My take on the restaurant "Bouchon"

Ruth and I quietly celebrated our 47th Anniversary last week at the very hot and trendy Bouchon Restaurant in Beverly Hills just across from the Montage hotel (separated by a "Pocket Park" ).

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

My 2010 Project & Canvases

Just started the preliminary details of the Parris, CA project and I thought I would give you some background and details on how it's progressing.

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.

Custom made canvases

some of many tracings

another trace done

This will be the longest painting

More to come on the next blog!

Bless You, Macey

LA Philharmonic & Music

Sunday we went to Disney Hall and the L.A.Phil with Christof Echinbach conducting.

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......

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:

The Final Painting of Florescent Foreplay

nice day! This is the final painting with the main focus now hitting you as opposed to the ground being the main attention grabber.

Mace

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.