Snow

This isn't a painting, but a picture of the snow at my house. I just thought it looked interesting.

Airport

This plane was one of my favorite toys as a kid.

Sunday Driver

This one features the Fisher Price garage. There is an orange ball lamp in the background that my parents had around the house when I was very young.

August Carnival

Around the end of 2005 or beginning of 2006 I bought a bunch of vintage Fisher Price toys on eBay. I have many memories of playing with these toys in my early childhood. My mom had long since thrown my old toys away, so it had been years since I had seen them. It was amazing to receive these toys in the mail an examine them closely. Each little detail or feature of the toys that I examined brought back a flood of distant impressions and memories....it was really cool! The next few paintings I will post are from this "Fisher Price" series. They were a lot of fun to make. This painting is entitled "August Carnival". It is approximatley 48"x50".

Hooray for Toast!

I think toast is way underrated. This one is from 2005

Come and See

I found a really cool "Dick and Jane" compilation book at a Wal Mart grocery store, of all places. I made 3 or 4 paintings that centered around the artwork in these books. "Come and See" is 47"x48" and was painted in 2004.

I Saw Inside the Tower

This one was painted in 2004. In these toy paintings, I often used things like plastic sharks, mouse traps, "barrel of monkeys" monkeys and Chinese food containers. Some of the objects have special meaning to me, I like other things for their visual qualities. Sometimes the interaction and inclusion of certain objects is purposeful and sometimes an interesting connection is unintentional.

Castaway

"Castaway" (46"x47") was painted in 2004. I used to keep all of my toys separated into bins according to color. The mouse on the top of the Chinese food carton is from the game Mouse Trap.

Red Shark

Same size painting. The scale of the toys grows larger. I started to use glazes on this one. The edges were "softened" by scraping the surface with a scrap of wood or hitting it with an old shirt. I like the feel of it. I observed a great professor of mine, David Dornan, doing things like this to create interesting surfaces.

This one is from 2003.

Mecca

The cereal bowl is an important icon of my childhood. I ate a lot of cereal. This painting "Mecca" was made in 2002. 48"x42" oil on canvas.

Prenatal

I titled this painting "Prenatal" because the characters in the lower right of the painting seemed to be on the verge of entering a new world. Some paintings seem to almost name themselves, but others, like this one, are more difficult to title. I think titles are tricky. The title can often prevent the viewer from finding their own interpretation of the work. This piece was painted in 2001.

Patterns

Here is a painting I made in 2000. I began to explore different color arrangements and patterns with toys. This piece is called "Bullseye". I think it was about 38"x42".

Intro

To begin my blog, I thought I would post a painting I completed in 1999. It is the first painting I made that I considered a sort of "post student work"piece. I plan to start posting paintings that I am currently workin on, but for now I am going to post a few things from the past. This painting is called "Lost at See". Oil on canvas.....about 35"x40".