Tag Archives: nude

January 09, 2017 – The Love Of A Good Woman

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Making art is like writing a love song to the beauty of…being alive. No artist was ever inspired to scratch graphite onto paper or lay pigment onto canvas who wasn’t in love, or devastated by sorrow, with the miracle of being alive, sentient, able to experience all of the landscapes and views, colors and splendor.

Making art with a loved one is transcendent.

The painful part is when love fails. I have a catalogue of photographs, drawings, paintings, of all of the women I have loved in my life. When the relationship fails there are hard feelings and bittersweet memories, and we tend to tell stories of the mayhem and anger and frustration – but I have all of these documents of the good times, and I can’t deny that those good times actually happened.

It kinda keeps you honest, you know? We want to paint a picture of that jerk, that dysfunctional person, that demon – but at the end of the day, we were once in love with them, weren’t we? And social media is extending this, where we can all look back at the jobs that were lost, relationships that ended, sunrises and sunsets that we will never see again.

I am nostalgic about yesterday, for God’s sake. I am riddled with sadness, almost all of the time. Because, at the end of the day, it has all been good, and memorable, and inspiring. And I continue to make artwork and celebrate the experiences I’ve had with those that are close to me, because I have to believe that maybe this time the story will last longer, that feelings won’t turn sour, that the world is going to be okay, make sense, turn out okay.

That’s how I feel when I am with this woman. I feel light. And I feel comforted. And I feel inspired. And there’s no greater feeling than having the love of a good woman. No greater feeling at all.

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Illustration – Nude Study

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There is no genre of art older than the nude study, the bare human form. It commands our attention and often makes some of us turn away, either in modesty or – more sadly – in shame. The question of its endurance as an art-form throughout the ages is an interesting one. To my mind, the nude is deeply symbolic philosophically, and elegant in its accidental eroticism. The nude is both attractive – and to many, uncomfortably attractive – because it symbolizes true vulnerability; exposed flesh presents a form with nothing left to reveal.

The nude subject is in its most confident and vulnerable state, achieving these at the same time. This cannot be found anywhere else, and that is why nude studies are so captivating, so mesmerizing, so subtly profound. We objectify and sympathize, simultaneously, and this duality forces certain truths to snake their way into our consciousness, about how we view our own bodies and how we use them.

I am proud to be both painter and subject in this genre, to continue this great tradition. In a media landscape that barely bats an eye at extreme violence but suppresses the most natural of sexual desires, I regret only that my artwork isn’t more filled with genitalia.

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Nude Woman With Flower

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Art for art’s sake. Isn’t that the expression? We just like to look at pretty shit and say “hey, jeez, that’s some pretty shit.” Everything is beautiful, nothing is off-script in the production-house of life. We wipe the crust from our eyes every morning, slap the alarm clock, brew our coffee, and go about our lives. And everything involved in that process is pretty nifty when you get right down to it. I mean, there’s tragedy and frustration as well, but these things can also feed into a creative, evocative, and transcendent output.

All of that is to say this: when in down, artist friends, make pictures of naked women. It’s as old as cave paintings. I found myself sifting through old source material, looking for an excuse to make a painting, and the image above is where I landed, for lack of anything else to do. I hope you like it.

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Lover’s Embrace

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“Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage; to trust that courage and build bridges with it; to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.”

~Maya Angelou

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Love is difficult to quantify, impossible to explain. I don’t possess the skill to describe the feelings of love that I have experienced in this short life. There have been moments of incredible intensity and tremendous pain, giddy uncertainty and unrelenting ecstasy. I’m certain that anybody reading these words will agree that passionate love is a glorious thing, that each of our experiences are unique and, somehow, surprisingly similar.

On this Valentine’s Day, I decided to forego with the condemnation I typically feel inspired to express. We have, all of us, already heard the arguments against the expense, the crowded restaurants, the expectations and the pressure. Rather than hammer-out a screed about the pitfalls of the holiday, I decided instead to nestle into the corner of a coffee shop and come up with a image of love that suits me.

This is the result, and I hope you enjoy it.
Happy Valentine’s Day.

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