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Painting from digitally enhanced photographs.

In my guest post a couple of weeks back I was asked to detail some of the techniques that I used to develop some of my paintings and I thought this might be a good topic for discussion.

I typically use the human face as a subject to support statements on issues that I feel strongly (social mode) or I use it to project characteristics like ‘beauty’ (descriptive mode).

Bollywood BroodingsLong neck and adornments

Left : Bollywood Broodings; Oil on Canvas : 3 feet wide X 4 feet high
Right : Long neck and adornments; Oil on Canvas : 3 feet wide X 4 feet high

I use the following steps to create my paintings.

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To BW or not to BW?

Color or BW

Mark’s paintings yesterday inspired me to a flurry of work with the junkyard abstractions that I introduced last week. As I mentioned then, it’s the color as well as the abstraction that I find fascinating. To explore this a little bit systematically, I went through basic preparation of a number of the images to get a sort of baseline treatment. That involves a choice of overall contrast and saturation, and in one case a slight shift in color balance. Later I can investigate more complex possibilities that might involve manipulations of portions of individual images, or variations in the hue-tone relationships.

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Inhale Audio, Exhale Art (by MJ Illingworth)

Currents Affairs at the Bar
Current Affairs at the Bar

Art and music for me combine magically. Over the years, my experience in meditation has also brought my mind closer to breathing music so that it can flow through me in my art. Now music is integral to my painting process. The art produced is the output at the end of each audio journey. The art is not the music or the journey; it is the visual experience resulting from the mixture of the two.

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Happy Chinese New Year From Park Avenue, New York City!

 Asia Society

Drugs, Sex And Inspiration

Tina now hangs in my bedroom at the foot of my bed.  Tina is a painting done by Paolo, my ex-lover of eight years and the emotional and sentimental favorite among my varied works of art (I suppose I refer both to the painting and Paolo.)  Tina, Paolo’s muse and my competition, is the subject and the meaning of the painting. Tina is the reason the love of my life and I didn’t survive in a relationship.

Tina

I surprised Paolo one evening, arriving home a day early from a business trip.  A classic set up.  I was asking for it and I knew it. His drug habit and infidelity were no secret and just something that we worked around. In fact, we had been working to incorporate the infidelity into our sex life.  Tina was another matter and eventually she beat me hands down. I despised Tina: The severe mood swings, the rages, the depressions, the lunacy.  But I was no match for her influence. Like too many artists, Paolo could not find his muse without drugs or alcohol. Part of me was fascinated by this dynamic, and also oftentimes sexually aroused–which pathetically helped enable my lover’s drug habit.  But Paolo’s use of crystal methamphetamine, known as Tina to her closest friends, eventually drove a wedge between us.

So I knew and I knew even more than Paolo realized I knew. However on that particular evening my premature return home delivered  huge surprises for both of us.  Yes, indeed, I did “catch” him, but not in the “anticipated” sense.

I walked through the door, and looked directly down the hall into our living room, our newly remodeled living room, I might add, and remodeled in my absence.  I later learned that most of the furniture had been piled up in the guest room and not, fortunately, carried away by the Salvation Army or an antiques dealer.

Around the perimeter of the living room, Paolo had propped up a  total of nine mirrors including the six bathroom cabinet doors.  If nothing else, Tina was the mistress of industry. In one corner of the room, he had placed the TV and VCR on a cart and Ken Rykerwas playing porn,  Ken Ryker to be precise. I remember this for a very good reason, as you will discover. Paolo had positioned his easel in the exact center of the room.  He was hard at work on Tina, wearing nothing but a beret (a little affectation of his), a Marlboro Light dangling from his lips, paint smudges wherever he had rubbed or scratched himself and, uh, a significant representative part of porn star Ken Ryker.  Paolo was athletically squatting over a stone pedestal from our garden that had a Ken Ryker Signature Collection 9 1/2 Insertable Inches Dildo stuck to the top.  Mounted on this enormous sex toy, Paolo was riding it slowly up and down while he painted, smoked and listened to the actual Ken Ryker grunting and groaning on the television set off to the side of the room.  The mirrors were of course positioned so that wherever Paolo looked, he would see a reflection of some angle of himself riding Ken Ryker’s plastic penile doppelganger.

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So who is Eddie Murray really? (guest post by D.)

murrayb.jpgWhen I was growing up, I was led to believe that the first baseman for the Baltimore Orioles, Eddie Murray, was a jerk. Not a fan of the Orioles, I had no reason to disagree. Later, I learned why I had been told this: he didn’t like talking to the Media. And who told me this? The Media.

How we position ourselves between the lives of others is significant and I think important to consider. What are our intentions? more… »

Artists I Like: Syau-Cheng Lai


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