Thurman's Notebook - The Gallery

Splash

2012-01-26T15:51:00.002-05:00

Here's the other experiment that resulted in "Jack". It's 16" x 20" on a practice board, with many different kinds of acrylic paints, finishes, and such. This was done sometime around 2008 or 2009, and is unframed.

Orange Crush

2012-01-26T15:38:00.000-05:00

This is one of two oddball experiments I did a couple years ago, utilizing dripping and hurling paint. The larger piece I called Jack was the end result of these experiments.

This one is 16" x 20", on a practice board, artist acrylics, gloss finishing varnish, crackle media, and a little bit of household paint thrown in for good measure. There are no rules.

Field of Flowers

2012-01-26T15:06:00.002-05:00

Here' the last of the 5" x 7" pieces I did around 2004. I later did a much larger painting similar to this one for my brother and his wife as a wedding present. This little acrylic piece would look nice framed with a pale blue or lavender matte. If you like it let me know, I'm not as sentimental about it as I was a few years ago, so the price would be pretty reasonable.

I've got quite a few other pieces done on practice boards in the last seven or eight years. Unfortunately the scanner I have now is smaller than my old one and the one I attempted to piece together from multiple scans this afternoon was horrible, so it'll be a while before I figure out the solution.

I'm also hoping to work on a few new paintings sometime this year, when the planets align and the moon is full, etc. I've got a new space to paint in now, but it's unheated, and right now it's a bit chilly even on warm afternoons. Sooner or later the urge to paint will get stronger than my dislike of the cold, and it'll have to come out.

Thanks for looking!

Small Composition No. 2

2012-01-26T14:57:00.001-05:00

This s the tiniest of my squiggle paintings, at 5" x 7". It's another of those early experiments, done in late 2004 or early 2005. Funny thing happened on the way to getting this one posted. I scanned a handful of these into the computer this afternoon, the first time I've even looked at most of them in five years or so.

When I attached this one to this post, the first thing I noticed was my initials... upside-down in the top left corner. I flipped it so it looks right, but that probably explains why I stopped signing my work on the painted surface a while back. Not even I can remember which way is up on these things after a while. Besides, what looks right to me, might look upside-down to you. Hang them any way you like. It's all subjective, and it's all good.

If you think you could make this piece look right on your wall, drop me a note and we'll talk about getting it to you.

Wildflower No. II

2012-01-26T14:47:00.000-05:00

Wildflower No. II is the ugly step-sister to another small painting you may have seen before, Wildflower No. I (such creative names, I know). The first one turned out really well, so I tried something a little different, and it was... well... different, and that's about all it was.

This one is 5" x 7", acrylic, unframed, on a practice board. If you like it better than I do, let me know.

The Prophet

2012-01-26T14:42:00.002-05:00

The Prophet is another of those early practice pieces I did back in 2004. I didn't write an exact date on the back so I'm not sure anymore exactly where it falls in the sequence of work (a lot of them are like that now - I was just painting like a mad man, with no regard for documentation).

The title of this piece comes from an impression I got, glancing at it one night across the room. For a few seconds I could see a bearded guy with what might have been long hair or some sort of desert nomad head gear on his head.

This is also one of several I did with the idea of painting a border or matte into the piece. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. This painting is 5" x 7", unframed, acrylic on a practice board.

If you like it, make an offer, and will see what we can work out.

Small Composition No. I

2012-01-26T14:33:00.001-05:00

A recent visitor asked if I had any smaller, lower priced work I'd be willing to part with, so this is the first of a few little ones I scanned today. Small Composition No. I (meaning, first untitled thing I did) was painted in November of 2004, shortly after I started painting again after nearly two decades away. I bought a handful of inexpensive practice boards to get used to getting my brushes wet again and this is one of the things that came out of it.

This piece measures 8" x 10" and is unframed, acrylic, signed on the back. I never really intended to post this piece for public scrutiny, but in hindsight, after eight years in a box, it doesn't really look as pitiful as I originally thought.

If you'd like to give this painting a home, drop me a note and we'll talk about it.

Dogma

2011-06-25T11:54:00.002-04:00

Dogma, approximately 12 x 40, mixed media collage on wood.

This piece was made by cutting out and gluing pieces of text copied from several religious books: the Bible, the Koran, Book of Mormon, Tao Te Ching, a Buddhist sutra, and even a few secular books. All were jumbled up and pasted onto a section of an old folding closet door I picked up somewhere.

Once dried I began applying acrylic paint, then layers of oils, fiddling around with it until it became what you see here. This was completed sometime in the Spring of 2011. Email for pricing.

Cathedral of the Soul

2011-06-25T11:48:00.002-04:00

Cathedral of the Soul, 18 x 24, mixed media collage on laminated cabinet door.

This painting was created using a similar technique to the one described for "Dogma", but this one was done on a laminated cabinet door.

Sold

2011-06-25T11:40:00.001-04:00

Oil and acrylic on an old closet door, approximately 12 x 36, framed, untitled.

SOLD

Highway to Hell

2011-06-25T11:01:00.001-04:00

Highway to Hell, 16 x 20, acrylic on canvas, 2010

Supernova

2011-06-08T20:25:00.004-04:00

This is "Supernova" - the largest canvas I've tackled to date. It is a combination of oils and acrylic paint used every way one is not ever supposed use them together. The surface is extremely textured, to the point of being covered with sharp points of paint that rise 10mm or more off the canvas face. This painting is almost a weapon.

This canvas was one of the first three I ever stretched and prepared completely myself, as opposed to purchasing pre-stretched and primed supports. It is at least four feet wide and about three and a half feet tall (correction, this piece is 48" x 37"). I wish I had the space to work in this size all the time, I love painting large!

"Supernova" was the last work I completed before we moved to our current home in 2006.

October Surprise

2011-06-08T20:00:00.001-04:00

October Surprise is an older piece, done in October of 2004. The title is a reference to the time of year and my surprise at the outcome of the painting - better than I'd expected so soon after returning to the easel. It's 16" x 20" or there about, done in acrylic paint on a practice board.

Incidental Acidity

2011-05-02T20:09:00.009-04:00

This is the third April (2011) experiment in oils, this time done on a piece of found construction material. I posted an earlier photo of this on Thurman's Notebook and asked for naming suggestions. I received only one suggestion, "Incidental Acidity" and that's better than anything else I've come up with so far, so the name will stick.

Incidentally, after I posted that earlier photo, I realized I was looking at this piece from the wrong angle entirely, so I turned it upside down. It looks much better this way.

This painting measures about 13 x 45 and is in a custom frame made by the artist.

$400

Embryonic Flux

2011-05-02T19:59:00.003-04:00

Of the three oil paintings I started last month, this one came closest to hitting the mark I had in mind at the beginning. I had initially decided to call this "In Utero" but opted for the current title instead. I'm not entirely pleased with this one, but it's time to move on to other projects for now. This one is also 16 x 20.

I Have No Idea

2011-05-02T19:52:00.002-04:00

This is a 16 x 20 canvas done in oil. It started with a very geometric design laid out on the canvas, progressed through several variations, and ended up here. It is what it is, and I had no idea where I would end up when I started.

Nancy Reagan's Mantra

2011-04-16T16:31:00.001-04:00

I found this in the back of my old portfolio yesterday while going through a closet. It’s about 12″ x 15″ or so, acrylic paint on an old pre-printed, brown paper grocery sack. It was painted sometime between mid 1985 and the end of 1986 while I was a student at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC. It is unframed at the moment, but I hope to remedy that sometime in the not too distant future.

Venus

2011-04-16T16:26:00.004-04:00

I painted this figure sometime in 2005 if I'm not mistaken. It's 25" x 50" on a hand-stretched canvas, done in acrylics. This is the only figure painting I've ever done, and no, the model is no one you or I know. She's a conglomeration based on several photos of models in similar poses.

"Venus" had been in storage for the last few years until last week when I fished her out of the closet. Unfortunately, an emergency renovation we had to do on our house a while back resulted in a shift in the things in that closet and something leaned against the canvas, severely warping the surface. I hope to restore the painting, but I'm not holding my breath. Still, she's one of my favorites.

Update: the damage mentioned above was not permanent. Apparently acrylic paint is more flexible and resilient than I thought.

SOLD - Private Collection

Wildflower No. 1

2011-04-12T08:49:00.001-04:00

Wildflower No. 1 is one of the smallest paintings I've done, measuring only 5" x 7". It's unframed, acrylic on a practice board, and available as is for only $20. Wildflower No. 2 didn't turn out very good, so the series ended here.

Arctic Hothouse

2011-04-12T08:39:00.001-04:00

This little number is called, Arctic Hothouse in honor of all the climate change deniers determined to sentence my children and yours to a world even more miserable than the one we inherited. It's 12" x 12" acrylics painted on a practice canvas. I'm asking $25 for this unframed work.

Dervish

2011-04-12T08:24:00.003-04:00

Here's an old painting from back in 2004 or '05 called Dervish. It was my first experiment in paining on non-traditional, found materials. It's roughly four feet tall and about 15 or 16 inches wide, acrylic paint. My original intent was to produce a piece that could be hung vertically or horizontally, but over the years I've come to like it best displayed as shown here.

Changeling (Self Portrait)

2011-04-12T08:17:00.002-04:00

This is a little piece I did a few years ago, called Changeling. I recently began using it as my universal avatar for most of my internet accounts. I think sometimes I'm a bit of a changeling, morphing from one persona to another depending on my mood or the need of the moment.

This painting is 16" x 20" and painted on a canvas practice board. Unframed, it could be yours for $35.

Madness

2011-01-05T11:20:00.002-05:00

"Madness" was my breakthrough painting, if indeed I've had such a thing. In 1984, shortly after finishing high school I purchased this 16" x 20" canvas with the intention of painting a cloudscape filled with ethereal lighting effects. In that effort I failed miserably, but I'd paid for the canvas and wasn't about to just throw it away! I set it aside and went about my shallow little life (remember, I was eighteen and utterly without a clue).

Several months later I found myself enrolled at Western Carolina University, very much a social misfit and spending way too much time alone in my dormitory cell. At some point I took out the canvas, which I had brought with me for reasons unknown, and painted in several new shapes and color fields.

I still didn't much care for the result, but a friend thought it was cool to look at (he was on dope!) and persuaded me to leave it out on a shelf. More weeks went by, if not months, and I would occasionally glance at the canvas and renew my disdain for it.

Then one day most of the campus population left for a three-day weekend and I had most of the dorm to myself. Never leave an overgrown kid with too much time and very poor judgment alone in a place where psychedelic drugs are readily available. It never ends well.

I spent several hours that weekend, locked in my room getting up close and personal with this canvas. I'll never admit publicly whether or not the finished painting you see today was completed under the influence of illicit substances, but the ideas you see developed on it were definitely hatched under such conditions.

It's not my best painting by any stretch, but it was certainly the first one to really resonate with me when I finished it. I spent the next several years dabbling with that style, but never again able to achieve the same result, before giving up painting entirely for about twenty years.

I no longer produce art under the influence of drugs and do not recommend the practice to anyone. Drugs are not a path to creativity, even if we sometimes get lucky and stumble blindly into it.

A few years ago I chanced upon a documentary about a New York painter named Milton Resnick. Resnick was a contemporary of Pollock, de Kooning, and other members of what came to be known as the New York school of Abstract Expressionism. Oddly enough, many of his paintings bear a slight similarity to some of mine, though Resnick's are far superior works of art. Unfortunately, by the time I discovered his work, Milton Resnick had been dead for several months.

Not For Sale

Creation

2011-01-05T11:18:00.002-05:00

Creation, 2004, is an early experiment using a knives only - no brushes - acrylic on card stock, approximately 12"x15"

$100, unframed

Jack

2011-01-05T11:16:00.005-05:00

This is one of my more recent paintings, done in '08 or '09. It is, obviously, an action painting, done in acrylics, in the style of the late Jackson Pollock, thus the title, "Jack." The piece measures roughly 48" x 10" and is painted on a piece of construction sheathing. It is currently unframed.

$300, in custom frame made by the artist

Untitled No.7

2011-01-05T11:11:00.005-05:00

This untitled painting is a 2009 experiment with liquid acrylics. It measures 16"x20" and is painted on a canvas board.

Gateway

2011-01-05T11:09:00.008-05:00

"Gateway" is a 16"x20" acrylic work on canvas done in 2008. I'd been reading a bit of science fiction at the time, which may have inspired this image.

$200, unframed

Mare Desiderii

2011-01-05T11:08:00.003-05:00

"Mare Desiderii" is latin for Sea of Dreams. This painting, done around the same time as "Gateway" in 2008, is also 16"x20" acrylic on canvas. The title derives from a map of locations on our moon.

$250, unframed

Outlandish

2011-01-05T11:05:00.006-05:00

This 16" x 20" canvas, done in acrylics, is one of my least favorite paintings. I was never really satisfied with the outcome. It is based on a landscape I once imagined in a dream, but it doesn't quite hit the mark I had in my head.

The funny thing is, I get more positive comments about this one than about several others done around the same time period, which I think are much better works. Just goes to show how truly subjective art really is.

"Outlandish" was painted sometime in 2008.

$140, unframed

Sunset Meadow

2011-01-05T11:03:00.002-05:00

This landscape is called Sunset Meadow and like all my landscape paintings, it is a fantasy piece in that no such place actually exists. It is acrylic painted on a found piece of MDF and was gifted to my brother and his wife. The painting is approximately 3' wide by 2.5' high.

Private Collection

Passiflora

2011-01-05T11:01:00.009-05:00

This piece was painted on a piece of wood and is roughly 39" tall by 36" wide.

It is composed of multiple layers of acrylic paint added over several sessions. The title comes from the resemblance of the central "flower" to the bloom of a passion flower.

$400

Soulstice

2011-01-05T10:59:00.003-05:00

"Soulstice" is the second largest canvas I've painted to date, measuring four feet across and nearly three feet high. It is also one of only three canvases, so far, that I've stretched and prepared myself. It is also one of only two pieces I've done combining oil and acrylic media.

Like many of my paintings, this one was completed in stages, with long breaks in between adding the various layers that make up the finished piece. Everything I've ever read about mixing mediums indicates that oil paint can be applied over acrylic, but that acrylic should never be placed on top of oils.

Never one to follow orders or read instructions, I ignored the rules and added as many layers as I wanted in whatever order happened to work. There are so many layers of pigment on this canvas that if I had to give an honest account of them I'd fail miserably.

I remember starting with a layer of oil based warm hues (reds, yellows, etc.) over a gesso foundation and at some point I recall adding several layers of very thin acrylic wash over top of the oils, turning the canvas several times in ninety degree increments, allowing the pigment to run from top to bottom and letting gravity decide the patterns. I nearly ruined the vinyl floor in my studio because so much paint ran off that it soaked through the drop cloth.

The canvas then hung on my bedroom wall for months, allowing the inner layers of oil to cure while I studied what else to do to it. I remember posting pictures of the then unfinished work on a web gallery I had up at the time. Fortunately, none of those photos still exist - it was hideous - but, I have a bad habit of stopping too soon or over-working a piece, resulting a much too busy painting.

Finally one day I decided I'd looked at the thing long enough and took it back out to the studio. I don't recall having any predefined figures in mind and probably just set about painting lines and curves, adding colors and defining shapes as I went.

By the time I finished I had something that reminded me of a crowed at a music festival (I was listening to a lot of jam band music at the time) or a pagan celebration, thus the corrupted name, "Soulstice" came to be.

This painting was completed sometime around 2005 or '06.

$500

Resurrection

2011-01-05T10:56:00.003-05:00

This is another painting that grew out of something else. I had started work on this canvas painting what I hoped would turn out to be one of those beautiful, awe inspiring sunsets we sometimes see where I live. Amber and golden hues blended with deep reds and hot pinks, you know the kind. What I ended up with was more like a big pile of mud, not at all to my liking, but instead of painting the canvas over with white gesso as I would have ordinarily done, I started covering the mess with black paint.

Toward the end I began running out of paint and noticed that the colors still showing from the original layers were now blending quite nicely into the inky blackness of the rest of the canvas. I stopped, leaving a small violet patch in one corner (upper right) and a larger, more broken swath of reddish bronze coloring which appeared to spread out from the alternate corner.

I had been experimenting with a few landscapes and still life works with flowers around that time and decided to take a shot at painting a stand of Irises of some other grassy leaved plants in the foreground, placing the viewer's perspective near ground level. When that plan refused to play out as I'd pictured in in my head, I decided to just let it go and started adding more "leaves" in brighter, unnatural colors.

The result is what you see above and one of my earliest impressions of the finished painting was that of flames and something refusing to die, despite the odds against it.

Initially I was calling this "Phoenix Fire" but soon dropped that title in favor of a more appropriate name. After all, this piece really was a work of "Resurrection."

This painting is 22"x28" acrylic on canvas and is my favorite painting of all.

Not For Sale (well, maybe)

Dancing Shaman (Vision Quest)

2011-01-05T10:53:00.006-05:00

This painting was completed in stages. It was one of the first pieces I worked on in the early 2000's when I first began to paint again after almost twenty years away from the easel. It began with the major color areas you see; the large blue, red, orange, and ochre areas and was left sitting in a corner for several months, if not a year or more.

I looked at it off and on during that time, thinking of it as a finished, but failed piece. I never throw away a canvas of any kind unless it is so thick with paint or torn so badly it cannot be used again, so odds are I planned on painting over this one at some point, but just never found the need.

I don't remember why, but one evening I was sitting, looking at this ugly piece of crap and for whatever reason I dumped out a bit of black and white paint and began the process that led to the painting you see now.

I've always been fascinated by Native American cultures and the role the shaman in history. When I finished painting that final layer of highlights and shadows, the image that jumped out at me resonated and I could almost hear the drums and feel the fire as the shaman pursued his vision to lead his tribe in the right direction.

The painting is 16"x20" and is one of my personal favorites.

$150, Aluminum Frame