Here are some more photos from my trip to Florence, Italy.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Back From Florence
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Roma Birthday
Just got back from Roma. It was all it was cracked up to be and there are a lot of cracks. Ha! The age of things is hard to grasp when you’re walking over a bridge that was built in 139 AD or a church in the countryside built in 200 BC.....Celebrated my birthday with my personal tour guide, Susie, her husband and a friend, who is also a TG. Went to a great seafood restaurant where the owner personally waited on us. He brought a tray with sea bass, red snapper and halibut all caught that morning…so we're looking at these whole fish on a tray - how fresh can you get? After a 10-course meal the lights in the restaurant go out - we thought it was a power outage. The owner and the waiters come in with the dessert and a candle singing, "Happy-a-Birth-a-Day-a"…and the lights go back on and everyone in the place is singing and applauding…a real Italian BD.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Tuscany
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Bound for Firenze
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Artworks for the Cure
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Concours D'Elegance
The Pebble Beach Concours D'Elegance is the most prestigious automobile show in the world and is held at the18th Hole of the lodge on Pebble Beach, one of California's most beautiful pieces of costal real estate.
headlight design, an integral part of the fender.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Perris, Je t'aime
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Autos As Art
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Art & Cars
Some feel that cars can be works of art. My 1961 Mercedes 300SL Roadster will be featured in the Rodeo Concours d’Elegance this Sunday, June 20. Lots of festivities and celebs and it’s all free. Hope to see you there, we’ll be on Via Rodeo. To see a a video from last year’s Concours go to http://tinyurl.com/2g84lyx
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Art Class
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Perris, CA Project
Progress is slow on my year-long PERRIS, CA project. If you recall, I'm doing a series of nine paintings depicting the downtown area of Perris, CA (all 3 blocks of it ) with mostly empty stores....I was struck by the emptiness of the site. Empty stores that are decimated by nearby big box stores - literally putting small businessmen out of business......I'm sure a sight repeated all over America in small towns everywhere....The ninth painting will be a wonderful old movie house called "The Chief”. It's been closed for what appears to be many years and has one of those 3-story pylons pointing to the heavens and adding a little bit of show biz to the building. This will be a separate painting and probably the last in the series. The other 8 paintings will all be only nine inches high by various lengths from 18" to 52" running horizontally.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Back From Scottsdale Art Fest.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Off to Arizona
The OPA also holds a convention/ conference covering all topics related to the fine art world like how to frame your work , how to approach prospective galleries, and painting demonstrations by successful artists..... For those of you formally of the Record Industry, it sounds very much like a NARM convention and I'm definitely up for that...... There's also some cash prizes in the show ...1st prize being $22000!!!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
My take on the restaurant "Bouchon"
The resaurant is owned by Thomas Keller who also owns the French Laundry in Napa Valley purported to be the best restaurant in the U.S.. He also has a Bouchon in Vegas and Napa.
Well, for all the hype it turned out to be a near disaster! First of all, the place is lovely but noisy and crowded....... They serve their bread with "home made" butter ....I asked for Olive Oil ....... Never got it .... We ordered Trout and Salmon ....pretty good... Ruth asked for a refill on her coke for which they charge!!!! I asked the waiter to take it off the check ... He wouldn't .. Told him to go to the manager .. He came back and said the manager would not remove it....... Asked for coffee .. Came stone cold ... Ordered dessert description sounded good .... It was 3 pieces if chocolate cake shaped like a wine bottle cork topped with a small dip of vanilla ice cream and 3 thin slices of banana!!! All for 12 bucks!!! I told the waiter to remember my face "cause I'm never coming back Should I be this fussy? Yes!!!! You should expect more from a restaurant of this stature
Friday, February 19, 2010
My 2010 Project & Canvases
First of all, lets start with the canvases:
The canvases are custom made. There are 8 custom canvases on aluminum stretchers instead of wood. The advantages are that the aluminum doesn't warp, and more cost effective than the wood.
They were made by Lucian Hudson, a well renowned custom canvas fabricator to well known artists. The surface of the canvas has the usual grain of cotton fabric and I prefer a very smooth surface. So it is required to paint the canvas with a very thick white paint called Gesso. You apply five coats and wet sand in between each coat until you get a very smooth glass like surface. The purpose of the smooth surface, you can paint more detail without having the texture interfere with the detail.
The next step is positioning the photographs which are 5 inches high to the canvas which is 9 inches high. So with fine tracing paper and shaping the paper to the size of the canvases you draw the outlines of the subject (in this case the buildings). Then you draw on the backside of the tracing paper with a charcoal pencil. At which point you press that side of the drawing onto the canvas and it gives you the outline of the objects. Details are not necessary at this stage.
Friday, February 5, 2010
LA Philharmonic & Music
Dvorak (Pronounced D'VOR-JACQUE ) Carnival Overture and the New World Symphony which is one of my favorites even though it's considered a "War Horse" by elite classical music snobs It has many recognizable melodies running thru it.
Going to the Symphony on Sunday afternoon encompasses practically the whole day they have a Cafe in the hall Run by Patina (also within the walls of Disney Hall ) So we have lunch then at 1pm, they present what they call L.A.LIVE where an expert on the program gives you background and anecdotes about the composers and musicians and then at 2pm is the concert ...
It's usually a full day and after spending 35 Professional years in the Rock N Roll world there's something very special about classical music that cleanses the brain and the soul I doubt if I could ever again go to a Rock concert at the peak of my former ( career ) life, I was out 3-4 nights a week listening to bands good and bad ( Mostly bad ) or visiting ours Clients at their venues......
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The Piece D'Resistance!
Now the Piece D' resistance!
My daughter who lives in Portland, came home for Thanksgiving, and since she is an avid skydiver headed down to a popular "Drop Zone " near the town of PERRIS,CA We followed her down and on the way drove thru the downtown section of Perris (all 3 blocks ) for some artistic reason it had great appeal to me. There were many empty stores and there were many stores with a strong"Mexican" Influence in the color of their signs and the type of lettering etc and there was Xmas decorations hung across the street there was also a once charming closed movie theatre called THE CHIEF with one of those tall Art Nouveauicons overhead.
Anyway, I went back to Perris on Xmas Day and photographed the 3 blocks (97 pictures) I printed the digital photographs,pasted them together and came up with pictures measuring from 52" long to 18" long. All 9 will be 10" in height. This will be my project for the entire year and I hope to have a show in either November/ December
There's definitely something magical about this very small agricultural town decimated by big malls but still holding on and supported by a strong Mexican (Not Hispanic or Latino but MEXICAN ) culture During the course of the year I'll post my progress on this inspiring project
Below are some of the pictures I took:
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
The Final Painting of Florescent Foreplay
Monday, January 18, 2010
Flourescent Foreplay
Some of you may have followed the progress of my recent painting "FLORESCENT FOREPLAY " which I completed in October 2009 Well sometimes a picture is never really finished. It just kept staring at me saying "Come on now, get to work and finish this thing !") And so I did I made significant changes in the color and texture of the foreground where as before a reddish blue dominated the foreground and the picture , I altered it to a light grey to almost but not quite Black and I find it more pleasing and the foreground doesn't fight the main focus ( THe Wall)I'll take a new photo let me know what you think I will have to change the date on the painting from 10-09 to 1-10. The paintings show above is the progressing from start to finish not including the most recent which I am going to put up later today.