Random notes on this piece:

I actually saw it in person (I think. Either I saw this one or one remarkably similar)

Joan Miro is my favorite artist ever

Joan Miro’s first name is pronounced “Yo-Han” (or possibly Yo-Awn.) For years I’ve been pronouncing it “Joan” like Joan Cusack. For years people have treated me like an idiot. Coincidence?

Job ad by Alphonse Mucha

I’m a big Mingus fan. I did this painting for my show “Neapolitan,” but I never finished it due to time constraints. It’s a cool picture and it would make a cool painting, but honestly I can basically make “cool” paintings in my sleep now. If I’m not challenged by a painting I get pretty bored and not too inclined to finish it.

About like a week ago I posted this here and on my facebook asking people if they thought I should finish it or not. Now, I wasn’t expecting a torrential downfall of opinions, but I got two. TWO! That’s sad even for me. Epic riling-up-the-people fail. Well, maybe 3, but I don’t count Emil’s comment as being an opinion.

However, the two comments came from my friends Layke and Kim and since they are sweeter than than the candy Lamar Odom eats at halftime, I’ll finish it. Just for them.

This was a very early painting I did. I think it was my fourth painting. It was never my intent to be a realistic painter, but I always prescribed to the school of thought that every painter, no matter what style he/she eventually did, should have a solid foundation in realism. On the previous three or so paintings my skill at shading and color selection felt really…….. I don’t know. Erratic? Or inconsistant maybe is a better word. During some moments I felt I could get the shading looking the way I wanted and sometimes the ability would just leave me unexpectedly which was very, very frustrating. I decided to do this painting as sort of homework assignment to get down shading.

I took the image from like GQ or something. I selected it primarily because I thought it would be a challenge. It wasn’t. Whatever problems I was experiencing with shading in the past I guess worked itself out because I basically blew through it with very little trouble. I got pretty bored of painting it after a week or so which is why I never finished it. This began a streak of about four paintings that I left unfinished (I don’t know if it’s by coincidence or not, but these four paintings all have kind of a noir feel going for them.) Of those four this is the only painting that I didn’t destroy. Even though I never really had much of a desire to finish it, since it was so close to being done I felt it would be a shame to destroy it.

During my last show I showed a picture of this piece to a girl I met named Annie and she liked it and said that it looked good unfinished and that I should leave it as is and consider it done. It seemed like a good idea so I decided to fold it into my alphabet series.

I like this painting. It has a pretty good weight to it I think. One of my original goals as an artist was to create paintings with maximum style and maximum weight. Like a perfect storm of Alphonse Mucha and Diego Rivera. I think I overdid it on the stylization a bit and should have held back, but maybe that adds to its charm. It’s of Ingrid Bergman who is my favorite actress ever. It’s the second painting I’ve done of her.