Just a quick reminder: this weekend – September 18 and 19th – I will be exhibiting as a part of Silicon Valley Open Studios up in Gallery House in Palo Alto. I’ll be in the gallery on Saturday from 10am to 2pm and perhaps a bit longer after that. Stop by and say hi!
I wanted to talk a bit about a couple of paintings I’ll be showing. I selected some of my favorite smaller works from the past couple of years. The painting above, for instance – Unidentified Woman – was made late last year after the skies over the Bay Area turned an uncanny orange/red color. I made three paintings in a sort of miniseries about that sky – Blue Van and Unidentified Car were the other two.
Unidentified Woman clearly articulates themes that I usually only hint at in my work. A man sits in a car from the early 1960s looking at his rearview mirror. In the background is the almost spectral figure of a woman. The connection between the two is unclear, but it doesn't look like anything good. The air is thick with a noxious-looking pink fog. The tangible objects in the picture all look like they are from the middle of the 20th Century, the American Century. The intangible conveys a very 21st Century feeling of unease.
The painting below is Tuesday 2 pm. It's small, only 12x12, but it's one of my favorites. I painted it during the depths of the COVID lockdown when everyone was terrified to leave the house and the country ground to a halt. I think this painting nailed the feeling of that time.
Anyway, that's just two of the works that will be showing at SVOS. I have a bunch more. You can see many of them here on the Gallery House website.