Oil Painting – Currently available for purchase.
“Family Day at Saratoga Races” 28″ x 40″ on Finch paper made in Glens falls NY.
I found inspiration wondering and watching at the Saratoga Race Track, in Upstate New York. One of my favorite activities in August is the trackside breakfast buffet, where anyone can watch the horse’s breeze, enjoy a nibble and drink tea. The sounds brought me back to being a child when my true love had four legs and a tail and I passionately groomed and exercised horses. As I sat there sipping tea and drawing, the smells of the crisp morning air and fresh horse sweat led me to feel nostalgic about family, time, community, and ease of fun. In that time I sketched, made notes, and thought- which turned into painting this piece. I would like to follow this piece up with two others making a series, but time will tell, as I have so many irons in the fire. I can always go back to these moments as they are captured in a sketchbook where the spirit of ideas rests safely for the future.
Oil Pastel
The piece I show here is inspired by a deep conversation with a friend and artist Sabi Idrus who is from Malaysia and showing at Etay Gallery in NYC. His work inspired many questions and contemplations about flying, dying, beliefs, and culture the most interesting part of the conversation was are cultural differences. It was a wonderful visit and I look forward to his time with us at the end of the month.
Drawing Series –
X-or Size Re relief
This has become my new collaborative ART Project, offers a place Purges without physical surgery or touch, allowing the connective tissue to grow in a supportive community for those with unnoticeable (to the naked eye) chronic illness.
I stumbled on the idea through my pain and frustration and through drawing felt relief.
I posted a picture of my frustration with ear surgery, it was a complex problem that has been haunting me for over six months, I posted the drawings after painful surgery. Which stimulated conversations about chronic illness and the perceptions around them. I heard a lot about the lack of empathy. I have much experience with illness, and how I deal with it and my beliefs, lead me to not talk about it, so that not to give any strength or power to it, and i try to completely forget it altogether. But there are many people who look fine and carry the heavy burden of illness. Once I opened a platform to communicate about the varied individual illnesses it exploded into a release mechanism for many varied situations. I then take the notes and transcribe into drawings. Some people choose not to have their names attached and others don’t care.
I ask one question and work through email, text, messenger so that the notes are a natural place keeper.
The one Question– What is your largest FRUSTRATION your illness poses.
THANK YOU GOES TO THOSE PEOPLE WHO ALLOW ME INTO THEIR WORLD!
If you would like to be part of the collaborative project you can email, text or message me – I will respond then we can start a dialog and see where it goes!
Sculpture
THIS PIECE IS NOT FINISHED: trying to get it powder coated, so the final color will be different/ permanent, then I’ll do final photographs and show you all.
Sculpture No. 800_ Pike Lexicon (6-7/2019)
90” high x 62” wide x 24” deep
Repurposed metal, Welded
Background Notes:
Lexicon -theories generally regarded in human language/ poetry, in this case, I look at the junction of human morality and imagination and use metal sculpture as my language of digestion to communicate the lessons of Aristoteles Theory of Fine Art and Poetry, in this piece he teaches what I believe combines the thoughts and ideas, I incorporate into this sculpture.
Aristoteles Theory of Fine Art and Poetry:
Into the number and nature of the parts of which a poem is composed; and similarly, into whatever else falls within the same inquiry. Following, then, the order of nature, let us begin with the principles which come first.
Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation. They differ, however, from one another in three respects—the medium, the objects, the manner or mode of imitation, being in each case distinct.
For as there are persons who, by conscious art or mere habit, imitate and represent various objects through the medium of color and form, or again by the voice; so in the arts, taken as a whole, the imitation is produced by rhythm, language, or “harmony,” either singly or combined.
Thus in the music of the flute and of the lyre, “harmony” and rhythm alone are employed; also in other arts…. In dancing, rhythm alone is used without “harmony”; for even dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement.
There is another art which imitates by means of language alone, and that either in prose or verse—which verse, again, may either combine different meters or consist of but one kind—but this has hitherto been without a name.
Such, then, are the differences of the arts with respect to the medium of imitation.
Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character mainly answers to these divisions, goodness, and badness being the distinguishing marks of moral differences), it follows that we must represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are. It is the same in painting Polygnotus depicted men as nobler than they are, Pauson as less noble, Dionysius drew them true to life.
There is still a third difference—the manner in which each of these objects may be imitated. For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration—in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does or speak in his own person, unchanged—or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us.
These, then, as we said at the beginning, are the three differences which distinguish artistic imitation—the medium, the objects, and the manner. So that from one point of view, Sophocles is an imitator of the same kind as Homer—for both imitate higher types of character; from another point of view, of the same kind as Aristophanes—for both imitate persons acting and doing. Hence, some say, the name of “drama” is given to such poems, as representing action.
This text has been adapted from S. H. Butcher’s Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (New York: Macmillan, 1932). Unless otherwise marked, all bracketed insertions are Butcher’s interpolations of missing or Greek text.
Article In Saratoga Living –
By: Jeff Dingler
This was an unexpected surprise and if a friend didn’t send it to me I wouldn’t even have known about it. Shout out of thanks to everyone!
Pot’ente the horse sculpture has been adopted and installed in its forever home with two wonderful people who just obtained there new house in Dimond Point NY.
Big congratulations to Pamela Welke and John Bova, who gave me permission to thank them while using their name.
Show –
I’m at Left Bank Gallery in North Bennington Vt. open till October 2019
In Closing –
I’m so excited to get ready for the second residency with Streb Company this time in New Jersey so that’s what’s coming for September.
Remember the Ballard Road Art Studio is open to the public- and I’d like to THANK the all wonderful visitors that we have met and who have supported my work! ~THANK YOU!
