Cairo

Good ol’ Fresno

Rembrandt's Jeremiah

After visiting Cairo, Fresno, to me, is quite a nice place to be. I appreciate the clean streets and neighborhoods, and orderly traffic much more now than I used to. I love the friendly faces I see in the Tower District, and there is no shortage of good company lately.
I am looking into a studio in Downtown Fresno at the moment, and I have found a few options to pick from. Im excited to get back to work, and the goal for 2012 is to learn to make frames. After visiting the Louvre, and the Rijks, and other museums of that caliber I have realized how important a good frame can really be. The frame is like a window into the artist’s world. Almost like a gateway into the vision of the artist. I really like this concept, and I think it adds much depth to the artwork.

One of the concepts that I really like about a lot of dutch paintings is their comic-esque qualities. I use this Rembrandt as an example. Here Jeremiah mourns the destruction of Jerusalem. It is hard to tell from this photo, but outside the cave is the small burning city of Jerusalem. So Rembrandt cleverly placed this little vignette off to the side of Jeremiah to show what he was thinking about. Well done Rembrandt.  I certainly approve.

I have heard many artists talking at FAA and occasionally I hear them bashing decisions like Rembrandt has made here saying that “he just painted the figure, and then put a background in.”  Often times it is said like it’s a bad thing, but I disagree. I think if the background is put in tastefully like Rembrandt did here, it can add many new layers of depth, and make the picture much more interesting. Yeah the background was stuck in there, but there was a purpose for doing so, and I think it works.

Antique Dutch Frame

Antique Dutch Frame

It wont be long before I settle back in to my new environment that is the Central Valley, and soon enough I will be learning the art of framing, and I should have almost every aspect of this wonderful obsession down. From making wood panels, to stretching and rabbit skin gluing linen, refining my own linseed oil, to making oil based gesso and grinding my own paint, all the way to making professional quality frames. I am very excited for 2012. It’s going to be a great year.

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Random photos from Maadi, Cairo

The view I painted....

Trash everywhere....

Capitalism! Fuck yeah!!

Another shot of Bekkah's wonderful skyline...

And another... Awesome light effect that the burning trash creates. Want to know what it smells like? Set a furby on fire and inhale.

Custom made pinatas. I wish I made one for Bekkah... Congrats on moving to Cairo and getting lung cancer from inhaling burning Furby smoke daily...

Who is that?

Get a helmet buddy! Oh yeah.. you could care less if your brains were splattered all over the street anyway...

I want this bike. There would be no need for a car. You could carry your whole family!

Neat still life objects... FAA students will appreciate this...

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Plein Air Painting in Cairo

Bekkahs Rooftop - Signifying the final peak of our relationship - The apocalypse is beautiful

It was a somewhat successful day here in Maadi, Cairo for me today. It was the usual routine for me, although I came up with the near perfect algorithm for painting such a complex view of Road 233. It is painted from the view of the rooftop of Bekkah’s apartment building. I started roughly at 2:00 after breakfast and coffee. I have been unable to sleep well, so I end up sleeping when I can which is usually when the sun comes up. I don’t understand why I can’t sleep. Perhaps I do, perhaps its something to do with Bekkah, and her mood swings causing me not to sleep. I only had one panel left anyway so so I wouldn’t be able to paint any more anyway unless I worked on the same painting every day. I like the slap dash sketchy style that I paint and I prefer to not continue to push my plein air paintings beyond the initial color sketch. If I feel compelled I will take the painting into the studio in the future.
I began this painting with a thin Transparent red oxide tone over the panel, and I did the drawing in a purpleish tone made of white, French Ultramarine, and alizarin Crimson. After the drawing was established I painted the greens to key the depth of the painting, as well as keying the values. I didn’t touch the sky until later. Usually I key the sky first, and even paint it first, but I felt that it would be a bad choice this time around, because I didn’t see anything epic happening in the sky at this time. I love epic skies, with peachy oranges, pinks and purples with the blue sky peering through, and apocalyptic fires off in the distance. That was my vision for this painting.
After painting the greens keeping the sky in mind I began to paint the architecture carefully with very precise brush strokes. I would maintain the drawing by chopping the shapes with other overlapping brush strokes. This is what I love about painting. Making all the puzzle pieces of nature’s complexity in front of me all fit together. I get a rush from this simple pleasure.
Once the architecture is established I moved to a different spot on the rooftop where one of the most fantastic sunsets unfolded in front of me, and I went for it. I am fairly happy with the result, but I wish I designed the clouds a bit better. Its difficult when everything changes so quickly.
After painting Bekkah and I take a cab to our last dinner together, most likely ever.
In retrospect, I came to Cairo to leave my bad energy between Bekkah and I here. We had a falling out the last night. I don’t ever want to talk to her again or see her again. She wasted two years of my life while I was in school and I can never forgive her for that. If she didn’t leave me ten days before I arrived back home, I would have given her the most incredible life she could have possibly imagined. What a shame how it had to work out.
I leave for Italy tomorrow. I still have the final stretch to make it out of this god forsaken place. I’m sure I will be fine. I can move on with my life now, and I have found the answers that I was looking for. I know have closure with this dead relationship and I am happy to be moving on. There were many lessons learned, and I am glad to have earned such amounts of wisdom.

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Amsterdam

The Art of Flight

As I woke up

Everyone on the plane seems dazed and confused, or maybe it was just me. I open my window and let the morning light in. We are served nasty Airplane coffee with not enough sugar or cream to cover the dirt taste up. I think their machine’s need cleaning badly. Whatever. I drink it and the caffeine does the trick. At this point we are flying over Scandinavia or the UK, im not sure but its stunning. Green, and peppered with little farms houses, and various shapes of perfect farmland. There were lakes and such. Absolutely beautiful colors and shadow shapes. I contemplated how to mix the various types of greens. This is how I entertain myself during flying or riding trains. Music and observation. Searching. Using my brain as if I was standing with my brushes and paints with nature in front of me. Its meditation for me.
My original plan was to try to get my bags in Amsterdam, and I knew this would be a challenge. My original itinerary was from San Francisco to Amsterdam and then to Florence. I asked the people at the airport if I could get my bags out at this stop. They wanted to charge me 275 euros, so I decided against it. I can get there much cheaper than that from Florence.

Amsterdam Central Station

My aunt and uncle bought me a OV Chipkarrt when I came to visit for christmas for riding the public transportation on the Nederlands, as well as a museum pass. My layover in Amsterdam was 11 hours. Plenty of time to play. Right away I went to innerspace, bought some truffles, and ate them outside the rijks museum. What a trip that was. Quite mild in fact. The paintings are hard to improove upon. It was a lot of fun. The paintings seemed to come to life, especially the landscapes by a dutch man name Jan Both. The Clouds would move, the water would flow, and the trees were swaying in the wind, Seemingly moving underneath the cracks of the varnish. Jan Both was a Dutch painter who traveled to italy to paint the italian light. He captured it well. I enjoyed painting it very much myself.
As I write this I am still sitting in Bekkah’s living room in Cairo. The windows are wide open, and the breeze is nice. Now the smell of burning trash is gently flowing into the large bay windows. How lovely. This place gives me a headache. Allora.

The Rijks Museum is always a treat. I love seeing the Rembrandts, Vermeers, the Heda’s (The dutch king of still life) Gabriel Metsu, Pieter Claesz, Franz Hals to name a few. From there I had a few more hours to kill. What else is there to do In amsterdam. Eat? Have some beers? Evesdrop on some local’s conversations about the universe and shit like that… Sure why not. (I got the universe figured out already) After some fear and loathing, I headed back to the airport to catch my Flight to Florence. Another pleasant flight experience. I love that.

The country of big skies

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