well received.