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.

Let Me Get This On My Chest

I have a project coming up where I'll be painting a porch floor. The location is a rural retreat in Ojai. That's: Oh, hi! It's going to be a pattern and I think I will use natural objects on the property as inspiration: twigs, leaves, stones, insects maybe, things like that. Years ago I painted a chest for myself and I think the floor will be similar.




Before I painted my own chest (see above) I did one for a client (see below). Leta Foster, the designer who commissioned the work, said it was her favorite object in the whole project. With that I had to do one for myself, although, I almost think I like the commissioned one better.








On the other hand if I were to paint one for myself today I think it would be more like another commissioned chest I painted. It's a BAMO project and like them it's cool and Modern and a little exotic which is more my mood these days.





What are you thinking about right now?

Artful Layers

Grand Hotel Villa Feltrinelli     Lake Garda     Italy

The story of my mirrors is layered and long. I'll try to be brief in describing it which means I'll leave some out so I'll probably end up revisiting the subject. The title of this post is my version of "Artful Lairs", a story written and produced by Zahid Sardar for the San Francisco Examiners' Sunday supplement magazine, Image. I'm talking 1993 but even at this early date you can see, if you look very closely, a tiny mirror cut-out. I used it in a three dimensional collage. I took an exquisite 18th century bull's eye mirror in gilt frame and used it in an irreverent way. The bullseye mirror image forms the "eye" in a surreal face made of flotsam. I made a number of collages of that sort and eventually scaled-up and translated the mirror into paint and graphite and other media.

Scott Waterman    home/studio   Image Magazine 1993

Scott Waterman    home/studio   Image Magazine 1993

Scott Waterman "Bug Box with Photoshop"

Fast forward to the early 2000s by which time I had moved to Oakland and a much larger studio space, a Victorian store front, late 1900s. Since I had the room my work grew in number and size. I explored the mirror image further and showed a portfolio to Bamo. Pamela Babey bought one of my graphite mirrors on the spot and the seed was planted for a future project which turned out to be a boutique hotel in northern Italy. If you, dear reader, ever get the chance to visit the Villa Feltrinelli I wish you'd take a picture of my work installed there and send it to me. I've never been! My mirror painting hangs in a prominent spot and there are a few of works of mine elsewhere in the Villa.

Scott Waterman   Oakland Studio   2001

Scott Waterman   Oakland Studio   2001

Scott Waterman   Oakland Studio   2001

Scott Waterman     acrylic and graphite on canvas

Scott Waterman     acrylic and graphite on canvas  Villa Feltrinelli

Style Saloniste, Diane Saeks wrote a profile on Pamela for City Paper and the mirror drawing Pamela bought from me is there in her chic living room. Actually at home and at work too because one of my largest mirror paintings also hangs in the Bamo lobby.

Scott Waterman  mirror drawing  Pamela Babey collection   San Francisco

Scott Waterman    mirror painting   acrylic and silkscreen on paper   BAMO  S.F. 

Now move with me to Los Angeles because that's where the story continues several years later. My studio has shrunk in size and my mirror work turns intimate again. I take another mirror image portfolio to Jennifer Long at Film Art L.A. She sells my work for use in movies, TV, and more, and that's how my work ended up on the set for "Wright vs. Wrong". It's a TV pilot. I have no idea when and if it will air but Debra Messing and Carrie Fisher are attached. Almost at the same time another agent of mine, Joanna Burke , placed my work in the Pasadena Showcase house. I saw it there. It looked nice. Amy Devault did the interior design.

Scott Waterman   mirror drawing   watercolor and charcoal on paper

Stay tuned for more on this series. There's more to come!