I guess what pisses me off most about this area is the total lack of respect for true thought, not the superficial musings of the remaining bullshit beatnicks who sit around spouting wannabe truisms and nodding in agreement if something said remotely resembles articulation.

Cool art is those works that are provoking and not dependant on shock value to shake perceptions. Cool art is that where technical intelligence matches underlying messages, either known or subliminally extracted by an artist sensitive enough for the task. Cool artists are ones wise enough to take in varied information from all walks of life and scrub that information through their own value systems to come to their own conclusions. That is called respect, that is lack of egotism, and egotism is the scourge of good ideas and cool art.

I hear some people saying – if you write a blog isn’t that a form of egotism? Well – this blog may be a rant/vent but it is also a platform for trying to talk about ideas with something resembling honest inquisition for personal development. In the respect of taste I will, for now, refrain from flaunting my own ego on the bathroom stalls of the internet until such a time as I have a sufficiently permanent marker. That day will come – through force of will.

They are primarily of portraits and still life’s from my new 4’s series where I am painting the same subject 4 different times and displaying them together. Sometimes Velasquez is my subject and I jump around from portrait to portrait. It was fun – and I learned a lot. I would appreciate feedback. My wife Nadia will also be showing with me and she has a great new body of work to show off as well. I don’t know what I am supposed to be learning from these series and I don’t know why I have to paint them – but there is something there for me even if I cant describe it artistically just yet. These last two series are leading me in a better direction to my goal of one day being able to make great art.