Before we begin, I'd like to start with a seemingly random doodle image as a warm up.  This drawing has no specific significance and really has more to do with the loose nature of daydreaming than with any intellectual import.  I'm doing this as a limbering up now as I did in the studio, because I've really no idea where this is going and we may be in for a long distance ramble...

    When looking back at this sketch, I wonder to myself, "Where in the heck did that come from?"  I've no real, purposeful interest in Amazon horned frogs.  The old man image was simply one that came off a Google search for "old man",  (I've got an interest in the aesthetic characteristics of well-aged folks...both men and women), and the other flourishes were just brain blurps that ended up looking alright.  However, it somehow turned into a not altogether unpleasant image.  These musings about the sketch led me down a rather winding path that ended in a burst of personal theory that also seemed to come out of nowhere.  We've all heard that quip, "You only use 10% of your brain!", sometime in our lives.  Now, I know that this myth has been duly debunked, but for the sake of  fun let's play with the elasticity of truth. 
       What if our creative thoughts need room to breathe?  What if it were intellectually essential to have all that extra space for our daydreams to lace up their shoes and go out for a leisurely walk or jog to work out the kinks?  That other 90% of one's brain could actually be where we lose those brilliant flashes we periodically get, but can't retrieve.  The trick might just be to leave that extra space less cluttered so you can retrieve those fleeting thoughts more easily even after you've lost them.
     I can be sympathetic to this idea for a need for space myself.  Before joining the Peace Corps in 2000 and heading to Mongolia, I had a real thing for the deep woods.  I was living in Oregon and couldn't get enough of the thick forests of Douglas Fir trees and coastal pre-historic Sitka Spruce.  Those temperate rainforests really got me going.  However, Mongolia slowly changed all of that.  I was living on the steppe, where you could see forever.  It was akin to the "big sky" of Montana, only with gers (yurts).  
    My visual worldview became attuned to what some would call emptiness but would be more accurately described as a decisive sparsity.  Every little thing in your field of vision was essential because of the lack of so many large focal points.  You can easily see any change in pattern (an animal moving or person approaching in the distance) because of this.  It is an amazing place for daydreaming because your subconscious can pick up the smallest of changes, leaving the rest of your brain the luxury to meander.  This kind of space really rubbed off on me and affected my work as a painter and imagemaker.  This is where I started painting and playing with the aesthetics of an image.  I found myself wanting to pare down images to their bare essentials, eliminating lots of details and letting the viewer's imagination fill those gaps in themselves. 

   This hopefully also gives the viewer enough space for reflection and contemplation within their own expansive minds, without crowding out their synapses with excessive detail and information.  The use of the silhouette gives enough to begin with  but not so much that it does all the work for you.   So, with that in mind we proceed to the next step of the process, closing in on completion.

To get the silhouette onto the board, I project the image and use a series of washes of transluscent raw umber and carbon black.  In between these applications of paint are periods of sanding, scraping and throwing of general detritus at the painting to see what happens texturally. 

Lastly, in relation to stillness and subtle changes of pattern, I've been listening to a lot of Philip Glass in the studio lately.  His music embodies what I strive for in my work.  Dramatic stillness. 

After some some fits and starts, fast forwards and regressions, I think that spring has finally been able to get a true toehold here in Vermont.  For a bit there, summer had tried to cut in line but was rudely tapped on the shoulder by a winter that wouldn't admit the love wasn't there any more.  Spring is a time for me when some latent ADD takes hold.  All of the new smells, sounds and sights are too much for me to stay focused on any one thing after the slow burn of winter.  This is also a time when my interest tends to be piqued by some new  fascination.  Right now, my childhood fascination with comics has resurged and has me playing around with the idea of graphic novels and long form comics. 

This thumbnail sketch is an experiment in style for a short story comic I've got in mind for a little wooden firetruck. 

The coming of spring has so many "signs", as they call them, it's hard to really pick any one of them that signifies the arrival best.  Lengthening days (too slow to really register at any one moment), leaf buds on trees, Turkey Vultures kettling above, flattened grasses slowing stretching themselves out, the songs of Cardinals, spring peepers, the appearance of sap buckets, mud...mud...mud...mud.  All of these blend into a general tapestry of spring but nothing so singularly gives me that resurgent buzz like the songs and calls of birds.  I'm both a visual and aural person, these senses taking the lead alternately depending on my mood generally.  However for me, spring is largely for sound.  The first calls of Red-winged Blackbirds and Tufted Titmouse ( to hear the song of Tufted Timouse...

...), spring peepers in wet areas, that low omni-directional breast beating of the grouse, all give me massive goose bumps.  In the end though, nothing has come close to really kicking it in for me like the high shrill call of the Killdeer over the fields of Vermont. 

This leads me to the next step in my painting process.  Choosing my subject.  Once I've got the general feel for what a piece is going to be, I've got to pick out what the subject matter is.  Right now, the focus is on those birds that help me find a sense of place.  Barred Owl during the winter of 2011 anchored that season, Pileated Woodpecker nearly year round haunt our woods and currently the Killdeer signifies the new season of growth.  Those species that are the pillars of place are the ones that I tend to have the most visceral connections with.  Here are the sketches for some of the birds I've chosen for these four pieces so far (including the Killdeer).

These are the images I will then eventually transfer to the panels after I've gotten those to a later stage.  As for the panels, they are now going to need some division of space and color palette choices.

This process continues for some time now, both out of procrastination and intuition.  The colors are usually chosen by a gut feeling rather than some intellectualized color-theory.  Sometimes it's just the tube that's closest to me.  But more often than not the choices are right.

Lastly, I thought I'd link up an incredible video piece done by BLU, a street artist that created this amazing wall-painted animation video on evolution.  Whenever I feel I'm getting stuck in some way, I like to watch this.  It is a great example of what can be done with true imagination, a sense of humour and TONS of time.

When our son, Ibis, was born in 2009, it was an irruption year for Snowy Owls.  This meaning that these birds, which usually stay up in the arctic, make their way down hereabouts for different reasons.  That year, several Snowies were hanging out in the fields about 5 miles away from our current home in Vermont.  At the time, I was working in one location, with a studio in a different location and living in a little cottage rental on Lake Dunmore.  That winter, while my wife Melissa was pregnant, I spent quite a bit of time cruising the agricultural fields of the Champlain Valley here in Vermont hoping for a glimpse of these birds, of which I got many.  Below is one of the moments I spent there...captured with very limited photographic talent...

...It was a winter to remember for sure.  Now, Ibis is 2 1/2 years old and we're having another irruption year.  This year the owls haven't been resident as immediately close by, but knowing they're around is quite enough.  This led to inspiration for creating a piece for Ibis' Christmas gift.  Below is the sketch I did to use as a start.

The fact that these birds only appear at unexpected intervals gives a texture to our winter season.  It's an anticipation that one can have every year, but is only fulfilled every once in awhile.  This lack of a guaranteed event makes those visits that much more special and memorable.  It can be one of those nostalgic red flags that you use as a wayfinder to trace your way back to certain memories..."When was it that we rented that cottage?  Oh yeah, in the winter of 2009 when the Snowies were down."

So, here are some process shots of the piece being worked on.  It's not finished yet, but getting there...

As for the process paintings we've been talking about...I believe I had left off with climbing ladders and dumping water on expensive wood panels.  Sounds smart right?  Well, it works and creates some pretty interesting patterns and sometimes leads to affecting certain decisions I make later on. 

After the glaze has dried on the washed out first layer of black, I proceed to either sand things down, add some liquid layers of additional colors or both.  Either way, it's a way for me to feel my way through the piece while also stalling until I figure out the major color scheme and subject matter.

A couple layers of glaze over this and it's time to make some real and intentional decisions...

This time of year, well into the winter, my fingers start to get awfully dry.  The wood stove dries everything out and the cold makes your hands ache.  In fact, it gets to the point that I daydream of ways to keep the cracking tips of my hands moist and...well...I came up with this...

The sketchbook is getting quite a workout these days as I try to keep loose.  We just came back from a week in the Florida Keys, where I got to watch some serious numbers of birds.  The current favorite (a never ending rotation depending on the season) is the Brown Pelican.  These birds seem to me the perfect blend of grace and poise with a healthy dose of humour.  They're pretty comedic and I've dubbed them the "Mall Cop" of the shoreline.  Every evening they patrol the beaches, gliding over the wave tops like a bunch of mall cops on Segways.

The I.S.F.E.S. stands for The Illustrious Society of Formerly Endangered Species.  It's an idea I had for an elite club of delisted species that were endangered in the past.  I imagine them (in my somewhat random and tangential mind) as being quite full of themselves because of this rather esteemed history.  They would of course pose for their portrait as if they were those fat, bloated bankers' paintings that you always see in the movies.  Soon to come will be the American Alligator and Peregrine Falcon.

Enough of the nonsense.  Last post I uploaded a picture of those beautiful, gleaming and naked wood panels that I would be painting on.  That stage is quite intimidating.  I get the panels made by Barron Arts in Brooklyn and they are beautiful.  To cover them in paint seems like such a shame but it has to be done.  So the very first thing I try to get from the process is a seemingly random act to set the tone.  I like the balance of deliberate action and chance.  Control and chaos.  So, the first thing to do is set the base layer of the painting with a deep black that I let dry until it's tacky.  Then, just as it seems like it's set, I stand up on a ladder and drop large amounts of water on the panel.  This sits in pools on the wood and paint before I tip the whole kit and kaboodle up  to let the water take it's course.  It looks like this after it has dried...

There are some things I can do to "control" the outcome but these really only give me a false sense of it.  After this stage has dried, I apply several coats of clear glaze before adding the next layers of paint.  The glaze is to create some actual physical depth between layers. 

Note the incredible wallpaper behind the panels.  Original stuff.

Enjoy the snow, sun, rain or whatever you're getting today,
Mike

This is my first real attempt at a blog.  My intention is to give a behind the scenes peek into my creative and technical processes so that I may: 1. Give you, the viewer some insight into how my work is conceived and executed; 2. Help keep track of what the heck it was I was doing to "get that effect".  I tend to be intuitive  in the way I work through a piece, with some constants between all of my work.   Sometimes in the flurry of a painting session I  will take out the sander, or use a specific trowel and go into a trance-like state with them (always wearing safety goggles of course).  Several days and layers later, the effect will become evident and I will love it.  However, I will be stymied as to how the heck it got there or in what progression I used specific tools.  The mind wanders and thus, the blog. 
Currently, I am working on a series of four large (4'x4') paintings on birch panel of birds native to Vermont.  The only requirement is that I have had some sort of personal experience with the specific species.  I moved here with my wife 3 years ago and we had our first child 2 years ago (Ibis Dylan).  One way in which I become acclimated to a new place is to become acquainted with the local flora and fauna.  I'm especially fond of birds and spend an inordinate amount of time keeping an eye out for them and daydreaming about them. It's no surprise that people are generally skittish about driving with me because of this.  So, this series of paintings comes out of that process of becoming rooted in the land.  I've had several seasons now witness to the comings and goings of these birds and I've had some incredibly intimate encounters that inform my work.  
Lastly, I will also be taking some wild tangents, I'm sure.   Subjects that loosely inform my paintings such as music, literature, movies, podcasts, long distance running, Neil Young's model train obsession and whatnot will inevitably make their way in here.  I've no control over that. Please, if you've got the urge, leave a comment and let me know what you think, if you have any suggestions or if you have any funny jokes to share.  I love a good joke.

Thanks,
Mike