Orlando

Orlando

I'm referring to Virginia Woolf and her novel of that name. In the book the protagonist, Orlando, defies time and has a miraculous sex change. It's the time travel I'm thinking about.






To be here to be now at last I am free
at last at last to be free of the past
and all the future that beckons me








2006 I painted the silver leafed room in Bel Air. The original plan called for a time-out before my painted work was sealed. We wanted the silver to have some time exposed to the air so it would oxidize a bit. How long? Unknown. As it turns out our onsite patinas expert had an itchy trigger finger and advised sealing before we really got to see some of the beautiful luster that time creates.








It's time, it's always time to reorganize and take stock which is how I came across some of my test work for the silver room. The sliver paper sample has been stored in one of my flat file drawers since 2006. Fortunately or unfortunately it has functioned as an unguided experiment in tarnishing. In this blog post I present several views of the silver paper under various lighting conditions. It's all so unscientifically controled but the point is you can see places of oxidation next to areas hardly tarnished. The untarnished areas had pieces of Plexiglas resting on them so presumably the pieces of Plexiglas blocked air flow and : no tarnish.








Why do we like the look of aged things? Or is that even the question? There's a mystery in this thing called time. We want it new, we want it old. Huh? Both at the same time? Something like that. I still want to create a project that uses this beautiful silver paper, let it tarnish and paint something referencing a much more recent time. Chinoiserie is fine but I want something closer to our lives today. I'm thinking Abstract Expressionism, Antoni Tàpies, J.M. Basquiat, Mad Men, Star, that sort of thing.





See you later Alligator.
After a While Crocodile

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flowers.kitch.01

flowers.kitch.01
Originally uploaded by scott_waterman

Flickr it, blog it, Facebook it, and get on with it.

Here in My Car

Hi, major news. A door closed and another one opened. You know, the usual. (!) One of my projects was put in the deep freeze and the same day I unexpectedly sold a couple of paintings to my Hong Kong client (via BAMO). Tant pis and yay hurray! So recent events have kind of thrown me for a loop and here comes a blog post that seems like a total non sequitur but stay with me, ok? (And do follow my links, they're great.)

I've been casually looking for a new/new to me car. It's casual or maybe uninspired better describes my mood as I hunt for car. The more I look the sweeter my (current) ride looks. I drive a 1987 Dodge Ram Royal Minivan. Ever heard of such a thing? It's very prosaic in a lot of ways but it also quite unusual for it's exact model, age, and its artsy graffiti. It's an art car. (I once lived next door to a household of tagger punks hence my painted van.)

So I'm looking at all sorts of things and then I think to myself: what is my fantasy car? It comes to me instantly: a Citroen! My father insists it the ugliest car in the world and many agree. To me it looks like the future even at 37 years old. Before my van, (which I bought new in 1986), I drove a 1960 Mercedes 220 Sb, pistachio green. So actually moving on to an older car again has a certain kind of logic.








A very quick Google search tells me the car of my dreams is for sale! I'm not going to buy it but if I were a little more insane, insanely rich, and insanely fortunately to have a Citreon mechanic down the street I might buy it. OMG it's so wonderful. I'd float over L.A. traffic in that thing. That beautiful Venetian blinded thing of beauty! My friend, Paulin Paris has just decamped to Paris for a month. Perhaps I should tell him to take a picture of himself for a ride in a DS, just for the vicarious pleasure of it.






Now to prove my devotion to the Citroen I take you back to my (Adobe) Illustrator class where I made the Citroen my final project. I'm sure my project garnered an 'A". Go with your heart, right? Fast forward many years later and I unearth my Illustrator project and subject it to the Jasper Johns maxim: Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. Do something else to it.. Actually first I had to render a digital file into object form. I created a transfer print on canvas and did something to it, etc. And the results are pictured. I love making constructions like this but even though it's a small piece working on a big painting seems to take up less room. So back to painting and I'll be back to painting in my next post. Be seeing you.

Island Romance

A number of events coincided in 2003. My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and the family met at a beach house on Folly Island near Charleston. That was nice, relaxing, and low key. I do remember enjoying it but it was a little bit of calm before the storm as I was in the midst of preparing to move from Oakland to Los Angeles. And I was in the middle of a commission destine for another island just a bit south. The commission was for four paintings for a wedding. Hey, is that a movie?







Back at my studio in Oakland I worked as long as I could on the paintings but my packing job was pressing so I packed up the partially completed work and got on with the move to the Isle of L.A. Moving ranks high as one of the most stressful events in your life. Cumberland Island is a nature preserved, calm and serene. I think I captured that in my work despite the circumstances. My four paintings were used to decorate a tent as part of a wedding taking place on Cumberland. Some years before a rather famous wedding took place on Cumberland Island. It must be a romantic place. Have you been?

Ojai On The Fifth Of July

Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Beatrice Wood

I went back to Ojai today for a meeting with my fabulously fortunate clients who have to my mind what most anybody in the world would love to have. Their spread, a few acres just outside of town, could hardly be more lovely. There's a ramshackle house that has been completely rebuilt and is sited just above a rocky creek. There's a red barn and a couple of out buildings currently under construction to house guests. My part in all of this will be small but I feel privileged to be able to fantasize that this is mine and my friends and family have come to share it with me.








I'll update my blog with the work I do there when it has been realized. I hope it will be soon. Following it's completion I have an enormous commission for a mural on the other side of the country so I must get busy.

Oh, btw, since this is Ojai and Beatrice Wood is part of the local folklore the house came with a few example of her work, some tiles that bare her unmistakable stick figure gestures. You do know that that Beatrice Wood is pivotal in the introduction of modern art to America, don't you? If not follow my links.

Tile drawings by Beatrice Wood

Thank you so much my dear readers from near and far. I so appreciate your taking the time to visit my modest little blog.

I Need Another World

I'm gonna miss my Selma.






My dear, sweet Selma died. I wish you could have known her. As I write this I'm listening to Antony & The Johnson's song, Another World in which he sings: I need another world...I'm gonna miss my..." and it's melancholy and I'm already sad but it helps, you know? We all need another world especially when this world gives us such a heart break, such a challenge. It is perhaps like losing a child, certainly it's losing a dear friend. So music helps a bit. And it almost seems like poetry to me so I'm re-reading Patti Smith's autobiographical: Just Kids. It too is another world, a tale she tells beautifully, tenderly. In Patti's book she gives up her first baby, her friend Robert dies, that's major. That puts it into perspective for me and there's some comfort in the shared sense of personal pain. Oh my dear, sweet, Selma Lou.

I called Selma my little baby partly because she was round and soft and about the weight of a little baby but also because she would fall asleep in my arms or my lap as I would hum to her: hush little baby, don't you cry. She did that her whole life. And she was such a beautiful creature. I just thought her looks were astounding and Patty's too. Selma's sister, Patty died November 2008. Patty and Selma were named after Marge's sister's from the TV Simpsons for irony as my cats were the polar opposite of the Bouvier sisters. My cats had charming, sweet dispositions and beautiful coats : a gorgeous combination of tones and shades of grey on one and stark black and white on the other. They were a most wonderful studio presence for their esthetics alone. We did share an interspecies love affair of the most poetic sort so I guess they were my muses. If I can call upon memory they live still.






Patty and Selma were calm and cool models, photogenic, and appeared in more books and publications than I can remember off hand. They both hung around my studio. Selma was last photographed in my studio with a project that's still up. My project is finished and ready to ship but I've decided to wait before I write a full post with images for the project. I really want to have some pictures if my paintings installed. That should make a big difference, although, I think they look pretty good in my studio. Anyway I'm posting my last shots of Selma and I couldn't resist adding a couple more pictures of her in her youth. I had a book bound of pictures of Patty after she died. I should do the same for Selma.

Heads Up

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This is a little preview for a coming blog post. I'm finishing up a couple of paintings, each about five and half feet square. They're a commission for a place in Charleston. It's been fun and unusual for me as the compostions include a number of figures. The originals were described to me as wall paper panels. 18th c.? 19th c.? I'm not sure.They have a folk art quality and I imagine were different hands at work on each panels given the varied manner in which the figures are depicted.


I have attempted preserve the idiosyncratic quality as much as possible.



Back later with more words and pictures from the Cave of Corbu.



And I thank you.