Destructive Beauty

Here are three new paintings, I just finished.  I'm working on a few others and will post pictures soon. 

A friend has recently been asking a lot about the drips in my work. 

I usually answer by saying "the drips allow me to have a more open mind.  Working with turpentine washes allows me to view the image as imperminent and gives me the freedom to make changes.  Also, puting a wash over the whole piece provides a consistancy and unity throughout the image." 

I might also say, "What is the difference between a brush stroke and a drip?  I'm simply letting the paint do what it does naturally."  I see this as a very Bauhausian idea; exploring what the medium is capable of.

I am extremely aware of the fact that people will read into the drips and think they are representative of some bigger idea and I am very wary of this.  But there is no denying that the drips provide a mood.  This mood, I have realized, is one of Destructive Beauty.  I am fascinated with factories, oil rigs, and cities.  I see them as powerful destructive forces and I see their destructive power as sad yet beautiful.

The piece below, does a good job at expressing this feeling.

more shimmering lights

I'm just starting to finish up a group of paintings right now (I like to work on about 10 paintings simultaneously) and I will be posting them as they are finished.

Here are a few:

Vincent Van Gogh once said, "I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day."  I know what he meant when he said this and I agree 100%

A lot of my new paintings are night scenes, concentrating on the presence of light sources within the painting and the reflection of those lights on water.  I'm sort of revisiting and refining some of the same themes I worked with in older pieces such as the two below.