"Just Enough Velocity for Lift"

Dedication to Greg

I love this piece.  It did everything I needed it to do. It was randomly designed, painted very smoothly, came out over the course of three days, the colors work, and it moves but stays still all at the same time.  I have learned that working on black canvas serves my natural brush strokes very well.  Interesting thing about this painting is that it had to travel from the manufacturer to my home studio, then to my work studio, then to the studio of Fred Smith, then back to my work studio. 

I was trying a new technique where I would ask an artist friend to loosely sketch and paint out one of my sketches.  Then I would go back and embellish their rendition of my work into what I would want to see changed or highlighted.   It’s a process that works conclusively, I have several examples to prove it.  Abought two years ago I hired a young girl out of art school named Quynh, and she was helping me do just that, recreate my sketches onto canvas.  Seeing her perspective of what I sketched allowed me to learn a few things.  I went back and reworked them with darker shades and brighter highlights.  They turned into amazing works of art.  I have several examples if you ask me.  Also, if you pay attention this will come up again when I leave a description of those paintings.  But right now, let’s get back to this piece.

So, Fred Smith was supposed to take this canvas and do just what I explained.  He spent way too long choosing a sketch, then took a picture of it, took my canvas to his studio and I didn’t see it for months.  I kept bugging him about it and eventually he half assed drew some crap on it that really didn’t look anything like the sketch.  I figured this was normal for Fred because he is just an asshole that way.  He probably just didn’t want to do it after he agreed and then when prodded about it put something down quick just to say he did it.  I think in the end he just didn’t take it too seriously, no worries. 

I get the piece back from him and its crap, pure crap, and I am thinking this MF, why would he do this. He even put shapes on there that he knew would piss me off.  So, I sanded down the entire surface and it left a few visible heavy paint lines, or brushstrokes.  I was still reeling from the disappointment of Freds effort and decided to just gesso over it and start fresh.  The center structure ended up being from a recent sketch, the four center lines that make up the cube are literally just four brush strokes left raw, they are amazing. 

The piece evolved around those, and a landscape became visible.  I wanted a green, white bright foreground for some reason, that’s how the ground began.  I will post the sketch.  It’s a gorgeous painting, I absolutely love it and almost hate to sell it, hence the high price.  Most of the painting evolved though the consequence of me sitting in a chair 20 feet away from this piece and seeing its development in my head, first, then I would get up and paint what I saw.  In this piece the center structure is open, rather than closed and the adjoining representational structure is at the top left extending into the sky, please tell me what that means.