Art Crimes

A good artist borrows, a great artist steals. 

- Pablo Picasso

I stole an image from the web, changed the color format, and added the lines for texture.  I do not believe I am a great artist, but Picasso's statement makes me feel better about my crime.  

Stand Alone

Emotions can be determined by location, and one may infer loneliness and isolation stem from being alone.  This tree stands alone, isolated on the outskirts of the city like a geeky student at the school dance, but blossoms like the prom queen.  

Redemption

In high school I applied for GSA (Governor's School for the Arts), which required me to create a portfolio of my work.  One of the portfolio requirements was a landscape from life.  Outside my backdoor most mornings, behind a cool tree, was an amazing sunrise, and I wanted to capture this moment.  

I rose at 5:00, gathered my paints, and headed for the great outdoors.  I was a little early so I retreated inside to grab some breakfast then it was back to work.  The sun delivered a beautiful site that morning and I jacked it all up.  My finished product looked like a mud puddle with a rainbow inside.  

The judges never said anything negative about my landscape, but obviously they had distaste for my work because I was not accepted.  No hard feelings, I know I did not deserve the scholarship.

    

Several years later I came home for the holidays to find this awful example of my work, framed and hanging in my parents' house.  My mom still uses this painting with her decor. 

Last year I created this drawing to redeem my futile attempt from the past.  This image is intended to be abstract; it represents a sunset instead of a sunrise and focuses more on the tree. The real tree looks nothing like this.  I "borrowed" this tree from an image I found in a Google image search.   

Ant Factory

After massive storms, when trees have been uprooted, one can see the infrastructure keeping those massive, natural-oxygen-tanks running.  Kids in large, urban spaces do not get to experience these wild acts of mother nature or the traditional tree house found in rural areas.  This is my interpretation of a an urban tree house with visible infrastructure. The more I look at this drawing the more I see an ant factory.  

Broccoli Tree

Sometimes when looking at Grant Wood's landscapes I see vegetables rather than trees.  Being a fan of both Grant Wood and vegetables I created my own variation.  This image turned out looking more like a leaf than broccoli.   

Fabric of Life

Six years ago I visited the Paducah Quilt Museum with the expectation of seeing old, dusty quilts, but I was shocked and amazed to see quilts that looked more like paintings.    Then about a year ago I came across some paintings with very soft, flowing lines and shapes which reminded me of the quilts from the museum.   Below is a drawing from my "Room for Squares" sketchbook with the soft, flowing lines I saw in the quilts.  The tree represents a large walnut that once stood in my backyard.  For many years it did not produce leaves, but appeared healthy and robust.  The cityscape in the background represents the urbanization that possibly killed the tree.  

Little Black Book

When I was a kid I watched Winnie the Pooh and imagined living inside a tree.  Once I hacked away at a tree trunk with a golf club to make way for a door.  As I grew older I realized that burrowing a hole into a tree to create a home will eventually kill the tree.    

My "Little Black Book" is not a list of phone numbers, but rather a collection of images.  I purchased this sketchbook with the intent of all my pictures being black and white: drawn using only a sharpie.  After a mishap with a generic Walmart version of a sharpie, color pencils graced the pages. 

The first picture I drew in my "Little Black Book" was this dying tree built out of skyscrapers stacked on top one another branching out in all directions.  The thick black lines represent electrical wires and plumbing snaking underneath keeping them all fully functional.  The Hundred Acre Wood made urban tree houses appear so cool.  Unfortunately, in the real world when we use trees as homes they die.

Cover Page

I have an obsession with sketchbooks and have built an extensive collection of partially filled books which one may find lying on tables, stacked on shelves, stored in cabinets, and tucked into my backpack.  Each book has a theme and purpose, but no image has ever seen the last page.  Several years ago my parents cleaned out some boxes and found similar sketchbooks.  So this obsession has been around for sometime.

A current sketchbook nestled in my backpack contains work inspired by graffiti.  By no means do I believe I possess the talent of a street artist, but I do like viewing their work and utilizing some of their ideas in my art.  

This is the cover page of my black "Tag Book".

Ironically the bark is tagged with "tree" because people are more likely to be upset about a name painted on a brick wall then a name carved into a tree.  The city in the background is fictional and is there only to represent the possible wall a tagger would use.  

The bird on the wire represents me.  I like people watching, hanging out with friends, and occasionally I am a freeloader.  

A desert landscape is visible in "earth" because Four Corners, United States is my favorite place on earth to escape the hustle and bustle of life.  The cityscape represents my urban home (even though I live in a rural community).   

The cityscape in the bottom, left hand corner continues to show my infatuation with big city life (which I know nothing about).

The number one is for this being my first book inspired by graffiti.