The Process…

So I have been chronicling the process of painting for me of late, and here is the process for a painting I did on Sunday, March 29th. I kinda like him. I wanted to console myself for the loss of the two paintings I sold – really, as if I need to consoled, cripes – and did this guy. I am still learning techniques and what I want to do and how to achieve what I want to do but, I figured this was pretty fun.
So here ya go…

Selling Out

Can I tell you how weird it is to sell stuff? Seriously?

Especially for me, to sell art.

I love painting, I love taking pics, I love drawing, but all of that is secondary to writing. This is all stuff I have said, before. I have drawn since I was a very little boy, the genesis of that coming from my mother and father, though my dad hides his artistic interests in wood working and that sort of work. I had wanted to be a cartoonist as a kid but never really had the drive to pursue it past idea.

When I started painting three years ago it was because I had always sorta wanted to try it but had never had the guts. Since the day I began I have always looked at this as learning on the job. I am not worried so much about being great as about being ME in my art. I want it to tell the stories I want to tell, and to reflect the worlds I see in my mind. I have never really thought about selling art and, to be honest, just to give stuff away tears me up. It’s crazy. I think it’s that I am still new to it. I can do work relatively quickly but it still is all part of me. All unique. All children of my soul.

Ah, but, dammit, I gotta eat. And eat I do. HAHA. I have my ideals, and my view on art and commerce and all of that, like we all do but for me, it’s a razor’s edge that is all about what you are comfortable with. I feel like selling my work allows me to do more work, which is a good thing. I am not dumb enough to think that my work is worth tons of money, as I would prefer people that are passionate about it get the stuff. But I do need to make enough to make it worth losing it. ‘Cause I love the stuff, dammit. Even if no one else does.

So yesterday I sold two paintings at the Cool City Art Auction in Flint, MI. The auction itself is over priced and overblown and reminded me why I wanted to help put together indie art shows and why art can annoy me so much, but there was a lot of beautiful work out there. My girlfriend and I had checked out where our stuff was – my three paintings and her three photos – and saw no bids. Fail. Though there weren’t many bids on things at all. We moved from there to the other three venues and checked out the rest of the auction. As I said, a lot of great art, but a lot of blown up stuff that, to me, isn’t worth half of what people want. It made me happy not to have an art degree, but then I am a dick, so what do I know. When we went back to the venue for our stuff we saw that there were bids. Freakin’ BIDS! I figured, assumed, that a friend had bid on the paintings as it was the same number for both but, to my shock, it was a gentleman I’d never met before. Crazy.

So today I feel as I did yesterday, and that is elated to be validated in those two pieces, but sad at their loss. I fucking loved those things. They were faves of mine, for sure. But, it is what it is. And I guess a lot of artists have a lot of their lesser works  hanging around in their places and their friend’s places, and, if they are lucky, have some rad as hell pieces on the walls of admirers.

And if they are very lucky, paying admirers.

c

Dedicate

Dedicate

It’s ugly, what we do in the name of love. Wielding it like a weapon against the world, more often than not against the ones we claim to adore the most. I have done things, things I would never have imagined before, before my love, but things change.

We change.

Love changes everything.

Love is a fire that covers you, coats you, burning through you and engulfing everything you are and were. And when you are in it, when you are in the inferno, you’d do anything possible to stay there forever. Hell is a concept, love the reality.

Her name was Marianne and it wasn’t love we shared, at first, it was devotion, it was dedication, it was destiny. We were drawn by desire and after that it felt like paint by numbers.

I met her at a bar. She was with someone and so was I but we caught each other’s eyes and that was that. The fire was started. I saw her leave for the bathroom at one point and followed her and we left together and made love in the parking lot as our dates wondered where were. It was violent, and angry, and animalistic, what we did, but it was love; love because I needed her, and she needed me. And in the end we were bound together, joined by skin and saliva, blood and sweat, thought and deed. We stayed in my backseat, covered by our coats as the overhead parking light flickered on and off in a far corner of the lot, not speaking, not kissing, just breathing one another’s air as the sweat dried off of us. It was near three in the morning before either of us spoke, and it was her, telling me what I must do to have her love, to keep it, to own it.

‘I am yours,’ she said, ‘but…’ and that was the ugly part of it, the part with barbs.

But.

And then she told me what she wanted from me. What she needed.

She told me a name, and an address, and that was all. And can I tell you I know what it was all about, why she set me on this person, or what atrocity they committed for her to want vengeance? No, no I can’t, but that isn’t what mattered to me. How – why – those were intangible things. You either get that or you don’t. I can tell you that I am the president of a company, and you either believe me or you don’t, and that depends on how much you trust me and what I say, but even if you trust me I can have told you a lie. Love though, love sees through the truth, through the lie, and gets to what matters the most, and that’s the other person. So what I am saying is that it wasn’t that I didn’t know why I was going to do what I was asked to do, because I didn’t ask and didn’t care. She wanted it, and she wanted me, and those were the only two things I needed to know.

Those are the only two things I will ever need to know.

You get that or you don’t.

We left the parking lot at five, after she showed me her gratitude for what I was going to do for her, and all I could think about the entire time was how much I loved her and how I’d do anything for her. And was about to do everything in a matter of hours. We dressed in silence and shared some flat soda pop and a stale donut that had been sitting in my car for a few days. I let her drive and she dropped me three blocks from where I need to be. I didn’t kiss her, I didn’t need to, but I ran my hand against her cheek and she smiled at me, her eyes hooded by her dark hair, and then she left and I stood in the center of the road, most of the neighborhood still dreaming, and I started walking towards my destination. I walked beneath a shadow of love, unsmiling but not needing to because my hands still smelled like her, and my body could still feel her heat on it, even in the cool of the morning.

The house was silent, silent and watching, an accomplice to what I was here to do. Inside was quiet, like the rest of the neighborhood but there was coffee on the boil and a note on the kitchen table – gone to work for a bit, back soon. I frowned at the news but went about my business just the same. I didn’t know who was home and who had left but it didn’t matter. Not really. Everything washes clean with blood, the good and the bad. I didn’t hurry, didn’t rush, but I did want to get this done as quickly as possible so I could get back to her. I found an appliance with a long enough cord and cut it free and headed for the back of the house and the bedrooms. It wasn’t a big house and that cut down the work I had to do. The bedroom door was open and the person inside fast asleep, though they weren’t visible from where I stood. As I said, it didn’t matter. I laid the cord down quietly onto the floor and walked into the room. I stood at the foot of the bed a moment, seeing the person but not seeing what they were, who they were, just that they were there, were between me and my love, and I did what I came for.

I took the comforter and pulled it over their head and before they were fully awakened I started beating them, letting my fists speak for me over and over and over as my body had spoken to hers because sometimes words cannot say enough. I stopped when the comforter turned from gray to black.

I let go of the bedding and pulled the lighter fluid I kept in my car out and started pouring it all over the bed and made a trail out the door. When I was outside the bedroom I pulled the door closed and tied one end of the cord to the handle and another to the bathroom door, which was across the hall. That done, I pulled out my lighter and let the fire say the things I was here to say.

And I was there in the car with Marianne, her hands on me, mine on her and we were gone from the world and far away, within infinity itself, in the cold blackness of memories long forgotten.

And then I was there again, staring at the door as the fire pulled the paint from its skin.

I was leaving as the screams started, though whether they were from the room or my head, I couldn’t tell you but the air was hot and all I wanted was the cool air of my car vents and the touch of her body in the backseat. Outside the house there were already a hundred flashing lights and so many people, like a circus had come to town and I was in center ring. I turned and saw the house was all ablaze and wondered how long I had been inside, lost in the thought of her, in the idea of us, lost while the world was waking up.

All was noise, and light, and she seemed so far away and all I wanted was to set fire to everything, to send it to ash, to dust, to nothing so we could be alone again.

Alone and together.

And sometimes the worst thing in the world is getting the one thing you want more than anything.

And sometimes the quickest path to get to where you want to go is to move in the opposite direction. So I walked into the blaze and the screams got louder, and the heat was unbearable, and the world was fire but I knew she’d wait for me, I knew she’d come for me, I knew she’d find me – even here in death.

Even in hell.

And Love They Made For Themselves

New painting I did yesterday, Sunday the 22nd. I paint in acrylics and finally realized how to use the painting medium stuff the more efficient way. Oops. I like this. It’s sad and cute at once.

YAY!

Michigan Central Station

I figured it was more appropriate to give MCS its own post as, these pics don’t really fit in with the rest of what I posted, picture wise. They tell their own story.

I had wanted to see MCS myself for years, after a friend told me about it and sent me a picture from her phone. She later drove me past it and I was in love. The place is so mysterious and creepy that it is exactly the sort of place I adore. This friend has been through the building and has said that it seems haunted, after hearing sounds and footsteps. Another friend was also in the building and told me that on the roof, at each corner, are spraypainted footprints with the words – Jump Here – with them.

Tales of Ruin, Tales of Hope – 2

Sunday was another beautiful day and this time we headed to Detroit to see an art show a friend was in and had put together. It just so happened that Sunday was the big St. Patrick’s Day celebration in what is known in Detroit as Cork Town, due to its close proximity to the old Detroit Tiger stadium. I had never seen this sort of St. Patty’s celebration, I mean, it was immense. Crazy. Wow! I never got into the holiday because, well, I don’t drink and am not that Irish. While downtown we took pics of the chaos and I suddenly found myself within sight of Michigan Central Station, an abandoned rail station that has to be seen to believed. It is immense, scary, and wonderful. We had a fantastic time, until that is, we got back to my car and found the passenger side window busted out. Awesome. The night only got worse from there but, there are good memories from the day and some really cool pictures of a city that is far from dead from the looks of it.

Tales of Ruin, Tales of Hope – 1

This past Saturday was one of the first significantly nice days of 2009 and presented a perfect opportunity to get out and take advantage of my camera so, with my lovely girlfriend in tow, we went around downtown Flint and took some pictures near the riverfront. It is strange how much history is here, in Flint, much of it forgotten over the years, the city written of to a great degree yet like a flower in a desert we are still here. Flint will never be what it once was but it is still alive, if you hold up a mirror to the city’s nose, and a day will come when the first thing you read about will not be a crime stat.

These images are not of despair but of beauty, even in ruin. Everything has to come from something else, creation in destruction. Beauty from collapse.

Snaps

Here are some random pictures I have taken recently, such as the process of one of my recent paintings, and another couple pics of the bloody knives. It’s stuff, dig?

New paintings and tools of the trade

I did a couple paintings over the weekend, and these are them. It is funny ’cause I had ideas for both and neither turned out how I had thought. Hecks, I had to re-do part of Mr. Mouth, but such is the joy of painting. The random pic is one I took for fun. ‘Cause I am weird and morbid.

Watching – poem

This was written for a friend, who will likely never know this was written for them, but it was just the same, and it says all it needs to say.

PS – it is a rare occasion that I write poetry. Consider this a blue moon.

Watching

Watching

as the light fades from your eyes

day

by

day

by

day

makes every moment precious to me.

Like wine to a savior

or

conception in a barren womb.

Your touch is cold but it’s the memory of fire

that keeps me warm.

And as your ferry slips slowly from my sight

day

by

day

by

day

I cherish these lost moments, these stolen kisses, these shared war stories.

I remember -

a night spent in the dark where the only light

was the friction from our bodies as they moved in unison beneath a falling sky.

I remember -

holding your hand when your sister died, and holding it until you fell asleep and finally let me go.

I remember -

how we were going to grow old together, never knowing how young old really was to you.

And I know.

I know about them.

I know it is before another hearth you warm yourself, and that I only have rest to offer in the bed we share.

I know you are lost to me.

And I know you were found by another.

But I have the memory of fire to keep me warm at night.

I have the phantom of your kiss to remind me of the years.

And I have the cold certainty that it is better to let you leave than to force you to go.

Watching as you float away, to shores I’ll never know.