The Naked Silo

Hubbub 16" x 20", oil on mat board, 2020 Continuing the practice of revisiting older photo reference I've shot (and, sometimes, painted already) this painting is based on a photo of my friend, Trish, from way back in the mid-1990s. Below is the watercolour version, which is okay, but it's very small, so there's less detail...and I think my new oil version is more vibrant and alive (which is a good sign, considering they're about 25 years apart). 15" x 11", watercolour, 1994 Here's the time lapse video of "Hubbub's" creation:

each watercolour panel: 15" x 11", coloured pencil words, 1994 Here's my friend, Trish, again, making faces at a bunch of concepts that would buzz around my head and keep me awake at nights (some still do). This was a talisman of sorts, exorcising the demons onto paper, mocking them in the process, hoping to quell the fury. I think her amazingly silly expressions balance out the heavy-handedness of the words. While experimenting with windows-in-the-mat design/framing (see: Body Language  and Go Ahead and Laugh ), I wanted to add some text that would be virtually fade-proof, my considered options at the time were inks, graphite pencil, and coloured pencils (which I finally chose because I wanted to alternate colours, but, if I were to do this type of thing now, I might just use black ink and run all the words together, maybe only separated by capital letters).

each section: 15" x 11", watercolour, 1994 The mid-90s was a bit of a whimsical time for me and my paintings and here I'm expressing that more than a bit. This was specifically designed to be framed with windows in the mat (they're four separate paintings, and only the bottom right one is signed), but I could have done them all on one sheet, I suppose (but where's the whimsy in that?). I did this windows-in-the-mat experiment with a few paintings at the time, notably in Postmodern Pranksterism *, where the words are not written on watercolour paper. Note the handmade "motion blur" as Trish blows you a kiss in the last panel. *see also Go Ahead and Laugh

22" x 15", watercolour, 2000 I used photo ref of my friend, Trish, taken in the mid '90s for this painting. I did a few paintings of her from that shoot where I got her to make some amusing, cheeky faces, and I thought this particular pose was so good that I decided to use it again here. Only the addition of the green band is different from the sketch. Sketch.