jfkpaint

I painted this in 2004 after 186 children were murdered by terrorists in the Russian town of Beslan. It was a very painful month of work. I did it in honor of the children and their families in the hopes that these horrors would not be forgotten. Some years later, after reading about the ISIS atrocities against children in Syria and Lebanon, I attempted to do a second piece. However, the reference photos I found were too horrific. I could not get past the pencil drawing and eventually gessoed over the canvas. Now Uvalde. I have had a sleepless night debating whether or not I could/should do a similar canvas in honor of the poor children and their families. I do not want to be disrespectful or cause anyone pain, but another part of me tells me to do it. I really hope to get some of your opinions on the question. Thank you

I have wanted to do a painting having angels carrying the souls of the dead from Covid 19 for some time now. For some reference pictures, I did an image search using "Carrying the Dead" as my keywords. The pictures that came back are really shocking and so sad. Mostly from war in the middle east.. I HATE it when it is children who have been hurt.

I have spent so much time in the past 10+ years putting dots of color on canvas and masonite. I remember the first piece I did, I complained about how long it took to do a square inch or two of canvas. When I was young, I did not have the patience for this technique. I read multiple books on Seurat and Signac and studied their works. I explored the technique, trying a multitude of different subject composition. I finally developed my own personal riff on the technique which I call "Translucent Pointillism". I will not describe it here in public, but if an interested party contacts me, I will explain. I am going to post the pieces I have done over the past few years.

I am starting my new posts with my miniature gemstone paintings. I cut gemstones for a few years and got into the whole lapidary scene, buying gemstone slabs at shows and on eBay. I often would look at the beauty in a stone and found it hard to cut them into shapes for jewelry. I would paint on them instead. Every stone requires successive polishing which takes time. I would begin to see things as I polished. I view the gemstone as an unfinished abstract painting. It is up to me to interpret the piece and decide what to paint on it. I could not find much in tutorials on how to paint so tiny, so learning technique became a bit trial and error. I did find inspiration in Russian Lacquer Boxes; Medieval Painted Prayer Books, and India Miniature Paintings. I will start the post with 10 pieces.

I have been thinking of testing the waters with Deviant Art again. I looked at my last post and see it has been 7 years since I posted an art piece. For the last 7 years I have worked basically in three areas. Miniature Gemstone Paintings; Pointillism; and Religious Commissions. I guess I will start in this arena though not sure where I should begin.